Chapter 149: Scouts, Then an Assault!!
"BREAKING: Gaia Consciousness appears — what does it mean? Where is the spatial passage Gaia described? Divine prank or genuine planetary awareness? Questions flood the human mind—"
Ryū stepped out of the internet café, rolled his neck, and started walking toward the spatial passage.
The first of the three Group Quests was straightforward in principle: no one from this world — not a soldier, not a civilian, not a single person — could step through the passage into the Qin's Moon world. Let even one through and the Quest failed.
No punishment for failure. The Chat Group didn't work that way.
But no reward either. And the reward was ten thousand Points.
Per person.
He was mid-yawn, ambling along the roadside with minimal urgency, when a faint tremor came up through the concrete underfoot. Almost imperceptible. The kind of vibration a normal person would never register.
Ryū noticed it immediately. Something in the quality of it was different.
He let his Observation Haki expand outward in all directions — spreading, spreading — and within five seconds the picture was clear.
Due west.
Four kilometers out.
"Already?"
The disinterested expression faded. He straightened up slightly.
He still couldn't quite work out how a newborn planetary consciousness — one that couldn't yet mobilize the planet's own natural forces — was managing to drive human beings toward the passage as an attacking force. The Quest description said it was "manipulating and inciting" people.
Maybe that was all it took. Maybe this world had no shortage of people with ambitions large enough to need very little incitement.
Probably both.
Regardless of the three Quests, he wouldn't have stood by and let the Qin's Moon world get invaded, occupied, and eventually consumed as raw material for a foreign world-consciousness. That would be an embarrassment to the Chat Group on a fundamental level.
"Numbers aren't huge — looks like around a thousand? Scouts, probably. Wait — armed helicopters overhead. And armored vehicles, though they look dated. Makes sense. This is a small, underdeveloped country. Not exactly flush with equipment."
"That internet café I was just in — apparently one of only three in the entire country."
Ryū shook his head faintly, then tagged everyone in the Group.
RawrSoFierce: @Edward Newgate @Terrible Tornado @Admiral Kizaru @Ying Zheng The Sovereign — looks like the first wave is already moving. Roughly a thousand people, probably scouts. Fully equipped though — firearms, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, the works.
Admiral Kizaru: Only a thousand? Though for a scouting mission into the unknown, that's sensible enough. Sending a full army blind into something you don't understand would be the irrational move~
Crazy Diamond: Requesting that someone turn on a camera feed. Newcomer wants to watch the livestream.
Kaguya-sama: Requesting that someone turn on a camera feed. Newcomer wants to watch the livestream.
Wandering Little Planet: Requesting that someone turn on a camera feed. Newcomer wants to watch the livestream.
RawrSoFierce: Breaking the chain.
RawrSoFierce: So — these thousand people. Do we eliminate them or drive them back? Ying Zheng, your call.
Ying Zheng The Sovereign: ...In war between civilizations, there is no right or wrong — only position. We cannot permit anyone to devour Great Qin.
Admiral Kizaru: Understood. Send me a location, Admin.
[Group Admin "RawrSoFierce" has shared a location — tap to view]
Ying Zheng's answer hadn't surprised Ryū. Whatever else he was, the man was a ruler — and when a foreign world moved to consume his empire, expecting mercy from him was optimistic.
From the moment the Quests were issued, until the newborn Gaia Consciousness was dealt with, the Chat Group and the JoJo fan world were in a state of opposition. That was simply what the situation required.
The Gaia of that world, and the power-players who'd decided to move on its word — they had made a choice. The consequences of that choice were now arriving.
Though they probably don't understand that their choice was wrong.
When an avalanche falls, no single snowflake believes it bears responsibility.
Ryū paused, trying to remember who had said that.
He gave up.
Whatever. If I can't attribute it, it was Lu Xun. Everything unattributable was Lu Xun. The man had an incredible output.
He silently saluted Lu Xun's memory and moved on.
A streak of blinding gold light tore across the sky directly overhead. By the time his eyes moved to track it, it was already gone.
Invisible to the naked eye. Observation Haki only.
He had to admire the speed. The Glint-Glint Fruit was not a thing to be trifled with.
He kept walking toward the spatial passage.
Behind him, several seconds later, a chain of detonations rolled across the distance. Deep, overlapping, like thunder from a clear sky. Loud even across the gap.
Could Kizaru eliminate a thousand-man force with full equipment?
Yes. Unambiguously yes.
A Marine Admiral, Logia-type Devil Fruit, Armament Haki, Observation Haki, Six Powers, Life Return. Given enough time, Kizaru could plow through an entire small nation. Especially a Logia — the natural-type fruits were built for area coverage. A sustained Yata Mirror barrage was less a battle and more a scheduled delivery of destruction.
Give him a day and he'd turn the country's surface into a freshly tilled field.
The complete annihilation of the vanguard threw the small nation into panic.
Civilians had no context. They heard a sudden massive explosion and found wreckage. That was the entirety of their information. They knew nothing of the global meeting, nothing of the coordinated plans to probe and eventually exploit the spatial passage.
The war's opening shot had been fired. The civilians were the last to know.
The officials knew exactly what that thousand-person unit had been sent to do. And under those conditions — with that equipment — total destruction without a single returning survivor was incomprehensible.
What made it worse was the forensics report.
Not one member of the force had discharged a weapon. Not a single shot fired. A thousand soldiers with full combat equipment — helicopters, armored vehicles, firearms — eliminated without any of them managing to engage.
Civilians felt confusion. Officials felt terror.
No actor within their world could have done this covertly and without attribution. Every major power had implicitly agreed not to interfere. Which left only one possibility.
Something from the other side.
"Gaia was telling the truth. There really is another world through that passage. And whatever's over there has technology we cannot begin to account for."
One suit murmured this to himself, eyes bright with something between hunger and awe. An entirely new civilization. If they could access its accumulated knowledge —
A cold dismissal cut across the room: "We can't conclude that yet. Everyone keeps saying 'beings from another world,' but has anyone seen one? Has anyone photographed one?"
"What's more probable — a genuinely alien civilization, or a radical faction with access to large-scale explosive ordinance? The second option is measurably more likely."
"..."
The words landed, but they didn't really land.
A thousand people, gone in an instant, with no sign of how. Even the skeptical voice didn't entirely believe its own argument.
From a certain uncomfortable angle, they had been aggressors. Their intent had been occupation. They had considered the possibility that the other world might contain intelligent life — had even mentally prepared for conflict.
What they hadn't prepared for was not seeing the enemy at all.
Their nation's total military strength was fifteen thousand. A significant portion of those were recently inducted recruits or logistics personnel.
A short, middle-aged man exhaled slowly.
"I'll be reporting our situation to the coalition. We don't have the capacity to continue probing that passage. Every additional push means more of our people dead — and at this rate, there won't be enough of us left to hold anything together regardless of what we find."
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