Jaclyn gazed thoughtfully at the window of the airplane, barely aware of the surrounding area. Not out the window, which would have been perfectly understandable considering the fact that they were rapidly approaching one of the transplanted magical realms that had appeared on Earth, but the window itself.

  The window she’d nearly broken at Heathrow, when she’d been trying to get a better look at the London that had been subsumed by an extraterrestrial jungle and accidentally pushed against the window just a little too hard, feeling it start to give.

  Mind you, it had been the innermost layer, which was purely there so passengers didn’t scratch up the actual exterior windows, being similar to the “sacrificial layer” used to protect glass floors.

  Replacing a cheap top layer was always cheaper than replacing the whole thing, whether you were talking about a window or a floor, or so she’d been assured. Even if she actually had destroyed the inner window, the only issue she’d have caused was a cosmetic one.

  It should have been a momentary moment of “whoops, gonna pay more attention next time,” but the incident had remained front and center in her thoughts even as they’d traveled halfway across the world.

  Yes, the window had been an accident, but if she put just a little effort into it, she could have torn open the entire side of the aircraft with casual ease.

  Intellectually, she’d always known that she’d gotten powerful, but somehow, the window thing had hammered that point more thoroughly than anything else could have managed, and sent her spiraling down the rabbit hole of contemplation.

  Why was it okay for her to have this much power?

  The easy and obvious answer was that she wouldn’t abuse it, she’d use it for good … yet wasn’t that the answer everyone would give, even the ones who really shouldn’t have any kind of power?

  In the privacy of her own thoughts, she could say that she knew herself and knew she would use it properly, but that on some primal level, that degree of trust was lacking when it came to others. Yes, she trusted Granger, Frye, Henderson, and all the others, but at the same time, if things had been less chaotic, and it had simply been a question of: you have the option of handing out a bunch of superpowers to people of your choice? With no exterior pressures requiring humanity’s power to grow, she likely would have said no.

  Simply because of how much more she could understand herself in ways she could not with others.

  She knew what was inside her head, she didn’t know what was inside anyone else’s. However, simultaneously, she knew that everyone else was thinking the exact same thing. They didn’t know whether she was exactly how she projected herself to the outside world, or a closet, well, anything. Sadist, psychopath, serial killer … there were plenty of labels that could disqualify someone from deserving power, while being possible to hide.

  Also, even if she remained true to herself, and the old saying about the corruptive influence of power proved incorrect, what if the world around her changed? Even at her current level of power, in the middle of D-Rank, she could expect to live a couple of hundred years. It would have been longer, but considering she was already pushing forty, she got a smaller boost to her longevity than others would.

  Society and politics were changing and evolving rapidly, and “old” people tended to have their views fairly set in stone. How long before she was reduced to the old lady waving her cane, yelling “get off my lawn?” Minus the walking stick and other implied disabilities, at least.

  Power was seductive. The fact that anyone could theoretically reach the top did little to change the fact that there would doubtlessly only be a few people who stood head and shoulders above the rest.

  Yet would someone like that be Superman, or Homelander?”

  Also, how much longer would her surroundings be able to survive her? The Earth was made of entirely mundane materials, and even the transplanted areas were largely only as durable as regular, non-magical, things.

  And Jaclyn, holding only a fraction of the power she could potentially gain, had already reached the point where her fights had utterly ruined cars as collateral damage and was starting to creep up to the point where accidentally bringing buildings down on her head wasn’t entirely out of the question …

  Yes, that damn window had sent her down quite the rabbit hole.

  But now wasn’t the time to think on it further, however, her actual job would need doing right after the plane landed, and it was about to touch down on the water.

  There was a bump and a jolt and far faster than she’d ever experienced before, the seaplane came to a stop.

  The local force might have been a Marine Expeditionary Unit, built around an amphibious assault ship that was designed to arm and launch eveything its marines could possibly need, but the vessel was still half-stuck in the mangrove swamp that was the local transformed zone and landing upon it with an ordinary planes would have resulted in its destruction via fried electronics.

