Chapter 147

World Gathers (V)

Though he knew that his speech had caused quite the commotion, Cain was largely disinterested in the reactions of others. He returned to his apartment and had a slow lunch with Lana during which the two watched some cartoons; afterward, Lana settled down to study for a bit while Cain scrolled through some websites, looking as to whether there were any explosive news that he wasn't aware of transpiring.

In the meantime, the hall where hundreds of people sat still reeled in silence; it has been nearly an hour since the masked madman left the building, but nobody uttered a word, everyone too adrift in their own thoughts to say anything of value. In many ways, despite the odd approach, he hit the core of the issues that were plaguing all representatives here -- the main one for the people without the Towers was the fear of being invaded, and the main one for those with was that they might have to give it up too soon.

Despite the fact that the masked man nailed the points of contention, few people were happy with his approach; not only did he publicly share the embarrassment of the non-Tower nations but also belittled those with the Towers by implying that he alone could decimate their nations if they stepped out of line.

That wasn’t the consent, however; unlike people who were yet to obtain a Class, those with one had no intention of ever walking within one hundred feet of that figure. What they felt... was something beyond primal -- almost corporeal evil, in a way. They felt as though a single, wrong breath would have resulted in their lungs exploding. A single wrong step would have resulted in their legs simply vanishing. A single wrong look in their eyes bulging back into their skulls, eating their brains like worms.

It wasn’t even just the quantity of Mana -- but rather the strange, hollow property that it had; it felt feral, as though it would swallow their own Mana if it just wanted to. Like a caged beast let loose on a pack of tiny rabbits just minding their business.

In reality, however, Cain's Mana itself hardly overpowered them; while the quality of his Mana was certainly a good few layers above the rest, the quantity was along the scaling line still. The truth behind the rhapsody that he put others through was the way he used it -- to him, Mana wasn’t a tool or some new-found power. It was a part of him as much as everything else that made up who he was; in the past life, the theorycraft behind Mana was that it manifested an actual, physical form of people’s consciousness -- a soul, essentially. And a soul was like a voice -- the louder one will always be heard more than the silent, quaint one.

And while everyone can scream, there are always means and ways to scream louder, harsher, and even more violently; similarly to that, others haven't had nearly enough time to practice with the way to use their Mana to even remotely stand a chance against him. Mana, in many ways, was a reflection of someone's experiences and the will they manifested through them; he, who had undergone twenty-five years of this, had chiseled and sculpted it to nigh-perfection. Others had just been given a huge chunk of stone and some tools and haven't even yet learned how to actually sculpt.

Roughly an hour in, people slowly started to get up and leave, most expressions dark, gazes wondering and wandering; though doubts infested over the ‘legend of the Phantom’, today they learned that he really is the two things that he was most-often called: strong... and absolutely insane. How else, after all, would one describe a man who stood up in front of all the leaders in the world and told them he’d kill them if they stepped out of line? A madman.

The three most shocked were, undoubtedly, Jake, Khristina, and Bren; unlike Rick and others, they'd never seen Cain as anything besides his usual, jokey, a-bit-of-an-ass self. Yet... when he stood up there and when they felt his Mana... it was as though he was a completely different man. No, he was, they realized; the man they joked around with is Cain, a happy-go-lucky lad who likes to make puns a bit too much. And the man on the stage... was that Phantom, the cold-blooded, merciless, soulless carnage of a man who had no fear in the world and was all but jokey in any way, shape, or form.

“... dad, are you... are you really gonna stay for least three months?” Lana suddenly interrupted Cain’s lazy not-quite-watching of the TV as she jumped into his lap, looking up at him wide-eyed.

“Of course,” Cain replied with a chuckle, caressing her hair gently. “Probably even longer. Why? You afraid you gonna get tired of your old man?”

“Nuh-uh,” she fervently shook her head and laid it down onto his chest. “I... I’m happy...”

“Ha ha, me too, firefly. So, tell me, how’s the school going?”

“Uu, booooring,” Lana replied. “Our math teacher, Mrs. Woller, gives us tons of homework every day! Why do even need to know so much math?!”

“You don’t.”

