Global Lords: Building the Strongest Civilization with SSS Rank Talent-Chapter 44: Existential Crisis

[ OUTGOING CALL: GORR (RANK 4) ]

The ringtone buzzed once. Twice.

Click.

Gorr’s stone avatar appeared. She looked busy. In the background, Red could see Molekins hauling massive crates of gemstones.

"You survived," Gorr grunted, not looking at the camera. "I saw the smoke. Impressive chimney."

"It worked," Red said, keeping his voice flat. "The Druid retreated."

"Good. He’s a fungus. He hates dry heat."

"He called me," Red said casually.

Gorr stopped writing on her slate. She looked up. "Did he?"

"He was... chatty," Red leaned back, floating in the air to look relaxed. "He was talking nonsense. About ’Tests’ and ’Physics’. He seemed to think my chimney was some kind of... cultural signal."

Red watched Gorr’s face closely.

"He said it proved I wasn’t a ’Native’," Red lied smoothly. "What does that mean, Gorr? Aren’t we all... gods?"

Gorr sighed. It was a heavy, dusty sound. She put down her slate and walked closer to the screen.

"You really are new, aren’t you?"

"I’ve been busy surviving," Red deflected.

"There are two types of Deities in the Pantheon," Gorr explained, her voice lowering. "There are the Natives. Ancient spirits. Concepts born from the world itself. The River Gods, the Mountain Spirits. They use magic instinctively. They don’t build chimneys. They just will the wind to blow."

"And the second type?" Red asked.

"The Summoned," Gorr said. "Or ’Outsiders’. Us."

Red’s heart skipped a beat. She admitted it.

’Us.’

"We come from... elsewhere," Gorr continued, being careful with her words. "We bring strange ideas. We build factories. We use ’Physics’. We treat the world like a..."

She hesitated.

"...Like a system to be optimized."

Red nodded slowly. "I see. So the Druid is one of ’Us’?"

"Yes," Gorr confirmed. "He’s been here a long time. Maybe fifty years. He’s bitter. He likes to weed out the Natives from the Summoned because he thinks Natives are... boring."

Fifty years.

Red did the math.

’If time flowed differently, maybe fifty years here would be five minutes on Earth? Or maybe he was from the 1970s?’

"Are there many of us?" Red asked, trying to sound casual. "Summoned ones?"

"Enough," Gorr shrugged. "A new wave came in recently. A big batch. Very noisy. They spawned in the Human Kingdoms to the West and the Elven Forests to the East."

West and East. That’s where his classmates were. The Heroes. The ones who got the shiny starting zones.

"They are chaotic," Gorr grumbled. "Always fighting. Always talking about ’Guilds’ and ’Justice’. I prefer the quiet of the canyon."

She looked at Red piercingly.

"You spawned in the Monster Zone. The Swamp. That’s rare for a Summoned. Usually, we get the nice spots."

"Lucky me," Red said dryly.

"It makes you dangerous," Gorr noted. "The others... they rely on faith and shiny armor. You? You rely on mud and desperation. Keep it that way."

She reached for the ’End Call’ button.

"One piece of advice, Rubedo?"

"Yeah?"

"If you meet other Summoned... don’t assume they are your friends. The Natives just want to survive. As the Summoned... We want to Win."

[ CALL ENDED ]

Red floated in the silence.

He had the confirmation.

→ Gorr and the Druid are Players. (Or at least, Earthlings).

→ The "Heroes" are here. His classmates are in the West and East.

→ This is a Competition.

"So it is a game," Red whispered. "But the permadeath is real."

He looked at the map. Somewhere out there, Chad the Paladin or Sarah the Saintess was probably building a kingdom of light, adored by humans and elves.

And here he was, in a swamp, ruling over lizards and rocks.

Red clenched his fist.

"Fine," Red whispered. "Let them play Hero."

He looked down at his dirty, industrial, monster-filled city.

"I’ll play the Boss."

—

-

.

The black water of the river churned.

