Chapter 321: Expanding an Empire (2/2)
If people came in. The granite panels sheened with a glossy finish, only a few golems standing in the circular stones. I held faith that once people understood the benefits here, they'd swarm in by the thousands. In my case, I intended on offering quite a few of these outposts to the skeptiles.
They'd arrive in a vast population, and establishing centers for them eased their transition. I'd split them into the cities by their tribes, letting them know what was going on. I might have Amara hack into Schema's system and let me announce a speech. But then again, a message might be better as they'd have it stored for reference.
After that, I'd dish out managers to the areas based on a meritocracy. I was no politician or city organizer, so problems would arise, no doubt. As they came, we'd fix them. For now, I worked within my limits and knowledge base. It was all I could do.
I kept planting these cities further out from Mt. Verner. The forests stretched out as far as the eye could see in all directions before I found patches of plains. Here, human settlements dotted the horizon. From far above, I used my superior eyesight to inspect these territories and how they managed themselves.
Every sight made me wince, everyone's situation both chaotic and haphazard. People, in general, did a great job with the resources they had. However, that was the issue; they had no resources to work with. That came about because of the culling.
Schema stripped power grids, destroyed Earth's infrastructure, and killed most people in the tutorial. Schema then forced everyone to fight eldritch or die. While I appreciated the levels and all, Schema made no efforts to help people off their feet. The closest approximation of that came from the Force of Iron. The generic, leaderless guild acted as quest hubs.
They didn't establish much beyond understaffed zones with outdated, leftover tech and weapons. It was better than nothing, but not by much, at least in the long-term. Springfield was one of these established zones, which helped against Yawm. Searching for more of those places, I found nowhere else in over a hundred miles with a Force of Iron camp. This left people scrambling for protection in tight-knit, small villages.
And they suffered for it.
Starvation loomed. Monsters roamed. People dealt with the aftermath of a brutal society built on snowballing level-ups. I did nothing to handle it before now, and I regretted it. When I viewed people sitting there, it weighed on my chest. They wallowed in what amounted to a dystopia.
If I couldn't have done anything to fix it, it wouldn't bother me. That was the crux of the issue - I could solve it quickly. With time under my belt for the first time in years, I did just that. I found one small town under siege below.
Townsfolk crafted an enclosure, using abandoned cars piled up as walls. They put barbed wire and spikes over the vehicles and around them, most of the spiky cords harvested from nearby farms. People within carried a few weapons, any gunned weaponry long having run out of ammunition. They used roughshod swords and spears, a few well-made pieces built into the mix.
One of the townsfolk was a blacksmith, and it showed by their shields, crafted from spare metal parts. People stood behind the cars, stabbing their spears through the shattered windows. Blood congealed onto those empties frames, no citizen having time to clean anything. They hoped rain handled that for them.
Even a cursory glance explained why as the citizens stopped an assault of entrail-covered bears. Four beasts mounted an attack on the village's eastern side, two dozen individuals fighting them off. A few children screamed, none of them fully systemized and unable to fight back yet. Several people scrambled to get them to safety in a concrete shelter built by what looked to be a dooms-day prepper.
The prepper's paranoia paid off for these people now.
The bears stripped row after row of barb wire on the frontlines. Entrails squirmed and coursed through their eyes, ears, and mouths. Misshapen lumps swelled in them, the bear's bodies converting to the parasite within the bellies of each beast. Several fuzzy eyes opened long the stretched entrails, each of them gazing out with teary, infected oculi.
I winced as they flashed green blooms that released spores over the town. Those fragments floated over the townsfolk like strands of a fleshy, green dandelion. Hovering over them, several people panicked in abject terror as the infection rained in. Some screamed out orders, trying to turn chaos into order. Some froze in place, unable to process what happened.
The entire scene flashed in my vision while I flew over it. I wielded Event Horizon as a cleanser that eliminated the spores. Passing over the people right after, I landed with a soft thud beside several other survivors. Beside the systemized humans, I stood as an umbral titan of metal. I dwarfed them and their barrier alike.
Before anything else, I covered them in the Rise of Eden, turning their weakness into strength. Beside me, a farmer with a scarred face gawked in horror. I pulled my helmet off my face, giving him a confident smile. Interrupting my gesture, an infested bear reached its head through a car door, shattering a window between the farmer and me.
The bear flashed its disgusting face at me, having been warped into horror by the eldritch parasite. The farmer stumbled back and down, mud plopping as he met the dirt. With a casual grip, I grabbed the bear's face, my palm dwarfing its head. I jerked the monster through steel, the car's frame bellowing out a loud squeal.
Lifting the bear over me in one palm, the bear fumbled for a grip on its paws, its body contorted at an odd angle. It grunted out, trying to escape my grasp. It met my fingers, each of them guillotines of steel enclosing over its head. Watching me hold the bear like that, the townsfolk stopped screaming.
They ceased moving as well, most even holding their breaths. My display of strength stunned them. From my palm, a swarm of living needles flooded into the bear, its body appearing unharmed. Beneath the skin, I wore the body like a puppet in my palm. I siphoned its life into my own, my being an engulfing monster.
The other bears gawked at me, the three remaining all wary of me. One of the parasites squirmed out of a bear, trying to hide in the dirt. I smiled at the monstrosity, pulling it towards me with a gravity well. It slapped into my raised arm. It squirmed at me, trying to find gaps to drill in and control my body.
It found a desolate wasteland.
It squirmed in horror, trying to escape contact with my skin. I let my arm down as flesh sunk into metal. The hollowed bear corpse flopped to the side before I raised my other arm. Before I did the same to them, the two bears turned on their heels. They ran away before I waved Event Horizon over them in a flash of misty red.
They disintegrated into mana, the energy siphoning into my skin.
The farmer beside me watched the entire massacre, as did the other townsfolk. Peering down, I left an enormous gap in their defensive wall, having destroyed the makeshift barricade in a patch. Breaking the ice, I scratched the back of my head,
”Hah...Sorry about that.”
The scarred farmer pointed at the hole in the wall, ”Uhm...Can you fix it? You look stout enough.”
I scoffed, ”When I'm done with this place, fixing this wall will be the least of your worries.”
Their faces paled, each of them terrified of what I might do. I spread the Rise of Eden over them once more while raising a fist,
”You'll never be forced to fight an eldritch again.”