This chapter REALLY didn't want to get written. But here it is.
Chapter 271 – Two Weeks
It was only two weeks into the thirty-day period of the Flames of Vengeance being unleashed by the death of the Al-Masih Mantle-holder, and the death toll was rising. Pressure from the Ceresan Empire and the rest of the international community had blunted some of the affected people’s worst impulses, at least amongst the state actors. The ‘revolutionary’ types and religious fanatics were not so restrained, unfortunately.
Ironically, places like Somalia and Yemen were the least affected by the Flames. Those countries had been only barely held together, before the System, and, outside a few city-states, had been mostly abandoned to the monsters, which had spawned in at higher levels than other areas. There wasn’t much further that they could fall, after all.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, had been utterly devastated. The dictatorial power dynamic shattered when the people realized that boosting all their abilities by 500% while reducing damage taken by 80% dramatically altered the playing field. The rulers, the elites, and the wealthy businessmen all found themselves torn apart by the masses. Foreign nationals who lived in some of the tax havens, there, fared no better, as they were under-leveled compared to those who had to work for a living.
Religious extremists were fighting in Turkey and Libya, while civil wars were raging in Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbeckistan. Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan were on the brink of war. War had already broken out between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo, and Greece was attempting to annex North Macedonia.
The situation between Poland and Belarus was calming down, thanks to statements from Poland’s allies reminding Belarus about Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. The Yagishna were moving openly in Russia, now, killing, cursing, or enslaving any leader who was trying to move for war in Ukraine, or to support Belarus in a confrontation with Poland. Baba Yaga had not said anything publicly, but the message had been received loud and clear, and while the Flames of Vengeance enflamed tensions and lessened consequences, it (thankfully) did not drive people past the point of reason.
Somewhat surprisingly, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan were all remarkably settled at the moment. There had been some initial clashes, but a lot of the bad blood in the region, at least in modern times, boiled down to interference from Cold War powers, and the Zionist state in Israel. But Russia and the US were staying out of things, and I had already taken Israel off the board. Reformed Palestine was the focus of the region, now, and leaders in those countries were quick to divert attention to either supporting the rebuilding of Palestine, or to the hunting of the powerful monsters that lived in the deserts.
Iraq and Iran were having a staring match across the border. There was still bad blood there, but the thing that kept things from boiling over was that word had spread that the one who killed Al-Masih was a European. Between that, and the chaos unfolding elsewhere, Baghdad and Tehran had put their forces on alert, but were mostly hoping to ride out the storm.
Other countries, like Kuwait and Djibouti, were just trying to keep their heads down, and avoid drawing anyone’s attention. They had histories with their neighbors, obviously, but lacked the strength to do anything about it. Especially since their populations had been reduced since the Initialization. According to the reports, leaders in the small countries were quietly pushing the people emboldened by the Flames to take up Adventuring, and go fight monsters in the wilds or in dungeons, to help secure their homeland and bring in new materials that could be used to advance their future.
Pakistan and India, however, had broken out into full-scale war. Pakistan opened the war with submarine attacks on India’s naval vessels, and using missiles to strike targets in Mumbai. At the same time, they used sleeper cells to disrupt and destroy power and communications infrastructure, hindering India’s ability to respond to the ground attack, when it came. The Pakistani Army invaded in the northern provinces, staging from near Islamabad to strike at Kashmir and from Lahore to push through Punjab, driving towards New Delhi.
India had been caught off-guard, but had rallied, preventing a total collapse of the front line. In the north, they abandoned Kashmir, Ladakh, and Himachal Pradesh, to focus on the defense of their capital, forcing the Pakistani advance to halt. In the south, the Indian army pushed forward from Gujarat towards Karachi, hoping to force Pakistan to shift troops from the northern offensive to prevent the southern border from failing completely.
Unfortunately, the mudflats and salt wastes of the Indus River Delta, heading into the estuary of Sir Creek was… less than hospitable to ground forces that wanted to move quickly, even if you discounted the wild monsters living there. In fact, Pakistan had deliberately left the monsters in the region alone, so long as they did not approach human settlements, and instead focused on air defense systems in the region. Any helicopters carrying troops faced the surface-to-air defenses of the Pakistani army, or had to fly low enough that the colony of Mud Drakes living there could bring them down with magic.
Clearly, this was not a war plan put together in an instant. Pakistan had likely been updating previously made war plans ever since the System came online. Plans that may have even been in place since India and Pakistan first broke apart after the end of British colonial rule. It had the kind of operational simplicity to it that spoke of a long-held strategic plan that could adapt to scenarios as they played out.
Still, India’s initial counter-attack in the south had stalled, and been called off, as the Pakistani forces made full use of their terrain advantage. This left the situation effectively at a stalemate, for the moment. Air superiority could have changed things, of course, but magic changed the game there, too. Especially since the Pakistan Air Force had purchased upgrade kits for their fighters, helicopters, and transports from my Empire, after seeing how they performed for the North Koreans. And it also seemed as though the Flames of Vengeance applied to fighters when the pilots had the buff. The difference was not enough to completely wipe the Indian Air Force off the field, but the IAF’s 3-to-1 numbers advantage over the PAF was not holding up well, when the PAF was shooting down ten IAF planes for every one they lost.
