Chapter 480

The sun sank below the western horizon, beyond the mountains and beyond the western coast of New Tokyo, casting Maeganuki Ranch into cool shadows. The young cows mooed, sounding happy, oblivious to the butchery of the older cows earlier in the day. It had been a good day. Mark stood on an overlook above the ranch, where workers from New Tokyo had carved into the mountain, leaving a cliff overlooking all the new construction. There was a lot of construction to look at; pastures, big walls that turned those pastures into something like wide wells, towers overlooking it all, security measures everywhere, and many buildings for processing and breeding.

Not to begrudge Reeni at the cattle farm back at Dawncoast, but New Tokyo had been more than prepared to fulfill all the Dynamo, Healthy Body, Telekinesis, and True Brawny needs that Mark could ever imagine. And they had done it fast, too. They didn’t have anyone with Man-made Manipulation, like Eliot, but they did have Builders and Stone Shapers and even one Terrakinetic who had carved out the mountain, turning it into more land for Maeganuki Ranch’s expansion.

The Ranch itself had originally been a collection of 4 buildings, each of them already a rival for what Reeni had at Dawncoast. The ranch also had Tamers and the more nuanced Rancher and a whole bunch of strong hands of their own to wrangle the cattle as much as they needed wrangling, though they were used to normal monster cows. And then Mark had come along, heralded by Melanie Moore and members of New Tokyo’s parliament and others.

The cows Mark had needed were exponentially more dangerous than the ones the ranch, or anyone else in the current world, had ever dealt with before.

Some superheroes had gotten involved.

Captain Titan of Justicar’s Team Mithril had been truly helpful. Mark had barely spoken to the guy during the blockade, or afterward, and then he had shown up, requested by Justicar, and gone to work. Captain Titan had only possessed Sally and Titanfist’s (of Memphi) Power of Titan’s Strength, but after a bit of cattle wrangling and subsequent Skilling, he also had Telekinesis, ripped from the very same cows that he had been wrangling for New Tokyo’s Telekinetic needs.

Team Mithril now had the superhero Tempest with Arch Weather Manipulation, Sky Shaper, and Accelerator Body, Specter with Natural Ethereality, Strong Body, and Battlemind, Captain Titan with Titan’s Strength and Telekinesis, which was all he wanted, and then there was Serge Garin, AKA Justicar.

Mark had offered new Powers to Serge, but Serge had declined.

“I have Union and Pinnacle Existence,” Serge had said.

Mark had been floored. “That sounds impressive?” And then Mark had rapidly added, “But you have True Brawny on Crystal Tower’s public stat sheet? is Pinnacle Existence?”

Serge had said, “It’s like True Brawny but healthier; The version of Immortal Body without actual immortality and instead more strength.”

Mark had filed that information away, marveling at all the new Powers out there that he had never heard of before, and offered, “Want some sort of Mind Power?”

Serge had smiled and politely declined. “I got Specter on the team for that.”

So Mark had moved on; he had had lots of people who wanted stuff.

And now he was here, overlooking a ranch that was fully updated, and with a bunch of new staff all with the Natural Power Tamer because Mark had taken Tamer from one of them and put it into a bull, and then that bull sired a whole new generation of Tamer cattle. And thus, a whole lot of secondary staff had gotten upgraded to full workers.

The family that owned the ranch had been overjoyed because now that Okuana was at war with New Tokyo, New Tokyo had needed to fulfill its meat needs in other ways, and Maeganuki Ranch was happy to provide, as long as they had staff capable of that providing. Tofu and fish was not quite enough for a population of 530 million people, and just 5 Tamers and 4 Ranchers on staff was not enough for all the new needs of Maeganuki Ranch.

But with 34 Tamers/Healthy-Body, and 27 Ranchers/Healthy-Body, Maeganuki Ranch was overstaffed, so most of them were going to move on to other ranches across New Tokyo’s lands. Tomorrow, about 200 more would-be Tamers/Healthy-Body were going to come in and Mark would Skill them, too.

The True Brawny cows and the Telekinesis cows had been truly dangerous, though, and 2 people had died, but Jessie came by and resurrected those people. They ended that program a bit early, to revisit it on another day, but now there were 45 more Kaiju Killers on New Tokyo’s payroll. All of those people had been in the army, which had gotten brutally murdered at Chiba when the blockade started pouring into that place. Jessie had brought them back, though, and then Mark empowered them.

