While they were walking toward the old archery range, which had been transformed into a giant natural gathering place, Gaia's other avatar was already busy contacting the other Trade Families. She needed to get them ready to move and support the secret realms that were beginning to break open across the world. She started with the most important of all the Trade Families, making sure that these expeditions would not go wrong because she was not interested in losing highly trained and specialized people. If there was one thing she could not accept, it was allowing people of this caliber to die because of a situation that could have been handled better.
What made the situation even more unacceptable was the fact that these recruits were among the most talented people their respective Trade Families had managed to find in the current age. The families had somehow managed to attract individuals with exceptional potential despite not being widely known in the larger circles of human society. Most of these people had already participated in the Trial, but information did not spread nearly as easily as it once had. There was no internet anymore, meaning information moved primarily through rumors, personal conversations, and whatever scraps of knowledge people managed to carry from one place to another.
Because of that, many of the talented people who joined the Trade Families had not been deliberately recruited through some sophisticated worldwide search. They had simply ended up on the right path through a combination of their own luck and the luck of the Trade Families themselves. Luck had become a real and quantifiable phenomenon after the arrival of mana, at least to someone like Gaia who could perceive and measure things that humans could barely understand. Every faction possessed its own amount of luck, and that luck could manifest in ways that affected their development.
The first few years of a faction's existence could therefore be surprisingly fortunate. The Trade Families had benefited from that phenomenon, especially when it came to recruitment, and Gaia was not about to waste the results. These were people who had somehow found their way toward the right families at exactly the right time, often without even understanding how fortunate they had been. There was simply no way Gaia was going to let highly specialized and talented people die because of something as seemingly inconsequential as a secret-realm outbreak that could have been handled with proper preparation.
"Fabian, I am in need of your people to go and support a mission," Gaia said as she appeared inside the private quarters of the head of the Bingen Family. Fabian was currently sitting there reading through various medical theories that had been proposed all over the world. For a doctor, falling behind on medical knowledge was one of the worst mistakes he could make, and the changes brought about by mana meant that there was more information to study than ever before. He had no intention of allowing himself to become outdated simply because the world had become more complicated.
And there was certainly a lot to read. The human body had not fundamentally changed, yet at the same time it had changed enormously because mana interacted with it in ways that had never been observed before. Doctors were therefore forced to reconsider countless assumptions that had previously been treated as established knowledge. Every new discovery created more questions, and every answer seemed to reveal another dozen things that humanity did not understand yet.
"Okay, what do you need?" Fabian asked as he immediately stood up and gave Gaia a slight bow. He had no interest in wasting time bargaining over whatever request she had brought to him. Gaia was the System, and Fabian had no reason to believe that refusing her would somehow improve his situation. More importantly, he understood that helping her would likely result in rewards that were far more valuable than anything he could negotiate for himself.
"Great, I love talking to smart people," Gaia said with a smile. Her expression briefly reminded her of all the politicians she had been dealing with, and the contrast was almost enough to make her laugh. Fabian, at least, did not seem interested in turning a simple request into a political negotiation. He simply waited for her to explain what she needed.
"As you may or may not know, there are currently secret realms breaking out, and I need half of your family and recruits to help support other secret realms that are running into problems," Gaia explained. Her tone was straightforward because there was no reason to waste time pretending the situation was less serious than it was. The Trade Families needed to move quickly, and the Bingen Family was one of the groups she needed to contribute. She was asking for a significant portion of their available manpower, but she knew they could spare it.
"Sure. I will get my people ready," Fabian said without hesitation. He immediately accepted the request because there was no reason for him to make Gaia wait while the world was dealing with an escalating crisis. He understood that the people being sent would be walking into dangerous situations, but he also trusted that Gaia would not casually waste their lives. The fact that she had personally appeared to request their assistance was enough for him to take the situation seriously.
"Oh, and I only need the people. I will take care of the supplies," Gaia added with a smile. Fabian simply acknowledged her, already understanding what that meant for the preparations. The Bingen Family would not need to spend time gathering food, ammunition, medical equipment, or whatever else their people might require. Gaia would handle that side of the operation herself, allowing the Trade Families to focus entirely on assembling the personnel she needed.
