Chapter 103

Within Paris insects and bugs were starting to disappear. There were some people who found it strange, however it didn’t turn into a big problem.

That was until one day a man suddenly collapsed in the middle of Paris.

After collapsing on his way to work, an ambulance was immediately called, and it was the doctors within that ambulance that noticed the abnormality. The guy who had collapsed, according to his ID was supposed to be in his 20ties, but no matter how anyone looked at him, he didn’t look any younger than 50. There were also completely no signs of him recovering.

In the end without being able to find out the cause or the cure for this man’s condition, he passed away the following day.

The man’s case didn’t become a newsworthy case, however what happened afterwards would. Following him a number of people started experiencing the same symptoms.

Due to the infected spreading even outside the centre Paris, the health protection authorities thought that the disease may be contagious, and immediately went to work. The search continued for several days, however in the end the cause of the disease wasn’t found, and even the people that conducted the search fell ill.

In a desperate attempt, France decided to close off a part of the city, and put restrictions on the citizens from going out. In order to prevent panic from occurring, the special news agencies that had been formed after The Calamity were holding back on spreading the news as well.

But even so, the problem just continued becoming more serious.

After another couple of days, the situation wasn’t getting better, rather the number of patients being admitted into the hospitals was only growing. On top of that the range where victims appeared was only growing.

Due to the unprecedented turn of events the French Government decided to contact WHO in order to ask for the disease, however this was apparently a never before seen case, so in the end they couldn’t find a way to deal with it.

It took the French Government another couple of days to finally figure out that this wasn’t a disease. It was right after that thing appeared within the Luxembourg Gardens that were currently completely closed off.

A 20 meter tower like thing had suddenly appeared in the middle of the Gardens.

People from the Department of Health wearing full protection gears went to check up on the tower. However, as soon as the car carrying all of the members got close to it they all died. Looking at the tower from a distance it was evident that it definitely wasn’t man made.

From the front it looked like it was surrounded by a creature resembling a leech, and as time went by the tower only got bigger and bigger.

The French Government deemed the tower to be an abnormal creature, and immediately contacted Prometheus to dispatch a squad to deal with it.

“What?A monster in Paris?”

“Yes, they requested for Prometheus to conduct a search on it.”

“Take care of it as soon as possible.I don’t want it affecting the voting inside Germany.” said Hans Berend not caring about the case at all.

After all there were already monsters everywhere so the appearance of one new one wouldn’t surprise him. The thing that interests him currently was how the election process would go for his group, and how many of its members would be able to enter the European Parliament.

In a bad way you could say that the people of the world had already grown accustomed to the monsters.

After the dispatched Prometheus group encountered the so called abnormal monster, they decided upon to attack it. However due to not being able to get close to it, they had decided on bombing it.

That day tens of the newly manufactured anti-monster missiles were fired at the tower. Due to their extraordinary impact the tower was gone without leaving even a trace.

Even though the target had been destroyed, it was still deemed dangerous to approach the area, so the members of Prometheus decided to postpone the search for the next day. However on the next day they saw something unbelievable.

The tower that was supposed to be destroyed had reappeared, and was now even bigger than before.

The reappearance of the tower raised the seriousness of the mission even further, forcing Prometheus to opt for the strongest weapon that they had, MOABs made with the newly developed gunpowder. (TL/N: MOAB is a type of bomb that is developed in the USA. For more reference you can check the wiki page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB)

MOAB or also known as the Mother of All Bombs, was precisely the weapon they had used to defeat the BOSS in Libya.

The second attack on the tower continued for half a day. Even though Prometheus used tens of MOABs, in the end they couldn’t destroy the tower completely.

Furthermore the growth of the creature was beyond belief. It was continuing to grow every hour.

In the end Prometheus abandoned their attack and immediately contacted the European Parliament, requesting an urgent meeting. And while all of that was happening the tower was still continuing to grow.

◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇

“What is going on?Hadn’t the attack against the monster succeeded?”

In order to answer the request of the leader of Prometheus Gert Schmick, an urgent meeting of the European Parliament was currently being held.

Currently we still didn’t have a clue whether the attack had succeeded or not. The whole venue was in a disarray.

“Army General Gertreport.”

“Sir!As according to plan we proceeded with the attack, however we weren’t able to take down the enemy.We deemed that any further attacks wouldn’t produce any results so we abandoned the idea of attacking.”

“In other words you failed.”

The whole venue had a gloomy atmosphere surrounding it. That was because all of the members gathered here, including me, hadn’t expected that the attack would fail.

It just went to show how much trust we had put into Prometheus’ fighting prowess.