  Hence, the seaplane.

  “I’m so sorry, Director Abrams, they usually have a boat ready nearby, but it seems like it’s going to take a while,” the pilot told her, sounding genuinely apologetic.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “They know I don’t need one. Can you unlock the door?”

  There was a loud “clunk” as some mechanism or other disengaged, then she threw open the door and simply … hoped out, a simple shrugging motion unfurling spectral wings to catch her before she wound up in the drink.

  Her initial power, the Honey Badger Spirit Bond was the core and anchor of her “build,” granting her immense resilience, flexibility, and staying power, which combined with the martial arts skills she’d acquired over the course of decades to easily trade punches and while leaving only the enemy worse off for it.

  But by God, she loved the Haast’s Eagle Spirit Bond.

  Sure, it’s enhanced reflexes and the claws she could summon around her feet were nice, yet none of that really mattered, not when it could let her fly, take to the air, and leave all the problems of the Earth behind her … at least until she had to land. Or unless she was forced to fly because she needed to quickly respond to an emergency.

  Right now, though, for the one minute or so it would take her to reach and land upon the deck of the assault ship, all she had to focus upon was the wind whipping through her hair, the sound of the waves crashing against the hulls of the ships, and the massive mangrove swamp that covered the entire horizon.

  Jaclyn had thought she knew what that word, meant, “massive”, after all, she was from London, the biggest city in Europe, and one of the largest in the world in terms of area.

  One and a half thousand square kilometers, nearly two-thirds of which had been replaced by jungle during the merge. And even back when it had simply been a maze of concrete and steel, it was all too easy to get entirely lost the moment one left one’s usual stomping grounds, never mind the current state of the place.

  Yet one could have dropped the entire city into the area that expanded below her and then completely lost track of it the moment one turned away.

  Intellectually, Jaclyn had been aware of the fact that this place was larger than many countries, a perfect circle of small trees, shallow pools, and muggy air laden with insects.

  But none of that could have possibly prepared her for this place. In fact, she only knew that this swamp was, in fact, a circle was because she’d seen the satellite images. From her current position, the border looked like as straight a line as was ever found in “nature.”

  And getting a proper overview of the area with her own two eyes would have required her to fly higher than the atmosphere would likely allow. Despite being magical, her wings did require some air to fly.

  If one assumed “Australia” was the yardstick for being deemed a continent, then the Earth hadn’t gained a single new continent, but three extra landmasses and two areas of unnaturally altered water were already playing merry havoc with the winds and ocean currents. The next winter was going to be a cold one, given how the Gulf Stream was being partially blocked by what most people thought was a massive patch of desert that had appeared in the southern Atlantic.

  Speaking of, the largest of the transformed zones was actually quite a big problem just to land on as it was, well, made up of sand that had almost immediately started crumbling into the ocean, causing all sorts of issues, starting with where the sand was going to eventually wind up and ending with titanic algae blooms in the near future as the nutrients caught up inside it were used as fuel for the whole mess.

  Iron-poor sections of the ocean would suddenly be chock-full of the stuff, far more than could ever have naturally found its way in, resulting in a vast spread of plant growth, and when those plants eventually died, they’d leave behind a “dead zone” too depleted of oxygen to support most life. Or so the analysts thought.

  Thankfully, that fell so far outside her area of responsibility that someone else would have to deal with it.

  The main issue it was posing for the people attempting to investigate was that, well, it was a huge pillar of sand in the middle of the ocean that had immediately started crumbling at the edges and likely would for some time until things reached an equilibrium, resulting not only in a beach that was highly unstable but also well into the “no tech” zone, making landing more than a little tricky. Too soft to anchor anything, too unstable to walk onto without any kind of assistance, too hostile to technology for most modern tricks to work.

  Now, that wasn’t to say that it was impossible to explore, far from it, but it was still the most annoying transformed area to get on.