“Eeeeh?! Then why are we learning it?”

“I dunno,” Cain shrugged. “To develop great minds and such. It trains your brain and stuff.”

“... were you good at math, dad?”

“Oh, the greatest!”

“Really?!”

“Nope!”

“Eeeeh~~”

“Ha ha,” Cain laughed freely for a moment as he patted Lana’s head, leaning further back. “Na, your mom was always the genius of this family. She’s the smartest person I know. Me? If I ever did learn anything, it’s ‘cause she taught me that very thing.”

“Huuh,” Lana mumbled silently and shuffled closer to him. “Right, what about that big meeting the fat lady on the TV was talking about?”

“Oh, that... that must have ended by now...” Cain scratched his nose awkwardly.

“Didn’t you go with grandpa Rick?”

“Yes, but you know... it got so boring that your dad kept falling asleep and they kicked me out...”

“Ha ha ha ha!” Lana suddenly burst into a bout of uncontrollable laughter, prompting Cain to oddly glance down at her. “Dad, you’re such a snob! Ha ha ha!”

“Hey! I’m not a snob!” Cain defended himself. “It’s just... honey... they were really, really boring! Think about how bored you get during math -- then, I don’t know, I was bored ten times as much!”

“I would have died!”

“Ye, ye, I almost did too...”

While Cain and Lana chattered mindlessly, Rick was currently awkwardly smiling at the hardened expressions of the top leaders of the country. The President had just relegated what had transpired during the meeting to roughly twenty or so leading members, all of whom had quite hard expressions to read. The main point of contention was, undoubtedly, the masked figure and his, what most considered to be, reckless speech.

There was a fine line between taking a hardened stance and pissing people off beyond a redeemable circumstance, and he had crossed it -- no, not merely crossed it, he'd set it on fire, pissed on it, stepped over it with a tank, and then rocketed a good extra ten miles ahead.

"The line is already stacked beyond the point of reason," one of the men broke the silence abruptly, glancing at Rick. "Thanks to your friend.”

“I--I had no idea he would do that.” Rick defended himself -- pointlessly so, he knew.

“He’d turned the entire world against us; if we weren’t going to a war before, we certainly are now.”

"Was it so wrong what he did?" of all the people in the room, everyone least expected the President himself to suggest it, eyes quickly veering onto him. "Were his methods a bit... eccentric? Yes. But, ultimately, he gave everyone what they truly wanted during that meeting. Countries with no Tower a shroud of safety, and those with a brief grace period."

“... do you really think he could just waltz into a country and do as he wants?” someone asked.

“Rick?”

“... uh, probably, yeah,” Rick shrugged; though it’s been a while since he’d seen Cain in action, hearing the stories from other members of the party... made him truly believe that. “All I know is that he really is, by far, the strongest Conqueror. I mean, you saw it during the meeting -- there were over a hundred of some of the strongest Conquerors in the world present there... yet not even one of them dared to peep, let alone try and fight back.”

"So what? Do we just stand behind a madman who threatened to kill the world leaders if they 'misbehaved'? Our image would plummet."

“We don’t need to stand behind him,” the President said. “In case you forgot, he also included us in that speech. For all intents and purposes, he can be treated as a semi-rogue agent. From what little I learned about him, he seems the type of man to do things at his own pace. If that’s the case, he won’t be the aggressor; at the same time, we promise our allies that clout of protection -- and slowly reel them in by opening up a few extra spots for them for the Tower.”

“Yes; in a way,” the Secretary of Defense nodded. “His madness is perhaps the best deterrent. I’ve no doubt in my mind that not everyone will take this lying down and that in a few months there will be invasions... but, we can just wait until then. If he steps in, just point the lenses at him and void ourselves of the blame. If he doesn’t...”

“He will,” the Vice President said somberly. “He certainly will.”

Similar meetings were held across the board; most leaders had already stealthily boarded private jets and departed, while a few yet stayed behind and discussed the meeting in their arranged rooms. The public was yet to get the wind of what had transpired, and most still believed the meeting was still in session. However, just a few days later, the news would break open... and the voices of terror would swallow the whole world in one, fell swoop.