Across Europe, Gaia repeated essentially the same process. She visited the other Trade Families and explained that secret realms were beginning to break open and that she needed half of their family members and recruits to support the ones experiencing problems. The responses were remarkably similar, with very little hesitation from any of them. The answer she kept receiving was effectively the same each time: "Okay, where do we need to go?"
Gaia was extremely pleased with that response. There was no time for endless negotiations, political arguments, or people demanding guarantees before they acted. The Trade Families understood that something serious was happening, and they were willing to move when Gaia asked them to. Within roughly an hour, every person she had requested was ready across Europe, assembled and prepared to be transported wherever they were needed.
"Good. I will leave the command issue for you to work out," Gaia said. She then began teleporting the gathered people toward various secret realms that were causing problems in the United States. She did not waste time organizing every individual unit herself because the Trade Families were perfectly capable of handling their own internal command structures. Her role was simply to put the right people in the right places as quickly as possible.
In every other country where similar problems were becoming apparent, Gaia had already issued warnings to the governments involved. Those governments had been quick to react, and the suspected corrupted humans were being captured while their respective secret realms were being contained. Well, they had not actually been contained yet, but Gaia's fortune-telling indicated that they would be, and she had already checked many possible outcomes. Fortune-telling was a quiet and convenient tool for her when she wanted to determine whether she was moving in the right direction.
That was all Gaia used it for. She did not treat fortune-telling as some perfect window into the future, especially because the Void interfered with her ability to predict certain things. Instead, she used it as a way to check whether her current actions were likely to produce the desired result. It was useful, convenient, and usually reliable enough to give her some confidence when dealing with complicated situations.
Sadly, the situation in the United States was different. Gaia's warnings were ignored and dismissed as fake news, a nasty term that had stuck around after Trump's fiasco. The corrupted humans had already managed to influence important people within the system, and the warnings that might have prevented the situation from becoming much worse were therefore not acted upon. By the time Gaia began moving the Trade Families into position, the consequences of those decisions were already becoming visible.
Arin was teleported to a secret realm near Washington, DC, which had originally been under the protection of the National Guard. Unfortunately, those forces had withdrawn in order to defend Congress from the Church, leaving the secret realm dangerously exposed. Arin immediately understood why Gaia had sent them there when he saw the situation below. The portal had not even been open for two hours, yet the area around it was already crawling with corrupted creatures.
There were already 128 Stage One creatures near the portal. The portal itself was situated at the bottom of a valley that had been deliberately cleared of trees, making it possible for the defenders to see the surrounding area clearly. The entire situation was strange, however, because one side of the valley suffered from a massive mudslide that would have buried the portal. Instead, roughly fifty meters away from the portal, there was simply a wall of mud and debris that abruptly stopped for no obvious reason.
The mudslide ended in an almost perfectly circular shape. It was as though some invisible boundary had prevented the mud and debris from traveling any farther toward the portal. Arin did not need to understand exactly what had caused it to realize that the situation was abnormal. The landscape itself was already showing signs that something strange was happening around the secret realm.
"Right, let's get rid of those first and then deal with command," Arin said as he surveyed the situation. He had absolutely no interest in dealing with that many Stage One creatures if he could avoid it, especially because he knew their numbers would only increase. Whatever was allowed through the portal would continue emerging, and the longer they waited, the worse the situation would become. Gaia had teleported them directly to the portal for a reason, and Arin had no intention of wasting that advantage.
"I agree," someone said.
The man unsheathed his sword and immediately began running down the hill. Around fifteen hundred other people followed him without hesitation, because everyone present understood what was required of them. There was no need for a long speech or complicated orders before they acted. They had been brought here to fight, and there were already more than enough enemies waiting below to make that purpose obvious.
At the same time, several people slipped quietly into the shadows and began running in different directions. Their movements were considerably less obvious than those of the main force, and they quickly disappeared from sight as they moved away from the gathering. The Crimson Guild and the Sonnenbergs, meanwhile, nocked arrows onto their bows and began focusing on the flying abominations. Their intention was simple: shoot the creatures out of the sky as quickly as possible before they could become an even greater problem for the people moving in below.