"I will get you your people," Karl said as he immediately began shouting orders to the Sonnenbergs around him. At the same time, Gaia was sending avatars to the other Trade Families in question, which amounted to practically all of them. She needed their help, but more importantly, she needed their unique position within human society. They were powerful enough to handle what was coming, yet ordinary enough that their involvement would not immediately turn into an international incident.
Gaia was about to send these people into the soil of foreign countries, after all, and she could not simply do that with another faction or a national military without creating a tremendous number of problems. If China, the United States, or any European country suddenly sent thousands of soldiers into another sovereign nation, there would be questions about sovereignty, military intervention, and whether the country was preparing for war. Even if everyone involved understood that corrupted creatures were the actual threat, governments would still have to respond to the presence of foreign troops on their territory.
The Trade Families were in a unique position because they possessed an incredible amount of power while technically remaining ordinary citizens. They were not politicians, military commanders, or government officials, and most of them deliberately stayed away from official positions of authority. The highest government position one would realistically find among their members was something like a public doctor, while the overwhelming majority had no government position at all. That made their involvement considerably easier to explain than the movement of an entire country's armed forces.
There could therefore be no serious talk of one country invading another when the people being sent into these secret realms were technically just citizens. There would also be fewer arguments over damages or demands for compensation when the Trade Families killed corrupted creatures, even though those creatures were worth quite a bit of money. The situation was still messy, but it avoided the immediate diplomatic problem of one nation sending its soldiers across a border. That was one of the biggest reasons Gaia could not simply ask China to handle everything.
If China sent its forces into another country, it would inevitably be interpreted as one country invading another, regardless of the reason. Even if the soldiers were only there to fight corrupted creatures, the political consequences could become enormous. Gaia needed people who could cross those boundaries without making the entire world believe a war had begun. The Trade Families, for all their eccentricities and immense influence, were almost perfectly suited for that role.
It also helped that the Trade Families could be rather draconian when dealing with people they considered threats. Gaia had even asked the Assassin Family for help, and they had considerably fewer moral problems with killing a few loud bureaucrats who demanded reparations simply because they saw an opportunity to line their own pockets. Their attitude toward threats was straightforward, and Gaia was not particularly interested in forcing them to develop a more diplomatic approach in the middle of a crisis. Right now, she needed people capable of acting quickly.
"May I ask why we need to be sent there?" Karl asked once he had finished giving orders. The Sonnenbergs were already preparing people and supplies, which meant there was a considerable amount of work to be done before they could leave. For the moment, Karl and Gaia were practically the only sources of calm in an incredibly hectic forest, surrounded by people rushing around to prepare themselves for an unknown battle.
Fortunately, the wildlife had already left the area around the portal. If the animals had remained nearby, the sudden activity would have disturbed them tremendously, and restoring the forest to its natural order afterward could have taken at least a month. The Sonnenbergs understood how important it was to avoid causing unnecessary damage to the ecosystem, especially with so much chaos already taking place around the secret realm. At least one problem had solved itself before the humans made things considerably worse.
"Yes, it seems that they have been quite clever," Gaia said, frustration evident in her voice. She was annoyed with herself for not foreseeing the possibility earlier, though she knew there was a reason she had failed to predict it. Her ability to foresee events did not work properly against the Void because the Void existed outside her jurisdiction, so there were limits to how much she could predict when its influence was involved. Still, Gaia did not consider that a good enough excuse.
The basic idea was not complicated, after all. Gaia had sent the Church into the United States to combat corrupted humans, and that intervention had triggered a reaction from the corrupted individuals. They had been gradually gaining a chokehold over parts of the United States and its governments, and the sudden appearance of the Church threatened the control they had painstakingly established. They therefore needed a way to respond without exposing themselves.
Unfortunately, the Church had managed to disrupt their plans, but the corrupted humans had apparently found another solution. Instead of fighting the Church directly, they seemed to have decided to create worldwide panic and distraction by forcing secret realms to empty themselves. If secret realms across the world suddenly began releasing their inhabitants, every government, military, guild, and powerful individual would be forced to react. Nobody could afford to ignore hundreds or thousands of powerful creatures suddenly appearing inside their territory.
At the same time, the corrupted humans had taken control of key public officials in the United States. Some of those officials held the highest levels of command over local secret-realm defense forces, giving them enormous influence over how those forces were deployed. By controlling those officials, the corrupted humans could redirect soldiers away from their actual targets under the excuse that the troops were needed to fight the Church. The result was that secret realms could suddenly be left dangerously understaffed while everyone believed the troops had simply been reassigned to another important mission.
