Chapter 1589: Unzoku’s Limits
When Gary heard the ultimatum, forcing one Alpha pack to destroy another, he imdiately thought of the familiar curse that dominated their own ti. It was the sa relentless pattern. For so ancient, unknown reason, if the Two Alphas didn’t fight against each other, that was when Unzoku would try and personally get involved, using threats and manipulation to force the hand of both parties. The sheer consistency across ti periods was terrifying.
Still, Gary listened closely, allowing Steve to finish his unbelievable story on the lonely mountaintop.
“So what did you do?” Gary asked, leaning in, the suspense of the ages heavy in the air.
“Well, at first, I wanted to know why,” Steven replied, the mory of that fear still raw. “Because Unzoku was clearly strong. In a way, his strength showed he was stronger than even my brother, Jack, who was at the ti the most powerful Werewolf I knew. So why didn’t he just do it himself? Why did he need to search for my small pack to carry out this terrible task? It didn’t quite make any sense, yet there he was, standing across from , threatening to erase us.”
Steve looked down at his hands, rembering the crushing fear. “At that ti, the truth was I was simply frightened, frightened by Rogan’s cautionary story, and utterly frightened by Unzoku’s sheer, casual display of strength. So I had made a terrible decision. In order to save my pack from imdiate destruction, I decided to agree to his terms.”
The three travelers were montarily stunned by the answer, especially considering the current situation where Steve was now their host and ally. But they listened on, understanding the impossible position he had been in.
“However, when it ca down to it, how could I truly fight against Jack?” Steve lanted, his voice tinged with the guilt of the past. “How could I force the pack to go into a devastating, unnecessary war with another Alpha when I was the one who had stopped Rogan from doing that very thing years earlier? I couldn’t be a hypocrite, not when the lives of my people were at stake.”
He continued to explain the strange progression of events. “Ti passed, and Unzoku would pay us a visit again. When he did, he would always question why I hadn’t done anything, why I hadn’t attacked Jack’s pack. I would explain the worries of those getting hurt, the lives that would be lost, and sohow, using every ounce of courage I had, I would manage to convince him to simply go away.”
This cycle repeated itself. “He would then wait, and he would co back again, and again, there would be no result. Yet,at the sa ti, Unzoku would do nothing. He simply left us be. And finally, after several visits, Unzoku had just stopped coming altogether.”
Steve concluded with a weary sigh. “Unzoku had co asking to face the other Alpha, but he never did follow through with his threat of destroying the current pack either, leaving us to the current situation we are in now. But I have to be honest, I still live in fear. I believe that any day he could co back, that he could decide to fight against us, and the fact that Unzoku hasn’t tried anything yet, that just makes worry even more. The silence is deafening.”
Unraveling the Paradox
Kai, Lupus, and Gary were thinking about the entire story now, openly analyzing the implications. Since Steve already knew about them not being from the current ti, a secret he had accepted, the three felt comfortable speaking openly about their knowledge of the curse.
“The situation seems to be almost the sa, but with one critical difference,” Kai said, imdiately getting to the core of the problem. “It makes wonder a few things. For one, with us in our ti, Unzoku had actively tried to use the power of the Vow to force us to fight. It seems in doing so, it allows him a level of overwhelming strength and control over us if we don’t complete the conditions of the Vow. However, both Jack’s Pack and Steve’s pack in this ti don’t suffer from the sa curse as us.”
“Right, so there was no reason for them to make a vow in the first place,” Lupus contributed, connecting the dots quickly.“There’s sothing else as well that bothers . When I fought against Unzoku, it felt like he was actively controlling . He could stop my movents, and then he could directly influence my mind. It makes wonder why he didn’t just do the sa thing to Steve when he didn’t get his way.”
Then, Gary raised his hand, a look of revelation on his face, as if he was in a classroom and had just solved the complex equation.
“I think I have the answer to that,” Gary said, speaking with the authority of soone who had faced the being. “When I t with Unzoku, and from what we have heard so far, his powers with us aren’t limitless. Each ti he does sothing that’s actively invasive, like manipulating minds or altering the world, it must use a large amount of power. So Unzoku always tries to get the two packs to fight against each other with the least amount of energy expenditure possible.”
He elaborated on his deduction. “If he’s so careful with his power, then the reason might be that it’s sothing that takes years to grow back. Maybe even in this ti, he simply doesn’t have the sa amount of power to do such a thing like mind control on a large scale. My other guess is that although Unzoku is strong, Jack is strong as well, he’s the other Alpha. So, fighting directly against him would be hard, especially since Jack had the protection of not just his pack, but the security of the Kingdom as well. Which was why he had strategically approached the easier target, Steve, rather than Jack.”
All of their deductions were adding up, forming a clearer picture of Unzoku as a strategic, power-conscious puppet master, apart from one frustrating detail: they still had no clue why Unzoku needed the two Alphas to fight so desperately, and what the objective was in creating this eternal conflict.
“Although I don’t have the sa information as all of you about the Vows and the future,” Steve admitted, a look of relief washing over his face, “you seem to harbor the exact sa strategic worries as I did back then. I had co to the sa conclusion: Unzoku wants us to fight, but he desperately doesn’t want to get his own hands dirty, likely due to a self-imposed limitation.”
He revealed his final, terrifying thought. “So then the question that popped into my head was this: if he can’t get to fight against Jack, then what if he tries to convince Jack instead?”
The parallels between past and future were starting to violently rge, and that subtle, insidious move was certainly an Unzoku-like thing to do.
****
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