Dark Fate, Chapter 277 (Patreon)

Chapter 277 – Fallout

Nailing down the specifics of the peace plan was the domain of diplomats and lawyers, not heads of state. I still had one of my people sit in on the meetings, acting as arbitrator and as a check on anyone getting carried away, but the negotiations were between diplomats, now, while the heads of the delegations went back to their countries, and started selling the deal to their legislatures and people. Thankfully, by the time the final deal was agreed upon between the diplomats, the Flames of Vengeance had already faded, leaving everyone far more amicable.

In fact, everyone who had experienced the Flames of Vengeance was now experiencing a profound sense of peace. That wasn’t an accident, of course. The System was brutal, but it attempted to balance things. Such a wide-ranging buff, granted to so many people? Obviously, there would be a hidden cost when the buff wore off.

System Notice

The Flames of Vengeance have run their course, and faded away. All residents of Earth who were affected by the Flames now experience a Peaceful Aura.

Peaceful Aura

The Flames of Vengeance have burnt out. In their place is a feeling of profound peace. All damage taken is reduced by 99%. All damage dealt is reduced by 99%. All abilities are reduced by 50%. Creatures within line of sight of one bearing a Peaceful Aura cannot attack unless they are two Tiers higher than the one with the aura. The Peaceful Aura will fade in 30 days.

Basically, everyone who had been driven into a frenzy now found themselves with an almost blissful sense of peace. They could barely damage anyone or anything, and they could barely take damage. The reduction in abilities was brutal, but not being able to get attacked unless the attacker was either outside line of sight, or was two tiers higher? That was powerful.

The main intent of the debuff was crystal clear, as far as I was concerned. A massive, widespread buff like the Flames of Vengeance would obviously cause a staggering amount of resources to be expended. Not just lives, but ammunition, potions, medical supplies, fuel, and so on. It was very likely that farms may have gone unattended, as well. Monster lairs may have been overlooked, as people focused on old grudges instead of clearing out the monsters.

Enter the Peaceful Aura. The debuff would allow people time to rest and recover, with attacks being unlikely to do serious harm. Even monsters who came close enough to see those giving off the aura would be unable to attack, which meant that gathering resources in the wild would be easier. Especially natural resources like herbs, timber, and ore. Basically, the kinds of things one normally needed to dodge monsters to harvest. Wouldn’t help with meat or hides, obviously, but those were less important, for humans, at least, than the abilities which would allow them to repair defenses and heal wounds.

Of course, the Peaceful Aura also made the Ceres Royal Navy’s presence over India and Pakistan all the more important. Since India hadn’t been caught in the Flames of Vengeance, but drawn into its effects by the Pakistanis, if the CRN wasn’t in place to enforce the peace, they might have decided that a renewed offensive when their opponents were basically incapable of fighting back would be worth it. Sure, they essentially had no navy or air force left. But they had strategic weapons, and they had artillery. There was a lot of damage that they could do from outside line of sight, if someone wasn’t hanging the promise of total annihilation over their heads.

Thankfully, none of the leaders on the Indian side of the conflict were willing to push things. Honestly, both sides needed time to recover, since no one had been actively planning for this conflict, and stockpiles of munitions and other supplies had dwindled quickly. Also, the violence of the war had been more than either populace was willing to resume, now that cooler heads had prevailed.

That was the thing about war in the modern era. Modern weapons were insanely expensive, especially compared to what troops had been using back in World War 2, to say nothing of medieval wars. Missiles could cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per shot. Every plane shot down was a few million dollars wasted. Every ship sunk was a billion dollars, easily, just for the ship, not counting the weapons on board it. And all of that was without counting the human cost.

Even if modern wars did not kill as many as the older ones, like the industrial-scale charnel houses of the Somme and other World War 1 trenches, they were more visible, now. The old wars were ‘over there’. The mud and the blood was something you heard stories of, maybe saw a newsreel showing it, but it wasn’t the same as Vietnam showing up in the nightly news every night, or the running cost trackers for Desert Storm, where people calculated the cost in lives and treasure day by day, and broadcast it for the world to see.

But even Desert Storm was in the dawn of the internet. These days, with everything being interconnected, and people being able to see livestreams and social media posts from the front lines, it made the realities of war mor real to those who otherwise would have just heard about it on the news. Now, they could see it, and some things you simply could not unsee.

This meant that people quickly tired of war. Unless it was an existential war, the kind of war where they were fighting against extermination, or a fanatical war, where they had been manipulated into believing that the other side had to be exterminated at all costs, the people of the modern world did not have the stomach for long, drawn out wars. If it lasted more than a month, maybe two, they would start asking if there really was nothing better that they could be doing with their money and manpower. If it stretched into years? They would be near revolt.