Basically, the war was only two weeks old, and India was not doing terribly well. However, as far as I’d heard, no one was thinking about putting nukes in the field. Not yet, anyways. That wasn’t just because cooler heads might be prevailing, but also because I’d warned both countries to make sure it didn’t happen. The Black Tear of Night’s Folly, the Great Horde superdreadnought that was the center of the Ceres Royal Navy’s Home Fleet was nineteen kilometers long, which made it easily visible from the ground with the naked eye, even during the day. That was the kind of threat that did not need to be mentioned directly to be effective.
Thankfully, none of this insanity was spreading towards Ceresan lands. All my holdings in South and Central America were far outside the radius from the Flames. Some individuals, merchant marine crews, had been in range, but the worst that came out of that were a few fistfights. And the few powerful groups that were both within range of the Flames, and might have a direct grudge against the Empire (and hadn’t already gotten stomped on) would find that the territorial defense groups were on alert and ready to respond to any trouble.
Which is why I had the time to turn my attention to other matters. Mhyreth, my familiar, had mentioned that her father was a Demon Lord on another world somewhere in the galaxy. Yhrath was his name, and he was, the last time she’d seen him, a Greater Balor Blademaster of the Hellfire Citadel / Demon Lord. Yes, Demon Lord sounded simple compared to the class, but the general rule of thumb with Tier 3 classes and professions was that anyone with one of those that sounded ‘simple’ was extremely dangerous.
Of course, most of the dangers of a profession like Demon Lord were tied to their lands, and their followers. For Yhrath, that meant that his power, and the danger associated with it, was contained within the Jarix System. Jarix IV was the planet he ruled directly, but the rest of the system belonged to him, too, just like anyone who managed to own Earth would probably end up essentially owning the rest of the Sol System. Either way, the majority of his power was tied to that area of space, which meant there wasn’t any direct threat from him.
Well, there wasn’t any threat from him, anyways, since Mhyreth had gotten in touch with him just after her summoning, to let him know that she was a familiar, now. Yhrath had, apparently, been pleased that his oldest daughter with his third wife, a Greater Succubus, had been ‘taken in hand’ by a Demon King. Of course, that was before I rose from Tier 2 to Tier 3 in mere months, and before she found out I’d used my skills to ensure our first encounter knocked her up.
Originally, with the Ouran squarely between Sol and Jarix, the chances of Yhrath being able to visit before Mhyreth had our child were small. Very small. The Ouran were one limitation in the way of that visit, yes, but they weren’t the only one. Rulers, by and large, did not get to just up and leave home on long trips. Not unless there was some good reason for it, they could reliably remain in contact with their people back home, and there was a way for them to return without too much time lost, if necessary.
A good seneschal or the like helped with that, but it was nineteen jumps with the Stitch Drive to cross the distance between Jarix and Sol. Even if you found a crew that could handle all the back-to-back jumps, you’d be destroying the engines without some proper cooldown time between jumps. Recommended time, for the standard engines found on the System Shop, was a bare minimum of two hours between jumps, though eight was the recommended cooldown period. You could cheat, somewhat, by installing multiple Stitch Drives in a ship, and using them in sequence, but that was expensive, and rough on both crews and maintenance.
So, you could understand my surprise when Mhyreth walked into my study at the palace, and showed me a message that she just got from her father through the System Shop’s mail interface. Apparently, a courier had been dispatched from Jarix, and they should be arriving within the next few days. The courier had many of her personal effects from home, which she’d been missing, since she’d been in the shower when I first summoned her, and ‘unsummoning’ a familiar didn’t send them home, but instead left them essentially an entity of thought talking in my head. That’s also how a familiar survived lethal blows. If they were ‘killed’, then they would be unsummoned, and couldn’t be resummoned for quite some time.
That much was reasonable. The [Contact Mirror] coming along with the courier, to allow the equivalent of interstellar video calls? Also quite reasonable. A [Contact Mirror] was much like the teleporters linking the Empire together, in that they were originally designed to connect to one or more mirrors, chosen at their creation, and either connected to all of them or none. The [Contact Mirror] also needed to be set in place, or it wouldn’t function properly.
Less reasonable was the last little item that was coming with the courier: a [Transport Beacon]. That was basically the [Contact Mirror] on steroids. You charged the beacon, and it teleported everyone inside the circle to the connected beacon, and its circle. Range was, frankly, ‘as long as it is on the same plane’. Sure, it needed to be on some suitable rock, asteroid, or otherwise, and couldn’t be moved once placed, but that was not really a big thing. Especially when you considered it was a Tier 3 teleportation item, cost several million gp, and, oh yes, needed to be charged with 1 Million MP for each activation. Even here, on Ceres, in the heart of my domain, that was no small ask. And it needed that charge for every transport, one-way.
The implication was obvious: Mhyreth’s parents wanted to see their daughter, grandchild, and me.