Two individuals walking on the beach of Japan. They corralled this beach to avoid citizens and clam-shell farmers from getting something unusual. The 800 meters beach had remained intact despite the storms that gathered around the nation.

The calm seaside, however, did not distract the two from their original goal. Gaston went down on one knee. He scooped the sand with his gloved hand. He turned on his heads-up display, analyzing the sand before making a scan of every object in the beach.

“This beach smells funny. There is some discoloration near the water.”

Gaston dropped the sand and sauntered to the water. He tapped on his earpiece before taking hold of his bracer, where he started manipulating it. Janna watched the beach with her hands on her hips. She tugged on her clothes before she squinted at the seas.

Hair flutters at every blow. Janna looked down at Gaston with her inquisitive eyes.

“Found anything yet, Gato?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, if we can find anything here, it’d be something. Going after rumors is necessarily not the right way to go about this. Hah, it was much easier in Rakvere. Remember that?”

“That town was small and an European in a hospital would be far easier to find than finding clues on this beach. Great thing is that at least we can stroll around beaches now.”

Janna shook her head. She leaned on Gaston’s shoulder while he was still on his one knee.

“Do you mind?”

“I don’t.”

Gaston stared at her for a second before returning to work. He made an analysis of every grain of sand on the beach of Odaiba. It was a good thing that he thought of using the cloud-computing ability of the Babaika Lions instead of using his own bracer-computer.

“It’s still analyzing the data, then compiling. Shouldn’t take long.”

“Maybe I should have got myself a bathing suit.”

“Sure, swim in an ichor contaminated water. Possibly nothing could go wrong.”

“Reminds me of what you used to say to Katarina La Forza.”

“That’s a name I didn’t think to hear today.”

“Why not?”

She made a nasty grin fit more for a degenerate. Katarina La Forza was a name he didn’t think he’d hear. Considering that was someone who they met in their military academy days. That doll-like woman with a doll-like attitude was hard to forget.

“Why do we know so many crazy, powerful women?”

“Cause they are nice to look at? And other than Brother Reginald, we don’t have that many in our batch who survived after that shit on Mars.”

“Katarina… where’s she now, anyway?”

“Space Force.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, she’s kind of made it big right now. She’s the Captain of the ISS. Apollo. One of the most advanced hospitaller-destroyer in the solar system.”

“Nice to hear a classmate make it big.”

“Technically…. she was also our roommate, and we only had two beds.”

“Yeah, because that wasn’t exactly a great place either.”

“Ah, Gato, your ability to forget is admirable. Four bottles of vodka and one whiskey… the true cure for degenerates like us.”

Gaston palmed his scalp at the words coming out of Janna’s mouth. She behaved as if she was enjoying rekindling old memories that had happened a long time ago. Then again, even those awful times had kinder days as well. They were the only ones who didn’t follow their classmates.

Even if they had the method of following their classmates and the means. The financial burden alone would put them into debt. Then again, their situation made Gaston feel that he’d rather make himself be in-debt to the Outer Space Unions than Earth-based unions.

Due to the rapid changes in technology. Earth wasn’t the only planet that humans can live on. Mars, Ganymede, Europa, and Pluto. Because of the split-realm dimensional ships, travel time has become less. Unlike the traditional forms of travel, like reusable rockets and so on.

There was a discussion regarding whether the dimension tunneling system was the cause of the events that made Earth like the way it was. Infested with these strange alien beasts that appear whenever there is a split-realm opening. The TYPE and the NAMED class of monsters were speculated to come from another place in the Galaxy or possibly an alternate universe itself.

It didn’t matter where they came from. What mattered was how large their influence on Earth has become. Earth’s culture and way of living was changing based on how these monsters roam the earth. Towns and Cities are much more urbanized and there is much more interest in houses that could go underground or protect itself from otherside threats. Though Earthside treats it as an infestation of alien life. Even all that is evil in the hearts of humanity wasn’t enough to complete a genocide against these monsters. It was hard to completely destroy them when no one knew where their source was in the first place.

Not to mention that they were producing these materials that are far too valuable for humanity to just abandon. Because of these materials, everyone was willing to live in a world that has many monsters. Of course, the smarter, and the richer ones have already evacuated earth and settled on the former red planet and managed from that safe haven.

It was strange how only earth was ‘infested’ with the biomass entities. The other human colonies were safe from the infestation. And although there are strays that have been appearing on mars lately, they weren’t exactly as terrible as the ones on earth. No, they are like puppies compared to the entities that appear on Earth. It has been a long time since they appeared. Not that they’ll be gone so easily.

Gaston looked up. The bioshield generator hummed as it deflected the rain. Behind those clouds was the view of the moon. The moon has become an international base and space port where the split-realm ships would dock. Spaceside was a new frontier for humanity while Earth was this old and rusted home that everyone would eventually leave behind.

[Analyze Complete. Compiling results to the selected drive in assigned folder]

Ten gigabytes of data was instantly uploaded to the bracer. Gaston accessed the bracer’s browsing function through eye movements. He had the information displayed on his retina and shared the information with Janna.