Of course, that was just when you were stuck on a single planet, or in a single star system. Communication between star systems was limited, meaning that interstellar wars were closer to how combat had been during the Age of Sail. One need only look at how the Ceres Royal Navy conducted Operation Slaughterhouse to see the truth of that. I was not fool enough to believe that the operation would have gone off the same if everyone in the fleet had been able to see livestreams from the sapient cattle on the planets before the explosions wiped them from their worlds, and people at home would definitely not have acted the same if they saw it in person.

I turned away from the reports of India and Pakistan, content that things were moving in the right direction. Elsewhere, brushfires and civil wars had mostly died down. Iran and Iraq had managed to avoid starting any actual war, while Belarus backed down when they realized that attacking Poland would be the mother of all fuck-ups. Somalia and Yemen were just as unstable as ever, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. The Greek push to annex North Macedonia had failed, as well, which was more of a surprise, given the difference between the two countries.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro had fought bitterly right up until the Flames ebbed. There was old hatred there, and the Flames had been just the excuse some groups needed. The death toll was sitting around 25% of the population, and the only reason it wasn’t higher was because of the number of people who had healing magic. The only reason that the war had come to a pause was due to Peaceful Aura.

In Turkey and Libya, the religious extremists had either been driven back or put down by the time the Flames faded. With the Peaceful Aura in effect, any further violence basically hit a wall before it could begin. The inability to attack unless you were two Tiers higher was doing a lot of work there, apparently.

The civil wars that had sprung up in Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbeckistan had all mostly resolved in a draw. No successful revolutions, but there were a great deal of dead government officials who were being replaced by rebels. Those were clear concessions to try and end the fighting. However, that just meant that the rebels were now inside the government. Time would tell whether they changed things from inside, or proved more faithful to power than their proposed beliefs.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates did not exist anymore. Oh, the land was still there, and the people were, for the most part, still alive. The majority of the infrastructure and buildings were even intact. However, the governments in both countries had been so thoroughly decapitated that there was, for all intents and purposes, no one left with more authority than a local mayor. They couldn’t even do martial law, since large portions of the police and military had joined in the killing, or turned their guns on their fellow soldiers, with the remainder getting eliminated along with the ruling class and the foreign expats.

The corporate side of things in those countries was even worse. Entire corporations were effectively dead, including some major oil producers, and pretty much every resort hotel in the region. Anyone with power had either fled the country, or had been hunted down by the people.

Considering the way things had been in those countries before the Flames, I found it very hard to care about their rulers getting killed. What I did find myself caring about, however, was a petition that had somehow gained over twenty million signatures. Considering the pre-Flames populations of those countries, that was as close to full support from the citizens of those countries as you could get. The two countries wanted to join the Ceresan Empire.

That move would essentially give Ceres a great deal of control over both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Not as extensive control as we had over the Panama Canal, but it would still rock the world. And I expected that of they joined, other countries in the area, like Yemen, Kuwait, and Djibouti, would also ask to join. Which would dramatically change the calculus of global trade, if nothing else.

Naturally, I was more than happy to accept new lands into the Empire. The massive boost to the Empire’s economy (once things settled) and the way would be able to influence global economic and political policy in the future was simply too big a win to turn down. Even if there were downsides to the deal.

The biggest downside, of course, would be that I was going to have to basically rebuild the countries. Not entirely, since there was a lot still in place, but the government of the different countries was going to have to change, substantially. After all, it was slightly difficult to have monarchies when the different royal families were all very much dead. So, I needed to do something.

Looking back at the petitions, I noticed that they were slightly different. The Saudi petition wanted the country to be made a parliamentary territory under Ceresan rule, with a governor instead of a president, much like how the South American members of the Empire were treated. That was a fairly sensible setup, so I was inclined to let them have that. Fortunately, I didn’t have to figure out the logistics for that changeover, since I had people for that.

No, it was the petition from the United Arab Emirates that caught my eye. They didn’t want to join the Ceresan Empire. Well, they did, but that was just a side-effect. They wanted to join the Kingdom of Ceres. To become direct subjects of mine, not just imperial subjects. The seven emirates had been basically little absolute monarchies working together before the Flames wiped out the majority of the royal families. But they hadn’t really been united before.

I could have my people handle the Saudi petition, and setting up their new government, but with the Emirates wanting to join the Kingdom, I couldn’t just have the Empire’s people settle things. No, this one was something I’d need to handle myself.

Guess I was heading back to the Middle East, again.