  Unless you counted trying to dive down into the North Atlantic or North-East Pacific transformation zones, knowledge of those two was entirely limited to what could be discovered via long-range sonar pings, and the myriad of horrific ways people had wound up dying, as could be interpreted via any corpses that wound up being swept out via currents.

  But none of that applied here.

  The locals, despite being identical to Earth’s manatees visually, were sapient, kind, and wanted to be on good terms with humanity. And they wanted to hear from and learn about humans other than the Americans.

  Ideally, Jaclyn would have brought Gula or another member of the Worldstrider Tribe along, however, politics had thrown a wrench in those plans.

  In England, the orcs were full-fledged citizens, albeit ones with a litany of additional legal protections to prevent all exploitation and usage of legal loopholes by any government that may be elected as long as the United Kingdom existed.

  Technically, that meant that anyone who accompanied her would have had the same legal protections as Jaclyn herself.

  Practically … it was all too easy for someone to claim that, not being human, an orc wasn’t covered by various treaties and international law, and then do something that couldn’t be easily taken back before things got straightened out. A smidge on the paranoid side, perhaps, but all these situations were delicate. Best to avoid problems wherever possible, even if that involved spending weeks being utterly superfluous at the Endless Snowfield.

  Basically, the idea had been to “share information,” but to be honest, there wasn’t too much to talk about. The base camps had been functionally identical to what they’d built in London, walls to keep out anything that couldn’t flatten the whole affair with a thought, gun ports to shoot from, and places to sleep/eat/shower.

  The only difference was the small hut sitting in the transformed zone proper, meant for people to take cover in while trying to earn their powers, now that having access to an air horn failed to qualify one for controlling the very atmosphere itself.

  Of course, there’d also been a lot of offers both for her services and access to the Worldstriders’ village nexus, under the assumption that she’d be more amenable than the staff of the UK embassy in Washington.

  All in all, largely a waste of time.

  Something this particular situation would hopefully prove not to be.

  It was at this point that she lightly landed on the deck of the ship, spectral wings vanishing into the empty air as she approached the man she was going to meet.

  “Colonel James Hunter, United States Marine Corps,” he said as he offered her a hand.

  “Deputy Director Jaclyn Abrams, Bureau of Preternatural Affairs, formerly of Scottland Yard,” she introduced herself, shaking the hand of the Marine Colonel, using the slang term for the London Metropolitan Police Department made famous the world over by Sherlock Holmes in his various movies and shows, rather than the official designation.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  She narrowed her eyes, drawing upon her Inspect Skill, which, for some reason, still required some kind of physical tell.

  Hunter was at the very start of E-Rank, likely being in the same boat as her own boss in having had access to a system-activating artifact but having to spend too much of his time doing paperwork or putting out fires to grow overly much.

  A lot like how her own Status Sheet was looking nowadays. One level and small growth in all combat skills, political, social, and utility skills through the roof.

  Having one’s truth-telling Skill be named “Bullshit Radar” was normally something found parents such as herself, however, it felt equally appropriate in the halls of politics as it did when her daughter was proudly pronouncing that she deserved sweets because she hadn’t had any all day … while her mouth was stained with chocolate.

  “Where would you like to go?” Hunter asked.

  “Wherever you’re willing to let me, I …” Jaclyn was cut off by the sound of her sat phone ringing.

  “I’m afraid that’s my boss.” She apologized as she withdrew the offending device, but Hunter just took a few steps back.

  “No worries, I’ll wait,” he replied, then turned and walked far enough away that, were the world still sane, he wouldn’t have been able to overhear.

  Considering the E-Rank power for the local system was sound magic, this was probably purely a matter of demonstrative courtesy, however.

  Frye sounded as calm and sleep-deprived as he always did, even when delivering news as unpleasant as what he was sharing right now.

  Someone had tried to kill Daedalus, and succeeded in killing military personnel in the process. That was all he shared, after all, he didn’t know any more himself, but this wasn’t the kind of message where it was much of a leap to imagine to assume it was only the tip of a very, very horrific iceberg.

