Although my forces have been eliminating the roaming turtles without much trouble, they didn’t seem to end. If anything, more of them were coming to land. So even had ti to lay eggs before they were captured.
But I didn’t give the scouts an order to stop scouring the ocean. I wanted to know how many evolved green sea turtles there were, and how many of them we will have to kill before they finally stop coming.
The scouts didn’t find an answer to that. Instead, they brought worrying reports.
"The scouts say there are waves of various fish-beasts travelling away from the deep sea and closer to the shores. Most of them can’t breathe above water and aren’t suited for shallow seas, but they still do it. They attack each other in the process and force other beasts to swim even faster. They attacked ships on their way, too—two human fishing boats were lost before I issued an urgent order for all ships to return to the harbours," Bloodhero told , coming to my office.
I scowled.
Fishing boats were not important—most fishern were actually fishing now only because they were used to it. Fishing long ago beca too dangerous to be considered a serious source of food.
But the ships...
"What about the ships on the way to and from Ashida or to the expedition force over the mountains?"
The expedition force might’ve dealt with most of the smooth-back deer, but there were still survivors here and there. They were also busy building infrastructure on the other half of the continent. I didn’t see why we shouldn’t colonise this place when we could.
The Champion Tree didn’t say anything against it, which ant that the Usnea God didn’t protest, either. And why would they? Their species were only surviving thanks to us.
"Those that were in our telepathic range moved toward the closest harbour. As for the rest, I don’t know. They all have guards, at least."
I huffed.
Guards won’t be much help against underwater creatures who could easily breach a ship’s hull.
"What could even cause a migration wave like this, Bloodhero?"
"Father, it’s like they are running from sothing terrible, but whatever it is, our scouts’ astral projections can’t travel far enough from the shore to tell."
I nodded.
"And the Oracles?.."
"Shrug and can’t say anything definite. Again! Only that it will likely get worse."
I rubbed my forehead.
"This will be risky, but we MUST send scouts into the open sea. We must know what this is! If we only find out a week before the thing happens, it might be too late. If this was what the green sea turtles were actually running from, despite all their defences, we would need so serious preparations to withstand whatever this is."
Bloodhero saluted.
"Yes, Father! If we send several ships together, they should be able to break through the migration wave. Even if a few of them will be lost to the attacking monsters, they could protect the other ships until they reach a calr zone!"
I shook my head and grinned at the idea that hit .
"No... Why send scouts over the sea when we have planes?"
I stood up from my table and went to the map hanging on the wall. It wasn’t the most precise, perhaps, but it had marks for land found between our and the Ashida continent.
There were so islands here and there. One of them was relatively close to our shores, while still far enough into the open sea that scouts could explore its deeper depths.
"This island, Bloodhero. You know what’s on it?"
Bloodhero walked up next to and frowned.
"Hm... When I was given a report about it three years ago, there were just rocks. Ships travel past it on occasion, so I can ask for more recent information."
"Do that. I must know if we can deliver a scout by a plane there and then pick her up. For the forr, we can just deploy her off the sky, but for the latter, the plane will have to actually land there."
Bloodhero’s shoulders dropped.
"I don’t know what planes need to land. They fly like dragons, but otherwise are not like dragons at all!"
I chuckled and patted Bloodhero’s shoulders.
"And? Don’t tell THIS is the hurdle that will make you unable to do the task."
My daughter imdiately caught herself.
"Of course not, Father! I will ask the Researchers imdiately. Your orders will be done the best way!" She saluted again. "Is this all?"
I thought about it.
"While you are at it, ask Researchina if they can send planes reliably at least halfway to the other continent. If we could just exchange ssages via planes, not even cargo, it would help our colonisation effort on Ashida a lot."
Bloodhero nodded. Then she looked around as if fearing that she might be overheard and continued to speak telepathically.
’My next report, Father—hive mind Precio-Us have completed field tests of their ability... Whatever it is. All types of beasts can be reliably stunned with it, and they won’t move until they are seriously hurt. It’s incredible! If we could take Precio-Us into the sea, we wouldn’t have to worry about ships being attacked, since they could stun all attackers.’
I perked up at this news, smiling. The research so far has shown that this power didn’t deal damage to Precio-Us themselves, but didn’t move to the next stage. It was good to hear any updates.
’But Precio-Us promised to teach other hives how to do this. Perhaps one of them could travel over the sea to guard transport fleets!.. No, we can’t do that until we find out what threat caused the migration waves. Still, this is an option we should leave open.’
’Precio-Us started teaching other hive minds, but they didn’t finish yet. Either way, with this power, we surely won’t have a single rival in this world! We’ve almost conquered the land, and now it’s just a matter of conquering the sea!’
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