Such an incursion would likely never happen again.

Somewhere in all of that Aleph Two had visited and talked some numbers with Mark.

True Brawny occurred pretty often. Telekinesis was a ‘normal’ enough Power, too. But together? Not often at all! According to him, Telekinesis/True-Brawny was estimated to occur naturally 1 time in every 200 million people. That was a broad ‘estimate’, with a lot of caveats, because the only known user of both Powers was Kandon Valen, Aurora’s Brother, and the few people that Mark Skilled with those powers a week ago. The AIs guessed that there were others out there, but those other people had chosen to remain hidden, or whatever.

And now there were 50 Telekinesis/True-Brawny guys out there, and New Tokyo had 45 of them in their army… Or however many there were. Mark just did the work. Other people recorded numbers. Quark recorded everything that Mark needed to know, though, if Mark needed that information in the future.

New Tokyo had gotten pretty much all of Mark’s Shapers and Speedsters and a bunch of Powers that Mark simply could not put into cows to reproduce those Powers.

The army guys from Aluatha had gained a lot, too, but comparatively less, for sure. Walaria had only listed 32 people to gain what Mark had to give, but 230 people had come on the trip, and so, thanks to New Tokyo’s efforts, Mark had ended up giving all 230 of those people a second or third Power. Most of the people guarding Jessie already had one Power or another, so Mark had mostly ended up giving out a lot of Healthy Bodys.

And then there were the Smart cows, the Battlemind cows, and the Tactician cows. Those cows had been truly dangerous to handle, with almost all of them almost escaping before Mark could put them down, but New Tokyo had handled it. Mark felt a bit bad about killing those cows. They were very much smart enough to be people… but Mark couldn’t allow himself to think about that too much. There was work to do and billions of lives at stake.

The Dynamo cows were pretty much just cows; they couldn’t do anything with all the mana they made, so they were simple as heck to care for.

Mark had Dynamo’d and Healthy Body’d 220 people for New Tokyo. That combo was particularly great, because the high PL of Natural Dynamo was directly opposite of the 25 PL of Healthy Body, leaving all of that Arcane and Mind area completely open, but highly supported by those two Powers. Those mages were going to be truly special.

The ‘war’ with Dominant was going to be a stomping at this rate.

And now Mark’s list of Powers was filled out in fun and exciting new ways, and the cows were subdued and mooing gently in their green, green yards down there, munching on morning-dew-covered grasses, tails swishing. Farmers of Verdago oversaw everything alongside the Ranchers and the Tamers, while governors and councilors were over in one of those buildings far over there, talking about getting more people in line for Mark to Skill tomorrow.

Mark had promised them the next 3 afternoons, but the mornings were for him. Mark had plans. He was gonna take some Dynamos in his soulhouse and turn them into something for Addavein or Rekaro or, mainly, Tartu, to see if he could make ‘Swords of Empire’ that were really ‘Staffs of Empire’, that would allow for Dynamo artifacts. Of course, the danger with making those is that they could get stolen and used against Aluatha and Mark’s people, but that was a risk Mark was willing to take, because if Mark made the empires of the Two Worlds strong enough, then Dominant would think twice about making any more moves.

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There was no to go to war with Dominant right now.

Billions of lives were at stake in a Worlds’ War, and nobody wanted that.

Mark honestly hoped that New Tokyo’s diplomatic efforts on that front found fruit. No one a war right now, except for maybe Dominant, because right now Dominant was, well, dominant. No one had dragons, no one had dryads except for the Godking, and Dominant had a bunch of hidden powers. Mark hadn’t watched much of the news, but he had seen a little, and a whole bunch of professors and soldiers and talking heads for Aluatha and New Tokyo and otherwise were saying the same thing: Dominant attacked now because to wait was to lose.

If he had managed to kill Aluatha at the Winter Ball Attack, and if he had managed to pull the heart out of New Tokyo, then he would have swept up the remainder without much trouble.

But Mark was here.

Mark usually turned off the screens when they started to talk about him, though.

