Chapter 1260 (1/2)

Theodora Greyman slammed her hands against her desk hard enough that she felt the wood crack. “They just… ignored our request? And passed through our lands like they owned the place?”

Douglas examined the report. “Yes, Madam President. Still, their journey was a brief one. They only spent two hours within Zone 1’s borders… but they did directly pass through the corner of our territory on their way North.”

“Fuck!” Theodora spat out. Then she rapidly forced herself to calm down. The stress of the looming threats swirling around the inaugural football game must really be getting to her if she was upset enough to audibly swear. She squeezed a stress ball ironically shaped like a football several times with her right hand. After twelve squeezes, her pounding heart slowed down.

Once Theodora was calm, she narrowed her eyes and looked at the map of Zone 1 that hung in her office. Perhaps this wasn’t as bad as she had thought. Strength came from unity, and one of the reasons why the New Earth remained so weak was because its factions were aligned only on the surface; the different Zones were jockeying for power behind the scenes. And the reason they freely competed with each other rather than accepting the lead of a single individual is that the single individual existed and had no desire to unite humanity.

Randidly Ghosthound abandoned his responsibilities, yet had continued to reap the benefits from his influential name. It was for that reason that Theodora Greyman utilized some methods that she found distasteful to suppress his influence in her Zone.

After all, would a few powerful individuals at the heads of disparate factions ever display the power that a united humanity would? Of course not. And due to Theodora’s struggle to compete with the Ghosthound, she was forced to rely on foolish individuals who wished to transform the current Earth to the same sort of heaven for the rich that the pre-System Earth was.

Even thinking about it now had Theodora gritting her teeth. If not for the benefits that sports would bring in regards to Paths and physical training… Theodora shook her head. But this blatant rejection of Zone 1’s request was an opening. She fully intended to take advantage of it.

“What about the damages? With those legs… I want some concrete proof so we can lodge a complaint-”

Again, Douglas checked the report with a dour expression. “They passed through areas of mostly bare ground. Drones have already scanned the aftermath. There are some small indentations, but all in areas that were effectively empty. No waterways or forests along its path either. It basically passed without leaving a mark.”

Theodora harrumphed in annoyance, but she hadn’t become President of Zone 1 by fixating. If she couldn’t use this against Randidly Ghosthound, so be it. “Well, at the very least they weren’t too over the top about it. It’s a clear display of disrespect to refuse to comply with our requests at the border, but… as long as this can be dismissed as a small event-”

“That is probably impossible as well,” Douglas was still flipping through the report. “The security checkpoint detected Kharon’s approach early, so the Western Military headquarters had eyes on the whole incident. Lost a whole squadron of drones investigating Kharon. But they must have told quite a few people about what they saw, and those people told other people… we expect as many as ten thousand people hurried North to catch a sight of the rumored “Moving City” while it was passing through Zone 1.”

Defeated, Theodora rested her forehead against the cool wood of the desk.

*****

After Kharon had lowered itself down to settle on the ground, Randidly hopped off of his floating island of doom and landed outside of the city of ogres. Honestly, Randidly was impressed. It had grown quite a bit since he had seen the place last. Most impressively, there were quite a few humans walking along the settlement’s streets. It seemed like Obyrn Myyr had been hard at work since last they spoke.

Waiting at the gates of the city were almost a dozen people. However, Randidly quickly picked out the four important ones and smiled at them. “Annie, Dozer, Sam… it’s really good to see you all.”

Sam snorted and folded his arms as he saw that Randidly had stopped wearing all of the equipment he made him but the but, but he still accepted Randidly’s handshake. Annie, who was clearly very far along in her pregnancy, walked up to Randidly and patted Randidly on the back. “Good to see you too. You look good. I like the new arm.”

“Thank you,” Randidly said with a twist at the corner of his mouth. Dozer simply nodded, so then Randidly turned to the fourth person of import waiting at the gates. “Obyrn, you are looking… ahem. Robust.”

“You don’t need to be nice,” Obyrn rumbled wryly. He shook his massive head. “I don’t hold a grudge that you brought me to my knees when last we met. I was weak, you were strong. It was as simple as that. If I had been stronger than you, the opposite would have happened.”

“Ogres are great losers,” Annie chimed in with an extremely bright smile. She looked over fondly at the armored ogre guards standing behind Obyrn. Randidly felt a little bit of pity for the population of this city.

They moved back to a private room to discuss the recent happenings in the ogre settlement, specifically focusing on the interplay between the two races as tensions rose with the encampment of Nordawn’s army only a half day’s journey beyond the gate. Randidly did his best to keep a straight face as he cursed his decision to become a king, dooming himself to a seemingly endless slew of meetings that were on the surface about different things but ended up all passing in exactly the same manner.

People talked, he nodded. Finally, he could make a decision. And lately, the decisions had all felt like “let’s wait” or “I’ll go fight that person/monster/thing”.

The only one in the room more antsy than Randidly himself was Sam, who had been eyeing Randidly’s arm with such a hungry gaze that Randidly eventually produced a few leftover scraps from the forging of his arm and gave them to the man. Sam had been very pleased for all of a single minute before Dozer gave him a level look for repeatedly banging the metal with a small hammer to test its structural integrity.

After Annie and Obyrn had finished relaying their reports, Dozer leaned forward from his spot standing by the door. “All that’s left… is to decide how to approach the group from Nordawn.”

“They haven’t said anything else since the letter?” Randidly frowned. But before he could continue to speak, a small movement had him send a piercing gaze toward the window.

Seeing his gaze, Annie waved her hand gently to catch Randidly’s attention then raised a finger to her lips. Then, in a normal voice, Annie answered him. “No. We replied once, asking for a delay until tomorrow… but other than that, we’ve heard nothing. We sorta think the fact that they haven’t attacked us after the initial date passed that they have accepted our adjustment.”

Randidly’s Grim Intuition focused on the figure hiding by the window, but very quickly he felt a pang of shock as he recognized who it must be. He glanced at Annie and Dozer and then tried to refocus back on the issue at hand. Raising his gaze, Randidly looked out in the direction of the Ogre Gorge. Even now, he could feel the dense image that must be the leader of the Ogres from Nordawn.