“Blood hell. We’re sitting in millions of fucking eggs? They are so close to being larvaes!”

Janna deployed his MF weapon. The broadsword turning into a buster sword blazing with dark red bio-energy. Gaston found his neurons complying and dark-red electricity ran around his body.

There was a study made from one of the first years that explained the reproduction cycle of the biomass-entities. They produced asexually and sexually. The dangerous ones are born through flesh-eggs that go through three stages before the ‘adult’ emerges.

Egg, larvae, and then pupa. When the adult emerges it becomes a full-pledged creature. A monster that seeks out sustenance by consumption of the living. From the looks of it, the creatures buried underneath the sole of Gaston’s feet were half-sand and half flesh-eggs that were going to emerge into larvaes.

[Bridge, please send this to the Commander and to the Earthside Consortium’s, Japan Branch’s, acting Manager.]

[Accepting data.]

Gaston sends the information he gathered from the beaches of Odaiba. It was only after a few minutes that there was a reply coming from the bridge. Lady Romanov sent two split-realm ships to contain the beaches of Odaiba while the rest of the ships were sent to different beaches with signs of decoloration to investigate.

There were many confirmed places that had the same flesh-eggs hiding in the sand. Jōdogahama and Uradome Coast was among the many beaches that were infested with these flesh-eggs.

Gaston found himself laughing inside whether this was coincidence or not. Then again the split-realm openings made it clear that there was something going on. And if it wasn’t for the rumors in the first place. Gaston wouldn’t have found something here. Nonetheless, despite this discovery, there was still no trace of the Ahra Cult that they could find.

Sitting on the side of the beach. Gaston watched as droves of breakers, scientists, and containment teams started to secure the beach. Since it was found by the Babaika Lions the news reports were going on about the important discovery that the Babaika Lions had made.

“This is terrible. On the bright side we’re getting paid for this.”

“She sent us a compensation?”

“The Lady sent something alright,” Janna showed a statement of account coming from the international bank. “Looks like we’re getting credits from that. Though from the looks of it they just deduced some of the payment.”

“Greedy, but acceptable. So, do we continue checking the beaches?”

Janna scooped the sand once more. She ran her bio-energy on the sand and dispersed them after they were fried by her energy. Gaston stared at the Otherside researchers isolating the larvae from the sands of Odaiba.

“This isn’t normal. Then again if we haven’t run a scan on this beach then the people near this beach are in for a hard time. No, the problem here is that there was no one that was able to examine this beach before us. Even the nearby garrison seems to not know.”

Of course there were also signs that it was just a normal beach. It was quite normal to have these kinds of effects. Sand itself reflects the state of the landscape and the people around it. Which means that there is a good reason for Gaston to believe that they also didn’t notice this until now. Not to mention that there was a recent excursion of biomass entities happening all over the nation of Japan. They didn't have time to care about the beaches.

“Our investigation is going to be cut-off at this rate. I doubt they would let anyone enter the beaches until everything is settled. And with how we reported this to the Consortium here. I doubt that Yamato’s Defense Force wouldn’t take this chance to profit and beautify their name after the embarrassment of the defense grid. Then again, it was something that can’t be helped.”

“So this beach crossed off our list. What now? Information regarding the Cult is well-guarded. No one is able to take information without them knowing. Even Brother Reginald had quite a trouble after leaking out information to you.”

“Not that it proved anything useful. We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. We can only go after rumors that might be or might not be related to these bastards. Now, that would be hilarious. If they somehow mess up and leak their information.”

That was impossible. The Cultists knew it better that everyone who had an inkling of love for planet earth would go straight to where they are and butcher them. It was different back then, but with the appearance of the breakers. The ‘age of heroes’ has once again brought forth righteous men and women who are willing to endanger themselves for the sake of humanity. Some fight for glory and fame while the greediest ones would try to take them on for the sake of the bounty on their heads.

That was how the world works. If they are doing this kind of action, it would reveal even one strand of their hair to the world. They were not the only ones who were chasing after them. In regards to finding where the Cultists are and butchering them until none of them was left.

“Looks like we still have to go by rumors.”

“Huh, so we are looking for the Loch Ness monster now? Ah, do you think we’ll find the Yokai of Japan as well?”

“No, I’m saying that we email the one who made a blog post about the beaches.”

Janna frowned, “You do realize that if they do contact us. We’d be putting this person into the target range. These bastards are careful. No, they are too paranoid to even think of letting anyone get a sniff of them. We invite the one who made that blog… then it’s safe to assume that we’d be killing them as well.”

“The blog post was by someone called Hijiri, right?”

Janna snorted. “That’s right. Guess we'll kill the blogger then.”

Gaston hardened his heart. There was a good chance that they'd harm this ‘Hijiri’ but it was something that they didn’t think too much about. For better or worse, they’ll just have to ask a favor regarding the person.