  However, the message had been clear, and she eventually hung up and stowed the phone again.

  “Everything okay?” Hunter asked, having begun his return as soon as he saw her end the call. Either out of politeness, or because he genuinely hadn’t been listening, she couldn’t tell which.

  “There was an incident in London,” Jaclyn decided to say. “I was told to wrap this up in a timely manner.”

  “Oh …” Hunter replied. “… It’ll take an hour or so to refuel the plane, I’m afraid.”

  After all, the small vessels she assumed were carrying the fuel hadn’t even reached the aircraft yet.

  Jaclyn shook her head. “Actually, Director Frye told me to finish this because it’ll likely be a while before he can send anyone over here.”

  “Okay,” Hunter said, nodding sharply, then pointed at the deck of the ship. “This is the USS America, an America-class amphibious assault ship that we’re launching all operations off of, the America’s front half is stuck in the transformed area because it manifested around us, if we’d had a choice, we’d have made sure that didn’t happen.”

  He paused briefly, then turned away and gestured for her to follow.

  “This concludes your tour of our ‘forward base,’ unless you have any questions, the boat should be set up already.”

  Jaclyn followed him, and as they walked, Hunter was barking orders, though it was less “barking” and more “giving orders at normal conversation volume that people were somehow hearing on the other side of the boat.”

  An application of sound magic, obviously. It was easy to start taking one’s supernatural powers for granted if you had them long enough.

  For example, she’d chosen to learn utility magic since she didn’t have any mana beyond what she naturally gained as she advanced in ranks and combat magic was expensive. The intention had been to clean wounds, get drinking water at any time, and fix important tools at the drop of a hat without needing any kind of tool, that sort of thing.

  But guess what she’d actually wound up doing with the magic? Saving on dry cleaning for her suits, fixing small things that broke around the apartment, and saving paperwork after she’d spilled coffee on it. And after the first couple of times, she’d barely even been aware of how supernatural and miraculous the whole affair had been.

  Of course, part of the reason she hadn’t used the magic the intended way was the simple fact that she simply was yet to find herself in a “wilderness survival” kind of situation.

  The procedure for entering the magical zone was familiar; she divested herself of all relevant electronics, left behind her baggage (just a backpack), and made sure the compass was in its correct spot.

  In London, the transformed area was small enough that if she were ever lost, she could just pick a direction, start walking, and in due time, she’d be free.

  Here, though … she’d need to actually know in which direction to walk/fly.

  Four other marines joined her and Hunter as they reached the bow and headed down into the bowels of the ship before emerging back outside just above the waterline and stepping into a small boat. And it was, in fact, small, bordering on tiny. Still bigger than one of those “couples rowboat” things often seen in romance movies, but not by much.

  Certainly a hell of a lot smaller than what she’d have expected the United States Marine Corps to use as a landing craft, but then again, the vessels she knew from war movies would have gotten stuck twenty meters into the mess extending countless miles in every direction save directly behind her.

  To be specific, those twenty meters were precisely how much had been cleared since the zone had appeared, opening a space for operations down here.

  And in the distance, a collection of platforms and small huts lined the artificial clearing, obviously having been recently built, the reds and oranges of the wood making Jaclyn suspect it would become a valuable export once things stopped being quite so crazy.

  “The troops tend to get less stir crazy when they have teh space to stretch their legs, and it’s easier to communicate with the locals,” Hunter explained, following her gaze. “That was quite the pain to make, our tools keep breaking, and we never know if something works because it’s unaffected, or because it’s not affected yet.”

  “I know the feeling,” Jaclyn replied. “I drove into the jungle with a perfectly functional Husky, came out with a car where basically everything except the engine and brakes were busted.”

  “Thank God for ruggedized military tech, eh?” Hunter commented.

  Yep, thank God for the fact that something in devices meant to survive an EMP also helped against the anti-tech properties of the transformed zones, despite said field clearly functioning on entirely different properties.

  She shrugged. “I don’t suppose you’ve figured out what’s going on?”

  Hunter shook his head and was about to reply when one of the small huts in the distance trembled and collapsed. He sighed deeply.

  “You know how it is, it doesn’t matter how good your people are in the field, if they’ve got nothing to do and they’re all in the same room to egg each other on … every damn time.”

  Jaclyn raised an eyebrow.

  “Sonic magic is really cool, but if you accidentally catch the frequency of some vital structural component… well, you saw what happens.”

  Jaclyn shrugged, looking around as they left the cleared zone and greenery swallowed up the world.

  “You know, when you’re young and dumb, you’ve got one job: don’t fuck up. As you get promoted, your job becomes: don’t let all the people who are just as young and dumb as you used to be fuck up. And now, it’s don’t let the people with superpowers fuck up,” she finally commented.

  “Story of my life,” Colonel Hunter admitted. “This nonsense never gets anyone killed and rarely even results in injuries … but I’ll be damned if the aftermath of some of those barracks parties don’t look worse than active war zones.”

  “I can imagine,” Jaclyn replied. She’d seen the aftermath of plenty of highly destructive university parties, and she could easily imagine how trained soldiers could easily top that, especially when the party was one of the few times the otherwise strict military discipline was relaxed.

  “Anyway,” Hunter said, as he straightened and gestured towards the swamp ahead. “This is our local transformation zone. officially, it’s called the ‘Manatee Grove’ and the locals don’t mind. But that might be due to a misunderstanding, there’s a translation effect in place, and their name for themselves is translated as ‘manatee’ to us.

  “The fact that there are Earth animals by the same name doesn’t bother them, they’ve point-blank told us that, but they also seem very amiable in general. But they stay deeper in, there’ve been some … incidents.”

  “Incidents?” Jaclyn asked, her mind already flashing to the worst possible way to interpret that.

  “Our local wildlife is as willing to eat sapient beings as animals. Thankfully, we were able to scare off the orca before it ate the kid, but we’ve all learned how dangerous swimming in the deep ocean is.”

  Jaclyn winced. The mere idea of swimming in water that deep gave her the willies. She might not classify herself as having thalassophobia, but that didn’t mean she was overly comfortable swimming in water too deep for her to see the bottom, let alone one that was also known to contain predators large enough to swallow her whole.

  Then again …

  “Is swimming in here safe, though?” she asked. “I thought mangrove swamps were full of snakes and mosquitoes, at least the Earth ones.”

  “Oh, we’ve got mosquitoes all right,” one of the other marines commented. “Smallest ones are teh size of chickens.”

  Jaclyn swallowed.

  “That sounds … well, like the start of a horror movie,” she admitted.

  “Basically was,” the same marine who’d spoken previously informed her. “The locals don’t think the bugs are dangerous because they’re safe underwater and didn’t realize they had to tell us about it. I’m just glad the point defense on the America was able to target them.”

  “So, if I see them coming, just jump in the water and wait for them to go away?” Jaclyn asked.

  “Pretty much,” Hunter told her. “But they’re pretty vulnerable to sound, too. We should be able to stop them before anything happens.”

  “And the snakes?” Jaclyn pressed, silently hoping there weren’t any. They were beautiful animals … but she’d much rather have a layer of bulletproof glass between her and anything longer than her arm. And even then, there were some highly toxic, smaller slithering reptiles …

  Her stomach rumbled.

  Right, not only was she functionally immune to poison and venom, but she also had an ability that let her easily find food and regularly reminded her about how “tasty” various serpents were.

  “We have emergency rations …” one of the Marines began to offer, but Jaclyn waved him off.

  “Being part honey badger means talking about snakes makes me a little hungry. But I’m fine.”

  Hunter laughed. “I mean, you do know who you’re talking to, right? The local snakes are good eating, but not too dangerous. Less than a meter long, and non-toxic. The big bastards are obvious, and we’ll steer clear of them.”

  “How big?” Jaclyn wondered.

  “You could probably call them kaijus and not be too far off,” Hunter answered after a brief pause. “Anything D-Grade and above gets big.”

  He paused again, then settled into a position that let him both gesture towards the mangroves that seemed poised to smother them all, as well as look towards her.

  “To be honest, I’m glad we’re doing this in here, because the PowerPoint I was supposed to use was horrendous.”

  Jaclyn sniggered. The “preferred format” for just about anything even remotely related to the government could always be relied upon to be incredibly ineffective.

  Hunter waited a moment, then launched into what was clearly a well-practiced speech, one which she strongly suspected had been given in numerous briefings.

  All of it was technically informative, but in the end, it could have been shorter.

  “… but in general, regular animals here grow in strength as they age, and that’s the only way. Basically, if they live long enough, they’re guaranteed to become a problem, but things also won’t spontaneously spiral out of control. There are a handful of ... I’ve been told that ‘old monster’ is the correct term, but …”

  Jaclyn sniggered despite herself.

  Hunter raised an eyebrow.

  “People use ‘old monster’ to refer to old superhumans who are a nation unto themselves, have largely retired from the world, and set everyone to red alert anytime they so much as take a single step outside of their ordinary routine,” Jaclyn explained, having thankfully recovered her composure.

  Hunter rolled his eyes. “… And now that’s forever stuck in the official files. How widespread is that terminology?”

  “Wide spread enough that it’s going to cause at least some misunderstandings, especially with off-worlders,” Jaclyn informed him, already feeling sorry for whoever had caused that confusion by misinforming the Colonel.

  “Anyway, that’s how monsters evolve. The E-Grade mosquitoes are the biggest threat, most of the birds are herbivores and leave you alone unless you get too close to their nests, and the big snakes are too large to hide, you just need to steer clear.

  “But anyone using the local system needs to ‘grow closer to the ocean’ to gain power. Just swimming works, hunting works better, and exploring new depths is the best. Sergeant Doakes is almost at D-Rank, and he went all the way to the bottom of the ocean.”

  “That’s survivable?” Jaclyn asked, aghast. Yes, there was magic involved, but the ocean had to be several kilometers deep around here, and water was heavy. She would probably get crushed like a soda can under a steamroller if she were to make the attempt right now.

  Hunter immediately understood and tapped the side of his head. No, his ear.

  “Water can’t be compressed the way the air in your body is. The moment your head goes underwater, all those little nooks and crannies like your inner ear are filled with water, and then, you’re equally at home at the bottom of the Mariana Trench as you are just under the surface. And when you get out of the drink, all the air comes back,” he explained.

  Jaclyn hadn’t actually thought it through that much, but it made sense. No one at her Rank, let alone below that, could outright tank the weight of the ocean, but the local system made it so one didn’t have to.

  “Ah, here we are,” Hunter proclaimed, gesturing towards a small platform made from mangrove wood bobbing seemingly in the middle of an empty patch of water.

  Jaclyn raised an eyebrow as there was literally nothing there save for the platform, nothing to indicate that it was, in fact, their destination.

  However, the outboard motor was cut, the sudden silence stunning her for a couple of seconds, and then, the boat drifted forward until it bumped into the platform.

  Hunter easily slung himself overboard, heavily landing on the wood, and Jaclyn followed immediately so that they were both standing next to each other.

  Now wha- …

  Suddenly, the water below started to light up, starting from some place beneath the platform and radiating outwards, bioluminescent plants in warm greens and yellows forming suddenly illuminating what was now revealing to be a vast but shallow pit through which numerous large shadows were already moving, but as the illumination grew, any semblance of “threat” in the beings’ appearance rapidly fled.

  They were, well, adorable. Which was probably something she should avoid blurting out, no matter how badly she might actually want to.

  Big eyes, soft exterior, slightly chubby … oh, and that one was clearly a baby. Aw …

  Jaclyn bit her lower lip, and reaffirmed her iron grasp on her expression.

  And then, the first voice rang out seemingly from the empty air.

  “Greetings, emissary. We, the people of the Endless Fields, greet you.”