On Arda, there exists a term called “initiative”. The simplest translation can be done in the form of: ‘to possess momentum’. The Ardans apply this initiative, or seem to, all facets of life. A goal on Tartarus or Paraideisius is, simply put, a goal to be achieved. We have always thought that satisfaction and contentment were facets of nature. A mushroom grows, and then it has grown, and it is done. A cattle grazes, and it sleeps, and it reproduces, and it is content and satisfied. The angels have achieved the society they have theorized of thousands of years ago, and they are content in their lives. We, due to factors of biology and geography, have not yet found that stability of satisfaction on a planetary level, but…

But to write it down like this is baffling on one hand. What sort of demon has never bathed in satisfaction or contentment? Is that not what we work towards? So that eventually, one can wake up with utterly nothing to do for all has been achieved? Everyone has their own goals, everyone achieves them eventually. It is due to the fact that personal goals can be achieved that the national goals of all Tartarus will be eventually achieved. There shall come a time when all is done, and it shall be a time that will be glorious.

Nevertheless, the Ardans do not think so. This is why they are so baffling for they are a planet that seemingly takes satisfaction in suffering. Their incarnation of Peace claims that her demesne is the grandest goal of humanity and that it can only ever be worked towards, never achieved. Their incarnation of Pride thinks that the entire universe should bow down to their little rock. Their Goddess of War says she wishes to wage a war so complete that it ends warfare forever in one sentence, in the next, she talks about war being a natural need of humanity and as long as two people disagree, they are in a state of war, in the third, she claims she is not an exterminationist. The logical inconsistency does not have to be pointed out, for it is so glaring.

Ardans seem to take satisfaction, if we assume we are talking about the same things, within failure. Failure is just another reason to try again for them. They talk of success as myth, as if it cannot exist. Their entire concept of initiative is built upon this understanding. To them, an achievement is not a goal to reach and celebrate, it is a stepping stone towards the next achievement. And then the next. The journey to victory is an endless set of achievements in that fashion.

To them, completion is a mere mechanical description. A house, a table, a sword can be completed. Even their lives, they can spend entire generations and claim not to have succeeded, instead only completing their journeys. In some fashion, they treat victory as something to only be achieved in dreams and spend so much time wallowing in defeats that the world is inoculated against them.

The mindset is sick.

The mindset is effective.

– Prince Semirge’s Review of Arda after the First Arascan War.

“General?” Miryim turned around to Alfred, one of the men brought in for the 1^st Strategic Missile Corp as they sat in their command bunker. This box of steel and concrete and flat panels had become a second home to them, but it was a fine second home. Miryim looked up from his monitor, he had slowly been scrolling through the list of targets and the dates given to them. The Rilian Landbridge was next. The Esberian after that. The original plan, to wipe out southern Esberia, had been locked away.

“What is it?” Miryim focused on Alfred, one of the captains who dealt with radar. The man rarely spoke, although he rarely had anything to do. Radar was one of the things that they had only built to prepare and to make it a proper facility. Ashen Skies had shut down flight all across the world.

“I’m picking up a signal.” Alfred said. The entire room seized then, forty different operators in charge of their own individual silos all stopped working and focused their heads upon the radar operator. The man looked around in his black uniform and reached to readjust a cap on top his head to cool his nerves. His finger brushed against a bald head, the cap was on the desk by the monitor.

“What is it?” Miryim asked.

“I don’t know.” Alfred replied. “It’s not responding, but radar’s picking it up.”

“Which direction?”

“From the south.” Miryim blinked and felt his body freeze for a moment as the worst case scenario came about. Something had gotten past the fleet.

“CHECK ALL CAMERAS! SUCCUBI SIGHTINGS OR ANYTHING! SEND A WARNING TO COMMAND!” Miryim kickstarted the room into action. Men abandoned their needless recalibrations and worked with a redoubled efficiency now that the stress of urgency was coming in. A force on them? It made sense, after Strike-One, Tartarus would definitely try to stop the launches of nuclear missiles.

