[LitF] 51.4. Interlude 4 - For Freedom (Patreon)

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"We lost them, sir," said one of the dozens of military operators in the big situation room.

The back wall was filled with screens displaying the images received from four human satellites, which the people controlled through computers. One screen had shown three flying people close to the crater that replaced the Institute, but they became blurry and transparent, then disappeared. Blaze Terrell had seen it, too, but hearing the report made it worse, somehow.

"Are you sure that was Boria?" he demanded.

He knew the truth, but he also knew better than not to confirm with other people. Arrogance had brought doom upon too many people throughout history.

The thirty-year-old unawakened with an oversized belly smiled apologetically. "I was told the elves can zoom in the image somehow, but we haven't figured out how to do it. There's only so much reverse engineering we can do on these damn things. We don't even know how the satellites can pinpoint the antennae positions!"

Blaze, of course, knew how. He had gifted the stolen technology to the Lumos Republic, but only after his own people studied it and made it even harder to decode. The elves had many things going for them, but not magic encryption. Thankfully so, or he wouldn't be able to use satellites even after stealing them.

Quantum entanglement magitech ensured both ends of the satellite were aimed at each other to properly send and receive strong light beam signals, and spatial prediction guaranteed the sender and receiver didn't miss each other as they remained in movement. Despite being impressive enough, the quantum tech would eventually evolve to bypass the need for signals, or so Blaze had been assured ten years ago when he stole the satellite magitech. There had been no advancements ever since.

His most promising researchers had instead turned to studying how to make portals without a shaman, which would allow them to connect the satellites to computers through a cable. Sadly, shamanism was rare and expensive, and shamans knew how to hide, the bastards. Even after becoming a Human Commander, Blaze had only found two, and one killed themselves before he could capture them. The other killed herself after sharing mere low-level secrets over several years.

The hunt had made shamans turtle down harder than ever, making portals even rarer than the decreasing mana levels. Blaze took it as a fortunate consequence. The less dependent people became on awakeners and things that screamed "magic" before it was turned into magitech, the better.

Anyway, his best researchers were almost figuring out an enchantment that would allow any random person to activate a portal. His second best were making headway into making portals work in low mana areas. The wired satellite plan would work. The only unfortunate part was that even the most conservative projections suggested the cost would be—

Blaze shook his head to center himself in the present.

Improving the ridiculously rare Brilliant Creativity skill to A-tier had sounded like a good idea. However, his B-tier Cold Heart couldn't block some creativity bursts, and he couldn't find suitable skill crystals to also improve it. If he continued thinking about magitech, he would eventually think of something interesting, but it might take anything from seconds to years. Now wasn't the time to let his mind wander.

He told the operator, "That's why I tell everyone we should just conquer and plunder the damn monsters. Why pretend elves are a Fated Race? We all know the truth."

All those words were a lie. If he told his moles that humanity should declare war on the elves, they would. But he had to control the game well to ensure the right goals were accomplished at the right time, including eradicating every other sapient race in the world. Misguided pity and sympathy at the wrong time would allow elves to disappear and become a hidden menage just like those damn werepeople.

Getting rid of them was a matter of logic. There was only one world and too many sapient races. Sooner or later, they would have to fight for resources. Getting rid of competition now was a bit barbaric, but better than waiting until more elves were crawling over the planet's face. Or dwarves, but those would be harder to deal with.

The operator chuckled. "You tell me, sir. I voted for war. It's General Vashlos you have to convince, not me."

Blaze nodded, patted the guy on the shoulder, and left Cosmos Command Room 3, finding himself in a long steel corridor.

The idiots had called the room Space Command before he came and pointed out that it would be confounded with a command related to spatial magic. Sometimes, he wondered how the Fated Races had developed from cave dwellers into him without someone like him to lead them on the right path.

Well, he knew how: aliens.

Blaze had noticed the alien threat the day he unlocked the truth behind the Necklace of Monster Charming. It could control innocent people, using the excuse of their long-dead ancestors having mated with monsters. If Fate could do that to them, it could do it to everyone, regardless of their bloodline. Maybe it was already doing it to awakeners. It was probably its whole purpose.

He had been willing to sacrifice some people under Howard to make everyone notice how terrifying items from dungeons could be and the dangers of the "prizes" Fate gave them. A few losses for the greater good. That boat had sailed, but Blaze still had the means to eliminate alien presence from this world.

His latest weapon's field test was the final evidence that awakeners weren't needed to kill monsters. Humanity could purge all alien influence from the planet, be it dungeons or Fate's lackeys.

He chuckled. That thought was a bit redundant. He was half-convinced that dungeons and their monsters were also working for the powers behind Fate. It was just logical.

Whatever the case, Blaze would clear the obstacles for humankind, and then his race could evolve naturally, as it was meant to, without an alien puppet master controlling their strings. It was so absurd that people would accept to be controlled by some computer program, as anyone with a neuron could tell was what the so-called Fate was! To think their uncultured ancestors were so awed by something that was simply... technology.

Blaze would save everyone from their own stupidity—and humanity had lucked out that he had been born with their genetic signature, so they would get to share the glory and perpetuate.

Things had gotten a little trickier after Boria destroyed the big bad dungeon. Two hours before he appeared, sensors detected how the world's mana levels were increasing. Mana madness would be a thing of the past in a couple of years.

Fortunately, Blaze had planned for it, too. Dungeons would start popping up everywhere soon. He would let them overflow and monsters create chaos for a few months, then save the day with magitech. Fools believed Fate was required for enchantments to work, but he knew better. Magic belonged to the universe, and humanity had already found a way to bypass awakeners by using Intent-Conducting Miniature Crystals. Awakeners were a useless relic of the distant past.

As for the League saving the day?

Blaze wanted to see them dare to do it after he had unleashed the power of the atom upon the world. He had been merciful enough to limit the spread of the blast and the radiation, but he would make sure everyone knew that had been a choice, not a required restriction in his weapon.

The League would knell and obey or be exterminated.

Even so, Boria remained a wild card. Blaze had fallback plans for a strong awakener, but Boria's power almost defied reason. Blaze's people and his own math had told him that a strong enough awakener could theoretically survive the blast, but it would require a lot of mana, mind stats, and elemental talent. It was a statistical impossibility for Boria to have all that, yet there he was.

At least the boy had gotten severely hurt, or so becoming a strange mass of flesh indicated. That, in turn, proved he could be killed. And Blaze knew just how to convince the whole world to kill him: mana madness. A few tweaks here and there, the right images shown from the proper angle, a proper filter of what was revealed, and the world would believe Boria was a mana-mad awakener.

Blaze would start slowly. Boria had made it clear how he would do anything for his girlfriend, and Blaze would use her against him. Later. First, Boria would lose his maid, then be seen killing innocents as revenge. Then, he would lose his knight and do the same. Finally, the truth that he was controlled by a half-vampire would come out, Blaze would kill the girl, and Boria would go on a rampage.

Blaze was confident he could also use Boria's mana-madness as an organic trigger to make humans declare war on elves with little political cost. The boy was a half-elf, after all. That reminded him that it would be easier to make Boria look more elf than human if he was linked to his sister's descendants, who had so little human blood remaining in them after Boria's mother and sister returned to the Endless Forest. That could be easily arranged. If the reports on Boria's maid weren't wrong, she was some sort of spy, and he could plant the right clues in every Avaria city.

Blaze squinted his eyes. What if he made the maid die while getting information about Boria's family? That would certainly make him more unstable. But he would need to luck out for the maid to be in one of the three cities where he had hidden portals and could send a vial of undetectable voidsteel poison.

He frowned a little at that.

What if he did luck out, but Boria got rid of the poison? That couldn't be allowed. The boy's heart had to become utterly devoid of hope.

Blaze had to assume he might have more incorrect data about Boria. The reports had been wrong about his element, after all. He was a biomancer, not a metalmancer, which was only his skill element, though he knew how to pretend well.

Still, even the strongest biomancer of Blaze's wildest estimates could only detect the poison on time if they were very lucky. They would then have limited time to get the patient to a purely technological hemodialysis machine in time, as enchantments, spells, and magitech would fail in contact with the voidsteel in the bloodstream. Such a machine didn't exist in Avaria, but Blaze would also order his people to destroy the magitech machines nearby, just in case. A few more sacrifices for the greater good.

Blaze thought about it for a bit longer, then nodded for himself. That should cover everything.

He almost felt sorry for the boy. The latter had the elemental talent, magic training, and mind stats to survive a nuclear blast, while Blaze had everything else. They were unfairly matched.

Fortunately, that hint of empathy was short-lived under the might of his Cold Heart skill.

Blaze had suffered a few setbacks, but he wasn't worried. Even if his plans failed again, which was already impossible, he would reach his goals eventually. He had too much control over too many world leaders. If need be, he could expend all his resources and power to ensure the boy was hunted down no matter what.

No single awakener could resist the might of the entire world—and that was a hard, cold, unchangeable, and undeniable mathematical truth.

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[A/N: This PoV was the most challenging to write. It's exposition-heavy, and reveal many things, yet I also tried to show a lot of other things without directly saying it. Let me know if it feels too confusing.]

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