"Heck, and those were the government employees..." Gaia continued, her expression darkening. "The privately owned secret realms were even worse." Those facilities did not necessarily have government forces protecting them in the first place, and some companies had already reduced their guards to save costs. Others were simply controlled by corrupted humans themselves. That meant there were secret realms around the world that could suddenly become almost completely undefended.
"But why can't you just kill those corrupted creatures?" Karl asked. He understood the basic problem now, but he still did not understand why Gaia herself could not simply interfere. From his perspective, she was Gaia, the entity responsible for the planet and the most powerful being any of them had ever encountered. If corrupted creatures were threatening humanity, why did she need to send ordinary humans to fight them?
"Well, I would like to say it is because you need to learn such lessons on your own," Gaia replied with a sigh, placing a hand on her hip. "But then I would not be standing here sending you guys into battles." There was a certain amount of frustration in her voice because she would have preferred a simpler answer. Unfortunately, the real reason was considerably more dangerous than simply wanting humanity to solve its own problems.
"No, the biggest reason is that I can't," Gaia continued. "If I do that, it gives the Void behind those corrupted humans the ability to lock onto my unique soul and mana signature." Her expression became considerably more serious as she explained the consequence. "And with that, the really scary creatures can pinpoint my location in space and use it to tear a small hole into the barrier of our universe and arrive directly at my location."
Gaia paused briefly before continuing. "I am not sure if I can kill those intruders, and I do not want to find out if I can help it." There was a small but unmistakable amount of fear in her voice when she said it. Karl had heard Gaia speak confidently about countless things before, but this was different. She was not pretending that she had everything under control, and that alone made him understand how serious the threat truly was.
"Thank you for answering my question," Karl said. He now understood why he needed to send his people into what was likely to become a very deadly fight. It was not because Gaia was unwilling to help them or because she wanted to test their strength. She was avoiding a danger that could potentially threaten far more than a single secret realm, and the Sonnenbergs were being asked to handle the consequences because they were among the few people capable of doing so.
"No problem. It is the least I can do, knowing that you are going to fulfill your duty," Gaia said. While she spoke with Karl, she was also working out a few more details with the Assassin Family. She was particularly interested in their services because she was going to need them soon, and their particular skill set was extremely useful in a situation where corrupted humans were hiding among ordinary people. Gaia had no intention of wasting the resources available to her.
"Oh, and don't worry about supplies," Gaia added. "It stands to reason that I will deliver your supplies. And don't worry, I am not on a budget." She glanced toward the enormous number of arrows already being loaded onto carts to be transported and teleported where they were needed. The sight made it clear that the Sonnenbergs were not going to run out of ammunition simply because they had been asked to fight across multiple secret realms. If anything, Gaia seemed perfectly capable of providing more supplies than they could immediately use.
"Great. Shall we walk towards the gathering place?" Karl asked as he bowed slightly and began guiding the way. He did not treat Gaia as though she were some fragile divine figure who needed everyone to kneel whenever she entered the room. Instead, he simply accepted her presence and acted as though they were dealing with an extremely powerful ally. It was a small difference, but Gaia appreciated it.
"Yes," Gaia replied, clearly glad that Karl was not treating her as someone who might be offended by every little thing. She could still see that everyone around them was nervous, of course, and the recruits were particularly frightened by having Gaia standing among them. However, the Sonnenberg family itself did not share that same fear. Their relationship with nature made their reaction to Gaia fundamentally different from that of most other humans.
The reason was simple. Just as Arin had named her Gaia, the Sonnenbergs saw her as the personification of nature itself. They had grown up surrounded by forests, animals, weather, plants, and every other part of the natural world, and they had learned from childhood how to read those things. They understood that nature could be dangerous, but danger was not the same thing as something alien. Having a primal force of nature standing before them therefore did not make them feel completely estranged.
Instead, it felt almost like being home.
And in this particular case, they were not entirely wrong. Gaia's avatar at that moment was based upon the Law of Nature, deliberately designed as a bonus to the Sonnenbergs and their forest. It was also the law she understood better than almost anything else. Gaia might not have liked the global-warming effects that had once plagued Earth, but the insight she had gained into nature from dealing with those changes had been tremendous. The same was true of restoring the ecosystem, because repairing the damage done to Earth's natural systems had forced Gaia to understand her own domain on a much deeper level.