The elven general stood up, one hand rested on the pommel of his ceremonial blade all of his were given as the command of Plateau D’Albion got to work. Monitors flick from spreadsheets and calculation tables to maps or ledgers of phone numbers. The local police forces were called. The Western Eparika fleet was rang, every radar station to the south. “General, I’ve got command!” One man said. “They’re sending reinforcements already!”

“Good, what is it?”

“They don’t know! It flickers on radar!”

“That’s true.” Alfred replied from his screen. He was focused on whatever the hell that was. “At speed…” He paused, then picked up a pen from his and set it sideways to his monitor. “It’s heading straight for us.”

“I expected that.” Miryim said. Alfred nodded and got back to monitoring.

“Just under an hour at current speed. Fifty-five minutes.” Miryim nodded, the rest of the room worked. Men still reached for their coffee, their arms still steady. As they should be, the 1^st Strategic Missile Corps had the greatest kill count after one strike. It wouldn’t do for these men to be nervous just because they were under attack. The hour did not pass.

Not even half an hour passed. Fourteen, maybe fifteen minutes later, one man leaned back on his chair, his arms fell to his side. “General.” He said. “I… We have video, gas station CCTV caught it.”

“It?” Miryim asked. “Main screen.” The man nodded, he moved slowly, clicked around with his mouse and the room fell silent. And Miryim leaned his lesson when his heart felt as if it wanted to stop. The mistake was not in him, it was in letting everyone here see. The hum of the air-conditioning suddenly felt like a thousand little knives scratching his eardrums, the glare of the white lights above was too bright.

On the monitor, a black cloud flew over the horizon. Insects as large as fists and organized in a tight steam. They passed over grass, over roofs, over trees, even over cattle that raced away from them. And then it disappeared over the horizon. Miryim knew what that was. The Tartarian Strategy textbook had an entire section dedicated towards the entity. “CALL COMMAND!” Miryim cried out.

“I have!” One man said. “They’ve confirmed Be’elzebub and told us to hunker down. Reinforcements is coming.”

“Start lockdown protocol!” Miryim shouted. “Prepare for attack!” The hum of the air-conditioning was now an avalanche closing in from all sides. Miryim’s coffee went cold, it wasn’t needed. The cold embrace of dread was a far better stimulant than any drug humanity could manufacture. More calls were made to Central Command and to the regional offices. Troops had apparently already been dispatched, although the numbers weren’t great. Special teams were being brought in, even local Divinity had been told. Men clicked on keyboards as heavy bunker doors, built hopefully to withstand explosion of the same scale that the missiles hidden in the mountainous valley could output, slid closed. Inside, backup generators were refilled as the maintenance crews and other soldiers raced back to their barracks. Trucks and vehicles on the surface drove away, as far as possible, in any direction bar south. Silo doors closed, massive steel locks engaged within them.

The rest of the time, maybe half an hour, it felt like ten minutes, passed in a blur as the 1^st Strategic Missile Corps began to dig in. Trenches on the surface stood empty. Gasoline had been spilled and lit up to make fires. That was part of the booklet’s instructions. Claymores were laid out near the silos, the surface bunkers had closed their doors and windows. Men raced away from them as inside, more air-locks kicked in. The power to the grid was cut, back-up generators deep within the mountains began to spin up. Miryim cycled through every camera pointed south every minute. He tried to keep it at every minute, it was difficult not to check every ten seconds.

A black cloud appeared over the horizon, a smudge of tightly compressed tar against the off-blue sky. Just as in the video, the insects kept themselves in tight formation. A wedge spearheaded the formation, the rest of them as long as a column of trains. They screeched, Miryim kept his breath steady and hoped that Be’elzebub would not find the bunker doors. Those were weaker.

But Be’elzebub did not even seem to look around. Immediately, the bug dove straight into the fire and claymores that surrounded one of the airlocks. Another swarm peeled off for another silo. And then another. They swallowed the flames in their own mass, the explosives barely had an effect upon them. A few hundred bugs were blown apart by the small shockwaves of explosion, distant cameras turned and zoomed in. The entire command room sat in silence as their lenses were focused.

