Chapter 115: Road to Power Part 5
BOOOOM!
He hit the ground hard and drove straight down. The impact left a wide crater, dust rising in a slow column before spreading outward and thinning into the wind.
For a full minute there was only dust settling around him.
He didn’t move immediately.
Not because he was stunned, but because he was recalculating.
The attempt upward had failed. The resistance in the atmosphere wasn’t something he could simply overpower with brute force or speed.
So going up directly wasn’t an option right now.
He looked down instead.
His body shifted slightly, and he began to dig, his innate abilities working in tandem with one another.
The ground split as his tendrils moved beneath it, forcing their way through compact soil and fractured stone.
Layers collapsed unevenly, some sections giving way too easily while others resisted before suddenly breaking apart.
So he adjusted, and added vibration.
Rock shattered faster. Not just broken by force, but destabilized at a structural level, as if its internal alignment had been loosened before collapse.
Each descent widened the tunnel behind him. What began as a narrow vertical cut expanded into a jagged shaft, its walls still shifting after he passed.
If the sky was watched, and the surface was exposed, then underground would be the only place left where movement couldn’t be tracked cleanly.
He continued downward, adjusting depth in uneven intervals,.
Sometimes he dropped several meters at once. Sometimes he slowed, letting the surrounding ground settle before continuing.
The motion created layers of delayed collapse above him, as if the earth was struggling to decide where it should remain intact.
While this was happening, the recording of the one-sided massacre had already reached Lucien and the rest of the staff aboard the main orbital cannon.
He watched the footage from the satellite feed and the airship cameras alongside the other members. The room was dim, lit only by layered screens and projection grids.
He couldn’t hide his annoyance.
He had severely underestimated their enemy.
The replay looped once more before freezing on its final frame.
The airship was split open from the inside, structural beams bent outward as if pressure had expanded within it.
Ground forces were gone without trace of struggle that could be followed step by step.
The room stayed quiet after the video ended.
No one rushed to speak. Even the operators avoided immediate analysis, letting the image remain on screen longer than necessary.
What concerned them more was Francis attempting to leave the atmosphere.
That single action changed the classification of the threat.
Humans had reached space for a reason. Unlike beasts and individuals born with special abilities, they did not have to fight against an invisible force that covered the world.
That was why even the King of Beasts, despite its ability to fly, had become a victim of orbital cannons.
Someone finally break the silence.
"Sir... should we allocate one of the sub unit to eliminate this threat?"
Lucien did not respond immediately. His fingers rested on the table, unmoving.
An analyst replied for him.
"Orbital deployment isn’t something we can afford right now. It will leave a gap in our Net system."
"Define the gap,"
The analyst adjusted his console. A map of the planetary coverage grid expanded across the table.
Thin overlapping lines marked surveillance layers—satellite tracking, atmospheric scan arrays, relay stations, and long-range predictive nets.
"If we reallocate one orbital cannon into active deployment," the analyst continued, "we lose continuous coverage in two northern sectors."
A pause followed.
Someone else added, almost as an afterthought, "There are already sightings of another King moving along its coastline."
The room shifted slightly.
The code name assigned to this King of Beasts was Glakor.
Also referred to in field reports as the Frost Leviathan.
Most sightings came in fragments. Thermal drops along coastlines. Sudden freezing of open water that should not have been cold enough. Seismic readings that suggested something massive moving beneath the ocean surface.
When direct visual contact occurred, it rarely lasted long enough to form a complete picture.
What could be agreed upon was its scale.
It moved like a submerged continent rather than a creature. Its body stretched far beyond standard marine classifications, its silhouette distorting sonar returns as if the ocean itself refused to outline it properly.
Where it passed, the sea hardened into layered sheets of ice that cracked and refroze in cycles, building temporary frozen paths that collapsed moments later under their own weight.
When it surfaced near the northern coastline, the air changed before it became visible.
Lucien looked at the northern sector map. The king’s movement was marked in slow, irregular updates along the coastline.
The data wasn’t clean, but it was consistent enough to suggest a pattern.
