Chapter 260
Our whole group shares a large room in the pack house, sleeping the afternoon away, having worked all night and through the morning. The werewolves are working to settle in this afternoon, trying to get a normal livelihood going again. Most did whatever the pack needed, but a few held outside jobs.
Most of those jobs being Hunting Beasts for pelts and meat to trade, the modern version of trapping, since they can destroy most standard trap lines. There were more working outside jobs in the past, but almost all movement and contact between settlements ended with the portals opening.
There aren’t a lot of them up north here, but the population is so low they mostly went unnoticed and unattended. Which led to the area becoming a monster wilderness of sorts.
Almost all the small towns moved to the cities, who posted guards around the perimeter, an expansion of the police force. Farms too far from a city were abandoned, unable to defend themselves effectively.
So the places that this Horde might have started are limited, unless there is a region I don’t know about yet where large numbers of Titan Clan might have gathered and chased the beast clan out. Of course it is also possible that they’re not running from something, but towards something. If that’s the case then the East is in big trouble.
Karl stirring beside me snaps me from my half awake reverie, and I stretch out, getting ready to face the day. Or night as the case may be.
"What do you want to do about that beast clan migration? You know as well as I do that there’s not much in the East that could stand against it. The cities out there are barely dealing with their portals, and from the reports I’ve seen, they still think that conventional firepower will prevail over cultivation. It’s just one big mess of political cronyism." I say to Karl who frowns and brushes my hair from his face.
"I say we warn them and let them figure it out by themselves. Sending in assistance so their entrenched leaders can claim political victory for saving the people isn’t going to make anything better. So just send out the warnings and let them be. With some luck, they’re not going that far and are going to attack the Giants somewhere in between here and the big cities." Karl says resolutely.
That’s a bit savage, but he’s got a point. With everything Arcana has done to help people build themselves up, encouraging leaders who only want to keep their civilians under their boot really isn’t a great call. But that gives me an idea.
"What if we broadcast a very basic cultivation manual along with the warning. If we can get more folk started, they’ll start to see the truth of things. Plus they’ll gain the abilities to defend themselves."
"I think I can work that. I’ve got a lot of connections, so if I can get a bunch of local radio stations to broadcast it at the same time, we might get somewhere. Long distance communication is still sketchy at best, with all the excess mana in the air, and that’s only getting worse. Even the shielded high power radios that Alpha Conway and the others are using will soon be useless." Karl agrees.