And Miryim could only stand and watch. Every few seconds, the bugs would screech, then race upwards and down again. At first, he could catch why. Why the small shards of metal began to form a ring of dust around each silo, he finally understood. They weren’t swallowing the silo doors, they were tearing them apart and scattering the materials to simply get them out of the way. A deep breath and the tightening of his fists were needed to stop the shakes.

He watched those insects tear through steel. They would get through to the Legionkillers. He should issue an evacuation order. He… He picked up his phone and scrolled to Goddess Kassandora, she was right at the top, her contract with an underscore as the first character to make sure she always appeared at the top of the list. He clicked ring without even taking a breath to steady himself. This was an emergency, this was why she had given him her number. Kassandora picked up almost immediately. “Kassandora speaking.” She said.

“Goddess, we are under attack by Be’elzebub.” Miryim said, he put the phone on the table, these devices were too loud for elven ears.

“I know.” Kassandora said. “I got your red alert.” Through the phone, there was obviously a scrambling. Papers were being ruffled through the phone. Boots running, shouting as well. Of course they were, the Empire was working. “What did you call for? My advice is to hunker and barricade the doors. Use steel, don’t bother with wood.”

What was he ringing for? General Miryim knew what he was ringing for. But… But how could it be phrased even? For permission to launch? Why was he ringing even? Should he not just give the order? Strike-One had been done without any communication from the Goddess. That was simply the green light above the central monitor. It was red now.

That red light was why he was calling. “We can kill it.” Miryim said. It was suicidal but he had read reports from the First Expedition, when Be’elzebub had descended upon Goddesses Kassandora and Kavaa and Iniri and their soldiers. That death, he did not want to experience. Nuclear hellfire was a more preferable option.

“You can?” Kassandora asked. “How?”

“We detonate the Legionkillers now.” Miryim said. It would take the base, it would take the whole valley in fact. The surrounding towns wouldn’t be hit, the blast radius of the bombs would be minimized by the fact they were in the ground. Every face in the room turned towards him. A few men couldn’t hold their mouths closed, eyes grew wide, one man dropped a cup of coffee he had curled his hands around. “Be’elzebub will go.”

For a few moments, Kassandora was silent. The rustling coming through the phone stopped, but there were still feet running around. The sound of vehicle engines being turned on began for a few seconds. Miryim looked away from the stunned expressions of the men under his command before they drowned him with their hopelessness. His eyes went to the cameras and sensors being swarmed by huge, fist-sized locusts. He watched them spit and spray some bubbling green substance onto the metal, then being to tear around grain-sized parts of it. If it was just one, they would have a month. But it wasn’t just one. The barrier was being ground down in real time. Kassandora finally broke the silence. “Why are you asking me General?”

Miryim didn’t wait for a response. “Because it is our soil.” The base wasn’t any grand piece of engineering, Zalewski’s Antworking methods had set the standard for how quickly combat engineers and magicians could build and tunnel. The radars would be a loss, the missiles too, but none of it was something that the Empire could not simply rebuild.

Arseille had been conquered by Legion. The third Landbridge was in the middle of the ocean. Both of those were enemy targets. This was not. “It is our soil.” Kassandora replied after a moment. More engines were running. “How long do you have?” Kassandora asked.

“HOW LONG DO WE HAVE?!” Miryim shouted. That got the room into action, men turned around immediately. Monitors began flicking to cameras, others to sensors in the gates. One man brought out a ruler from his desk to physically measure the infrared image that showed a warm swarm burying through cold metal.

“Two hours!?” Someone shouted.

“I think four!”

“I say one!”

“Thirty minutes!”

Kassandora replied through the phone. “I caught that general.” She said, then sighed again. “On your question to detonate, it’s a negative. Hold him there, a pesticide team has been sent off.”

“Understood Goddess.” General Miryim replied. “That was all I had to ask.” He would let her be the one to hang up as was mandate. One had to be utterly brainless to drop calls on Divinity.

“I’d advise burying yourself in deep.” Kassandora said. “Evacuate if possible, if not then have a gun on hand.” Miryim stared at the swarm as he processed the information. A gun? Against insects? And what would that do? No. Not for them. For him.

“Understood Goddess.”

“Kassandora out.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep