Lintong District, China

  Magic was mysterious, magic’s return had been unexpected, no one could predict what magic would do. Mostly.

  Because sometimes, it was abundantly obvious what would happen.

  Such as when a world-famous collection of statues remained mere statues when anything else that even remotely resembled a living being came to life. At that point, one did not need the power of prophecy to foresee what would happen in the near future.

  Yet the precautionary destruction of these priceless heirlooms would have been troublesome, at the very least.

  Which was why precautions had been taken.

  Countless lines of mines and shaped charges of the antimaterial variety, artillery batteries stationed at the very edges of their effective ranges, eternally dialed in to ensure that if one of those statues so much as twitched, it would be reduced to powder in a heartbeat.

  An entire battalion specially equipped with antimateriel rifles and powerful grenades stood guard.

  And finally, flight paths for missiles carrying a nuclear payload had already been calculated. If something went wrong, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. It would simply cease to exist.

  At least that was the plan … yet when the Earth’s second Nation Boss rose, it proved to be far beyond the first one.

  Even as explosives shattered the statues nearest to the outside, clay spears began to fly at speeds that nearly matched bullets, only to detonate into lethally sharp shrapnel at the moment before impact, ripping apart the defending soldiers or intercepting incoming artillery shells.

  Fifteen minutes after the tomb had awoken, there were no living guards remaining, the survivors having evacuated.

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  And twenty minutes after the emergence, the first nuclear missile was on final approach, only for a lance of quicksilver to lash up from the ground, ripping clean through from well over a mile away, annihilating not just the guidance system, but also the engine and the warhead itself.

  Then, it retracted, leaving a ruined and useless radiation-spewing slab of metal to come crashing down into the countryside.

  A second missile met the same fate a quarter of an hour later, then a third.

  But the fourth detonated overhead, a tremendous wave of fire and fury washing over the uncaring army below, shattering many that had already been damaged, and cracking some that had previously been intact.

  A more effective attack than any of the previous had been, more than all of them put together, in fact.

  Some mushroom clouds rose at a distance of a few miles, warheads having detonated against the ground, other missiles were used as devastating airburst rounds … yet the unfeeling, uncaring, unliving army continued to march in spite of the ceaseless bombardment.

  ***

  Temujin

  It seemed that Chinese historians had turned him into some kind of horrifying monster, a beast that slaughtered pregnant women to bathe in the blood of their unborn babies or something equally pointlessly horrifying, with a dash of primordial evil to boot.

  Which was why he was quite understanding that his proffered hand had been slapped away, they were simply too scared of him to accept his help.

  Even though whatever he could do, were he inclined to go back on his word, would be infinitely less damaging than what their little Nation had already been doing for the better part of twelve hours.

  He just shrugged, bade the Mongolian ambassador to Beijing goodbye and hung up the phone. Their loss.

  They’d eventually wind up in such a terrible state that they’d accept his help, or they’d be destroyed to the point where they could no longer object to the international community asking him to help, bleeding hearts that they were. Or the monster would march onto Mongolian soil of its own volition.

  Either way, he’d just gather his horde on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar and when that time came, [Instant March] would transport them to the intended field of battle.

  Until then, he’d spend this time watching the Nation Boss, observing, learning.

  ***

  President Lane

  When the Nation Boss rose, it wasn’t a message that warned him, a panicked aide running into the situation room he was pretty much living in nowadays, or one of his Skills informing him of a disaster hundreds or thousands of miles away.

  No, he knew something big had happened because the ground shook, and cracks began to spread across walls that should have survived an A-bomb going off above him.

  But all the other ways he could have found the same information blared to life a couple of seconds later, letting him know just what had happened.

  Most of the National Mall had become a monster.