Hopefully the heat of this upcoming war died down now that Mark had made a good 500 new Big Powers in the world, because if Dominant was just some asshole on the edge of humanity, relegated to obscurity through the advancement of everyone else in the world? That was fine by Mark.

If Dominant kept up this war, then it was going to go terribly for him, for sure… hopefully.

And if he waited?

In 20 years from now, humanity would have thousands of new cities all across the Two Worlds, Empires risen from the ashes of history, and powerhouses like Nobody Important and the Demon Kings like Planty and hell, even Thrashtalon… Well, probably not him. And not the goblins, either. But all the rest of humanity would set upon Okuana and oust that tree forever.

… But if Okuana tried shit? Like really, truly went for war...

Then… Then Mark would figure out something with Jessie and probably make some deals with Thrashtalon to get the demons fully against Okuana… maybe. Would Mark give up the Reset Quest to get the demons all on his side?

… If he could get all the demons to agree to ‘soft reset’ the System?

… Was that even a thing?

Mark sat down on a boulder, thoughts heavy.

he make deals to make the demons less demony? To codify a new system for Power distribution? To get rid of the monsters and to propel humanity into a future, like the one they used to have before magic came along and tore down all the civilizations of Earth, robbing humanity of the stars?

… Well… Humanity couldn’t go past the gravity well of Earth anyway because there were giant monsters out there…

Mark furrowed his brow, thinking way too heavy of thoughts. For the first time since he started campaigning for the Reset Quest, Mark was thinking about everything necessary to really get there. Lola had once spoken of pushing a button to kill half the world and Reset everything to a paradise, then and there, and Mark had said ‘no fucking way’, and yet…

The path forward was going to be—

“What ya thinking about?” Isoko said, landing softly beside him.

Mark glanced up at Isoko, and he knew she had been having deep thoughts all day long, too, so maybe… Mark said, “I was thinking about everything happening right now, and I kinda feel like I was in a dark room, and all I had in front of me was the Reset Quest lighting the way. But then Nobody Important knocked me off of that path, and here in the dark I found… a lot. Figured out how to fill out my soulhouse, how to Skill people, how to string my body along a wire and not die to void bombs, and now I’m here, in New Tokyo, and it occurs to me that this has been really awesome.”

Isoko grinned, asking, “Stopping to smell the roses is nice sometimes, huh?”

Mark wasn’t going there, exactly, but… “Yeah; that, too. But… If Doomo and New Tokyo’s people can get Dominant to pull back everything he’s doing —not even sure what the diplomats are even asking for, actually— then we don’t have to go to war with him, and that would pull a whole lot of worries out of the world right now. We could grow as a people; as a civilization. We could get beyond the monsters and the horrors just through pure advancement of powers and tech. What if every city on Earth was a tier 10 city, like New Tokyo, and they could blast the lands outside of the walls and kill absolutely everything? Would the demons stop trying to take down the city walls? How awesome would that be! But no. We’re headed toward a war. And I think that even if we advance enough then Dominant is going to try shit, anyway… And I think you’re worried about some of that anyway, right? About war.

“I don’t want a war.”

Isoko’s eyebrows went up, and then she softened, smiling slightly, truly, as she said, “I don’t want war at all, and I’m glad you don’t either. But what about when Dominant opens up that Sahara Gate, full time?”

Mark cringed. “I to knock it down at least once, but I know I shouldn’t because that would strain relations...”

A thought occurred.

If Mark went and knocked down the Sahara Gate, that action would likely kill people.

Mary Getty, that Mind Control woman who Contracted with Leash to turn demonic, had been Mark’s first human kill.

Mark had killed hundreds just the other day, in the blockade.

“Oh fuck,” Mark said, elbows on his knees, hands to his face, staring down at the ground. His face felt hot, his chest felt cold, his life felt too short. He whispered, cursed, “I killed so many people.”

Isoko sat with him.

She said nothing.

It was more than enough.

Mark breathed out Bad for a while, and Isoko helped him breathe in the Good.

When the sun had set, the stars came out, and the lights of New Tokyo glittered everywhere as far as Mark could see, Mark got up. Too much sadness had a way of burning itself out sometimes, and Mark had hurried that along with a Union of Good and Bad, and Isoko had helped.

Isoko suggested, “Feeling hungry? I hear they have steak on the menu down the road.”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”