Vol. 3 Chap. 135 Cascading Contingencies

Vol. 3 Chap. 135 Cascading Contingencies

Truth lay on a tree branch. It wasnt very comfortable, but he wasnt paying attention to that fact. He was just there. Being there. He was playing the fool. He was being loud, and obviously provoking. He was relying on the terror and paranoia of others to trigger a proxy war. This was a low percentage play. A smart person didnt rely on the emotions of others. They made things happen on their schedule. This was dumb. He was being dumb. Which fits playing the fool, but maybe too much? He didnt know. It just sucked all the way around.

Was he depressed? Truth didnt know. Maybe it was just exhaustion. Spiritual, more than physical these days. The endless refinement of his body had made physical exhaustion a real challenge. But the mental struggle wore on him.

It was the cop he used as a mouthpiece. And the guys he just fed to tigers. And a lot of other people, actually, now that he was letting himself think about it. Especially Nevile. It was just so shitty to be shitty to people when you know the game is rigged. That you are still picking cards off the same stacked deck. Even if you are hoping to kill the dealer at the end of the game, you are still playing along. Still working over the suckers who didnt spot the con.

Telling yourself that it was necessary. That this was just how the world was. This was reality.

What a joke.

Would it be worse if the terrible things he did were successful, proving that this was, in fact necessary and this was, in fact reality- or if they didnt work because the whole premise was phony?

That would be an awful lot of dead people just to prove a philosophical point.

He just needed to stop for a while. Take a few days or weeks. Just process all the insanity. He didnt have time for that. The clock was ticking, fast and loud. So he would just hang out on this tree branch for a while and not try to think about anything much. Try not to worry about the damage he knew he was accumulating.

Truth was roughly north of the Great White Mountain. He could see the peak from his tree branch. There was a fair amount of air traffic around it, now. Lots of talisman devices, lots of spell birds and summoned beasts. He could imagine all the Jeon conscripts squaring off against all the Onis conscripts. Neither really wanting to be there, both juiced up on all the nationalist rhetoric their officers could cram into their ears.

Both very aware that, be it in conscripts or regulars, Onis outnumbered Jeon more than ten to one. And both very, very aware that their numbers were meaningless when the high levels were fighting. Ten thousand conscripts, or a working from a Level Seven combat mage not concerned about taking prisoners? It didnt qualify as a fight.

Truth looked blankly up into the sky, letting the tree branches flick over his vision. The army didnt explain much about what to do when high levels kicked off, just basics like If things are coming at you, any degree of underground is better than being on the surface. The PMC was a bit more forthcoming.

It was after he got back from his recuperation on the Star of Mercy hospital ship. There was a video in the training library at the PMC, where a high level Starbrite mage had essentially hijacked a rainstorm. The enemy was dug in? No problem. He turned the water into acid, and once that had started eating through clothes and armor, added a little extra something to the water. Tiny demonic parasites, immune to the acid, that crawled in through the open wounds and festered. The results were agonizing. The final outcome was predictable.

Or there was that Senior who ripped through four ammo boxes for a heavy needler, launched straight up, tagged each needle with a bane spell, a hunting spell, enlarge and Graemes Arrow. He THEN cast a tanglefoot spell that covered almost two square kilometers and held it for the fraction of a second the needles needed to find their prey. Total elapsed time- two seconds. Total casualties, one thousand three hundred. No enemy survivors.

Truth waited, needler rock steady in his hand. Waiting for Incisive to tell him the moment to strike. Waiting. Waiting-

Graemes Arrow picked up the needle, whipping it through the air far faster than the needler could manage on its own. The soldiers separated, then looped around, passed each other within inches, separated and moved back. Then closed again.

The needle caught the Jeon flier a moment before he would have made his pass against the two soldiers from Onis. At the ragged edge of its range, even with Grames Arrow, it plinked off his helmet harmlessly. It was enough to make him blink, and for just a moment, flinch. His strong summoned beast smashed directly into the two flying serpents. All fell down. Directly onto the Great White Mountain.

A lot of things started happening all at once. From either side of the border, sirens started blaring. Blizzards of birds took off, flying platforms went up, spell arrays, summoning arrays, sacrificial arrays, Golem launchers started deploying, conscripts were screamed into position, told to stand to, to dig in, that This is it, Boys, This is WAR!

Sirens screamed the alert, as the mountain seemed to shiver and boil. Things were moving on it, enormous things, knocking over trees. Truth could see the trails of their passing from kilometers away. Wards shimmered and snapped into place over the mountain too- enormous things. Impossible things. Truth would never have thought an entire mountain could be covered in wards.

Starbrite had always been so much more than he could imagine. He was just a little rat, staring up. Trying to understand the means and majesty of the king of the world.

The spells started deploying. Explosions ripped apart the air, flattening the trees on the mountains, filling valleys. Erasing lives. They werent all targeting the mountain either- the spells smashed into the soldiers lines, ripping apart bases and airfields. Trying to disrupt summons.

Enormous demons, things with three heads and six arms, each hand holding a bane or a suffering, manifested over the battlefield. Truth could see into the distance- they werent all going for the battlefield. Some were marching into the interior. Cutting off supply lines. Pacifying civilians. There werent many cities in the mountains between Jeon and Onis. Not many people at all, comparatively. But there were some. A few million, perhaps.

Just a few million, out of the billions on this world. And its not like they were targets. Most of them should probably live. Negligible, in the grand scheme of things. A necessary sacrifice for the greater good. The rats had to be fed. They were already starving. Regrettable necessities would remain both regrettable and necessary, given the current and projected emergency conditions.

Truth was numb. He didnt know he was crying, as he watched the spell birds tear each other apart. As angels seared the life from the land, eliminating human and infernal contamination with equal contempt. As demons proliferated, bursting out of the bodies of seventeen year old conscripts. Conscripts who had to be cleared out as economically as possible, and what was more economical than turning them against their fellows?

Standing above it all was the Great White Mountain. Its shields shuddered under constant magical assault. Spears of molten stone launched from arrays the size of houses, the volcanos lava moving under Starbrights command. Smashing through summons and fortifications with equal ease.

It took less than ten minutes to reduce wooded mountains into a fiery hell. Everyone knew this was just the beginning. The warm up. It would get so much worse than this.

Truth watched in horror as the rats fed on each other without mercy. Without hesitation. Without regret.