The citizens of Bastion gathered at the muddy banks. The thermal trenches were sputtering out, the last of the coal turning to white ash. The air was still hot, but the green death was gone.

They watched the water.

BUBBLE. BUBBLE.

A massive shape broke the surface.

Old-Shell dragged himself onto the mud. He didn’t look like a tortoise anymore; he looked like a wreckage. The resin seals Red had crafted were melted and dripping like wax. His iron shell was scorched black from the thermal shockwave, and barnacles of dead rot clung to his legs.

The Root-Father unlatched from the shell. The Treant Elder was in bad shape. His leaves were brown and brittle, having absorbed the worst of the toxins to protect the crew inside. He slumped onto the bank, his roots digging frantically into the clean mud to heal.

HISS.

The seal on Old-Shell’s side cracked open.

Warlord Gorak fell out first. He landed on his hands and knees, retching black slime into the river. He was covered in soot, swamp-muck, and the blue blood of the Colossus.

Then Krug stepped out. The High Priest’s white Hydra-armor was stained grey with ash. He held his axe in one hand and a pulsating, severed green organ in the other.

The Heart of Rot.

The crowd was silent. They had seen armies march. They had seen walls built. But they had never seen this.

This was a squad that had walked into the mouth of hell and walked back out.

Iron-Scale pushed through the crowd of awe-struck Kobolds. He stopped in front of Krug.

"You smell like cooked cabbage and death," Iron-Scale wrinkled his nose.

Krug dropped the massive Heart onto the mud with a wet squelch. It pulsed, causing the nearby Mud-Skippers to jump back.

"The Tower is gone," Krug rasped, his voice rough from the smoke.

Iron-Scale looked at the Heart. Then he looked at Gorak, who was wiping the slime from his mouth.

"And the Warlord?" Iron-Scale asked, his eyes narrowing. "Did he try to run in the fog?"

Gorak stood up. He leaned heavily on his rusty spear. He looked at Iron-Scale, then at the cheering crowd of lizards and kobolds.

"I had the chance," Gorak rumbled. "The fog was thick. I could have vanished."

He stabbed the spear into the ground.

"But I had a job to do."

For the first time since his capture, Gorak didn’t look like a prisoner serving a sentence. He looked like a soldier serving a cause.

Red, watching from the Void, felt a surge of satisfaction.

[ QUEST COMPLETE: THE ROTTING TOWER ]

[ MVP: SQUAD "SUICIDE" ]

[ LOOT SECURED: HEART OF ROT (EPIC) ]

"They didn’t just win," Red whispered. "They leveled up."

He zoomed in on the stats.

[ KRUG: LEVEL 18 -> 22 (CLASS: FLAME-KEEPER) ]

[ GORAK: LEVEL 45 (STABILIZED - FAITH RESTORED) ]

[ OLD-SHELL: TRAIT GAINED "RESIST ACID" ]

[ ROOT-FATHER: TRAIT GAINED "TOXIN FILTER" ]

Red leaned back. The immediate danger was over. The neighbor was silenced for now. The territory to explore had expanded.

But looking at the pulsating Heart of Rot on the riverbank, Red’s mind went back to the classroom. To the biology textbooks he used to read while hiding in the library from Marcus and his goons.

"Infinite biomass," Red mused. "Energy cannot be created or destroyed... unless you have a magical organ that breaks the laws of physics."

He tapped the [ RESEARCH ] tab again.

[ PROJECT: BIO-REACTOR ] [ STATUS: READY TO BEGIN ]

"Krug!" Red’s voice boomed in the High Priest’s mind, startling the exhaustion out of him.

[TAKE THE HEART TO THE SMELTERY. BUILD A VAT OF GLASS AND IRON. WE ARE NOT GOING TO EAT IT. WE ARE GOING TO PLUG IT IN.] 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Krug looked up at the sky, confused but obedient.

"We plug... the meat?"

[YES,] Red ordered. [WELCOME TO THE INDUSTRIAL AGE.]