Chapter 961: The Scary Demigod Side

Asano Village had an auditorium for large meetings. Jason sat quietly at the back, watching a presentation by Clive, Audrey and a pair of biologists from the Cabal and the Network. With them were officers from the CIA and their Australian counterpart, ASIS. They were outlining everything that had been discovered about the blood oaks, from the name to confirmation that there were more of them. The results were a combination of experimental records, recovered communications and working with samples. Along with samples from the lab, they had been working with what Colin had left of the blood oak they had killed.

Jason’s instincts were to stick to people he knew and trusted when dealing with the vampires, but he knew that wasn’t practical. He simply didn’t have the bodies for simultaneous strikes, coordinated across the globe. When the main concern had been vampire lords, he would have considered splitting up the visitors from Pallimustus, putting each in charge of a team from the Asano Clan’s impressive roster of silver-rankers. They even had a gold-ranker, although that was staying tightly under wraps for the moment.

The addition of the blood oaks changed the equation considerably. Splitting up teams became much more dangerous, and they would need to rely on the people of Earth a lot more. They lacked the power and experience of Pallimustus adventurers, so making sure they understood the threat was critical. To that end, the auditorium was filled with essence users and operation coordinators. They came from every government and magical faction that could field a gold ranker, or at least a contingent of capable silvers. The training programs initiated by Farrah and refined by Rufus had been taken up around the world. The old guard of monster core users were slowly but surely being superseded.

The initial plan, to alpha-strike the vampire strongholds and seize as many nuclear devices as possible, was no longer viable. There was no doubt that the vampires would have caught wind of it to some degree, but after the Melbourne event, there was no more surprise to be had. The Australian Prime Minister was nailing that coffin shut as he ran a media blitz talking about terrorist vampires. He was desperately attempting to spin the narrative in the face of domestic political pressure and international condemnation.

The new plan was still being talked about as a variant of the old one, still based on coordinated raids across the planet, but with less stealth and more overwhelming force. The reality was, however, that there would be no mass-rush against the vampires while their nuclear arsenal remained an active threat.

An ASIS agent, Natalie Park, has been assigned to Jason as liaison from the Australian security services. A silver-ranker, she had been a young girl at the time of Jason’s last visit. Trained up using on Farrah and Rufus’ methods, she was a silver-ranker with no trace of cores in her system. She entered through the rear of the auditorium and crouched behind Jason’s seat.

“They’re almost ready for you, Mr Asano.”

“Thank you, Natalie.”

Jason got up and left the building for another, nearby. Originally it had been the mayoral residence, combined with some administrative space. It was currently occupied by Lenora Coleman, and served as communication hub for the international forces present. The Americans had installed a magitech conferencing device in, appropriately, the conference room. Jason had been told that it was as secure as remote communication could be, at least for now. Inevitably, the technology would be leaked, copied and cracked, but until then, the largest vulnerability was the human element.

Although it was far from his field of expertise, Jason’s mind had been on magitech since planning his return to Earth. There was no way for his home planet to catch up to the magic of Pallimustus. Even disregarding the millennia of magical history, Earth’s average magic levels were a step or two lower, across the board. Those levels had risen, but high-magic zones were fewer and smaller than on the other world. There were even a handful of magical deserts where gold-rankers had trouble visiting without gulping down spirit coins.

Jason’s hope was that magitech would level the playing field. Pallimustus was starting to adopt more technological principles, but it was slow going, and mostly the work of Travis Noble. He had used the traits of technology to do something magic didn’t excel at: cheap, long-distance communication. On Earth, technology has many bottlenecks, and a planet full of people now turning to magic to overcome them.

Much of the last few decades had been spent using magic to circumvent key chokepoints in technological advancement, such as a lack of efficient superconductors. That research had leapt ahead in the last decade, once the world had gotten used to magic and begun recovering from the monster waves. As a result, technology in multiple fields had rocketed ahead of what Jason had known. Things had advanced so fast that the world was still catching up, socially and politically. The Middle east, always a hotbed, had become more volatile as most of the world abandoned fossil fuels.

As Natalie led Jason into the conference room, he looked to the example of magitech it contained. A conical device had been installed on the centre of the table, with control panels at each end. A man was sitting at the head of the table, with a computer tablet plugged into the panel.

“They’re calibrating it now, Mr Asano,” Natalie told Jason.

“I’m surprised you’re plugged into it,” Jason said. “Shouldn’t everything be wireless, at this point?”

“Sure, as long as you trust the wireless network you’re using,” the tech said, and pointed at the device in the centre of the table. “No one is going to tap into this thing until someone reverse engineers it. My tablet, though, is more vulnerable. A hard connection is more secure.”

“Fair enough.”

“Shouldn’t be more than a moment, Mr Asano” the tech said. “Big fan, by the way. I have a poster from back when you had the silver eyes, not those orange and blue ones you’re rocking now. They’re cool.”

“Thanks.”

The tech was dressed in the standard IT uniform of jeans and a t-shirt with some pop culture refence Jason didn’t understand.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Damn,” Jason muttered.

“I’m sure he’ll have it set up swiftly, Mr Asano.”

“Not that,” Jason said. “I just realised that there’s fifteen years of popular culture I’m never going to catch up on. And people thought my references were outdated before. Have they rebooted Knight Rider again yet?”

“You mean that show about the car possessed by the ghost of David Hasselhoff?” Natalie asked.

“David Hasselhoff died?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“He hit silver rank a couple of months ago,” the technician said.

“Then why would they make a show about his ghost possessing a car?” Jason asked. “Was it his character from the old series?”

“Nope,” the technician said. “He was playing himself. They supposedly killed him off in the show, and he did the voice for the car. Then they revealed in the third season that he was alive the whole time and the car was a magitech AI synthesising his voice. The show dropped off pretty hard after that. Never got a fourth season.”

“I should check that out. Do they have a box set of the series?”

“A box set?” the tech asked. “Like one of those Japanese lunches?”

“Right. They probably don’t do those anymore.”

“No, there’s bento places all over,” the tech said. “It’s a trend right now.”

“Never mind. Shade, remind me to look up the Knight Rider reboot.”

“No.”

Jason burst out laughing as Natalie looked at him askance.

“All done,” the technician said and pointed at one of the chairs. “That one’s yours, Mr Asano.”