Slow advance. Coastal pressure. No sudden deviation.
Finally, he spoke.
"Prepare orbital movements. Glakor is a threat, but it’s still a sea creature. We’ll have time to reposition the orbital cannons if it attempts an attack."
The analyst beside him shifted slightly.
"Sir... you’re assuming it will remain surface-bound."
"I know," Lucien said. "But if we don’t stop this new threat, it will keep attacking the other cities. From the data our satellites gathered, it’s getting faster and showing more abilities."
He paused briefly, then added, "It’s better to assume we are dealing with an evolving beast that grows stronger the more it devours humans."
The phrase landed heavily in the room.
"An evolving beast?" someone repeated quietly.
The term didn’t sit comfortably within standard classification.
Beasts could grow stronger, yes. Mutate under pressure. Adapt within limits. Develop resistance over time. But what he was implying suggested something else. Something faster. Less stable. Less predictable.
Quick accumulation instead of gradual change.
If that was true, then it had to be treated with the same danger level as the Kings, regardless of origin.
No one challenged the order.
They began reallocating orbital control. Currently, they had twelve smaller orbital units and one main cannon positioned around the country.
Shifting one of them required recalibration cycles and temporary blind overlap in surveillance coverage.
"Begin tracking it," Lucien commanded.
The satellite feed shifted immediately. The display recalibrated as filters changed and scanning layers activated.
Heat signatures were searched across terrain grids. Atmospheric distortion models were overlaid. Movement prediction systems engaged.
Then the readings began to fail.
Francis had already accounted for it.
He had gone deeper, far beyond the range where surface heat or shallow scans could reliably reach.
The underground was not uniform. It was layered, fractured, inconsistent. That inconsistency worked in his favor.
"Sir," an analyst said, adjusting the interface again, "we can’t detect it anymore. It’s hiding underground."
One of the officers leaned closer to the display.
"Switch to seismic tracking. If it’s moving underground, it should still leave displacement traces."
The analyst complied.
New layers of data flooded the screen. Ground vibration maps. Pressure shifts. Structural stress readings across continental plates.
"There," the analyst said. "We have partial lock."
Lucien did not react outwardly.
"Track the signal."
The system attempted to stabilize the signal. A projected path formed across the map.
Then it fractured.
The line split into multiple branching paths that refused to converge into a single direction.
"It’s not moving in a straight line," someone muttered.
"It’s adjusting depth and direction simultaneously," the analyst replied. "It’s actively disrupting prediction models."
An officer frowned.
"Underground movement shouldn’t allow that level of interference. It’s stone and soil, not open terrain."
Lucien’s gaze remained fixed on the fluctuating map.
"Unless it’s changing the terrain faster than we can read it."
Another technician checked auxiliary feeds.
"Seismic noise is increasing. We’re losing clarity across the region. If this continues, we won’t be able to distinguish movement from background shifts."
A suggestion came quickly.
"So we widen the scan range."
"We already are," the analyst said. "Any further expansion will dilute resolution. We’ll lose precision entirely."
Silence followed.
Not from confusion, but from recognition of a closed system. Every adjustment reduced control somewhere else.
The room became still for a moment, broken only by interface noise and shifting projections.
Lucien finally spoke.
"It’s forcing us blind. It knows our satellite capabilities and is finding ways to misdirect us."
His words made sense. That was the problem.
They made too much sense.
It meant they were dealing with a beast whose behavior was no longer instinctive.
It was adaptive.
One officer spoke carefully.
"Sir... if it remains underground and continues moving at that depth, orbital targeting becomes unreliable. We won’t get a clean firing window."
Lucien’s eyes stayed on the map as the system struggled to maintain coherence.
The projected lines collapsed again.
Another pause followed. This one longer.
An analyst tried once more, then stopped mid-action when the data fractured again.
The room waited without speaking.
Lucien exhaled once, slow and controlled.
"Instead of tracking him down," he paused. "we’ll predict his next target. He’s going to attack another city. When that happens, we’ll have a small window to lock onto him."
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