“The monster far exceeded our expectations.We suspect that it will only increase it’s sphere of influence, which will only lead to more casualties. That is why we wish to discuss with the members of the parliament on how to deal with this case from now on.” said Gert after which an image was displayed on the screen that was within the room.

On that image an enormous lighthouse, or something that closely resembled a tower could be seen.

And situated on top of that tower was some kind of round object…

“It’s growing by sucking in the life force in a perimeter around it.Its height currently is over 800 meters and still rising, considering that it doesn’t have any intention of stopping we believe that it might be a BOSS.”

“A BOSS?”

Up until now there wasn’t any news about monsters appearing in France. And now, all of a sudden we got news of something that could possibly be the BOSS!? 　None of us could believe it, however we also couldn’t deny the image that was being shown on the screen.

“So, what kind of creature is it?”

“According to the biologists it apparently resembles a bug.”

“A bug?We’ve never heard of a bug type monster before.Are you sure they’re not wrong!?”

“Yes, the tower itself can be viewed as an annelid. In other words it’s formed from numerous insects such as leeches and earthworms.And also that circular object on top of the tower…”

Suddenly a picture of the circular object was shown on the screen. Honestly speaking just looking at it made me feel sick.

“This circular object is the main reason we believe it to be an insect type monster.All of the biologists said that this circular object closely resembles a moth’s egg.”

“A moth?If it’s something like that you should have easily been able to destroy it!Why didn’t you just do so?”

“We did put all of our efforts into destroying it, however it just kept regenerating itself with stunning speed.We think that it’s absorbing energy from the tower beneath it.With the weapon power of Prometheus, it won’t be possible to destroy it.”

“So what exactly are you telling us we should do?What’s the reason you called for this meeting!?”

“Please ask for The Sanctuary Knights’ assistance.With just our power alone it’s…”

“Are you crazy!!Why do you think your squad even exists!There’s no way I can do something so shameless!”

“However The Sanctuary Knights have experience that we don’t.If we cooperate with them we might be able to bring it down.”

Hearing Gert’s suggestion there were a number of parliament members who supported his idea, however there were also ones who thought it was downright stupid. In the end it wasn’t a suggestion that we could accept.

“I don’t care if you use nuclear or hydrogen bombs.Do anything it takes to take care of it with just Prometheus’ members.”

“Even Prometheus’ strongest weapon, the MOAB, that easily surpasses the power of nuclear or hydrogen bombswasn’t of any use.”

“How many shots of MOAB do you have left?”

“12.”

“Use all of them.I don’t care what it takes, use the utmost means to take it down.Am I clear!?”

“Understood…”

◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇

The afternoon that day the attacks against the tower continued. Prometheus bet everything they had on the combined force of all of their weapons.

They also had pilots bombard it from the skies, however due to the life force sucking ability of the tower suddenly expanding its scope, all of the pilots immediately lost their lives, crashing alongside the planes.

Even after they had exhausted almost all of their weapons, the tower still hadn’t fallen, rather it had become even bigger, causing the Prometheus soldiers to lose all hope. The growth of the monster was unbelievable.

Faced with the crushing odds, the higher ranked personnel in the squad immediately ordered the abandonment of the mission and reported the outcome to the European Parliament.

Within a newly held meeting, every member was currently looking at the recent footage, no one uttering a single word, their faces filled with despair.

After the failure of the mission, a number of specialists in the field of medicine, mathematics and statistics were called in to explain matters to the parliament members. This had been Gert’s plan to show to the parliament members the current state of things.

“We will first start with an explanation from Prof. William specializing in statistics.” said Gert, after which Hans crossed his arms, with an unpleasant look on his face.

“In regards to the creature’s life force absorbing ability, the biggest problem associated with it is its scope.We believe that within several days it will have covered the entirety of France’s territory.”

“We already know that.Can’t you tell us something new!?” said Hans angrily as if trying to reprimand Prof. William.

“The tower is already spanning over 1000 meters in height and it doesn’t seem to have any intention of stopping.With that in mind we believe that its life force absorbing scope will only continue to grow as well. Please look at this data.” said Prof. William pointing to the screen where a number of different graphs appeared.

The one that caught everyone’s eyes was an exponential functions graph. On which the line could be seen rapidly curving towards the upper right.

“If it continues expanding at this rate then I’m afraid that within two weeks the whole of humanity will be wiped out.” said Prof. William, his words striking utter fear into the hearts of everyone within the room.

Some time passed, after which Hans opened his mouth breaking the deathly silence.

“Contact Leo Garcia…”