Chapter 57: 56 - Less Than Forty-Eight Hours

I could do without all this attention. I mean, seriously...most of my classmates had messaged me one after the other, following that news report about my altercation with those X-Warriors. I'd managed to reply to all of them, but most of them were still keeping the conversation going...this is completely new to me, I've never texted this many people all at once, it's kinda weird. 

It was currently two days before we'd move out towards the Wight campsite, and hundreds of the bug-sized drones had already been scattered towards the place. The coast outside was clear, though from the drones that were hovering around the campsite, it was clear that the Wights were gearing up to launch a large scale assault on us, there were about ten thousand of them located there. 

Meanwhile, we were launching our attack with a number of only about five hundred. Six of the twelve Aces and forty-five K-Ranks, the rest were all Q and J-Ranks. There were currently eighty-nine active K-Ranked X-Warriors, so just about half of them, and about a third of the Q and J-Ranked X-Warriors...yeah, this was a huge chunk of the Sanctuary's overall manpower in terms of combatants. 

Ten thousand to five hundred...on average, that's twenty Wights per X-Warrior. In other words, if things didn't go according to plan, we'd probably lose...specifically, we'd be massacred. And if that happens, I won't hesitate to escape using my Pause power. 

Still, I had reason to be optimistic...Director Silva had done most of the planning, and she knows what she's doing, so I doubt she'll end up sending five hundred X-Warriors to their deaths...I still didn't have the full picture as far as the plan and strategy were concerned, but from what I did know, I had no issues with any of her ideas.

Starting from tomorrow, those assigned to this operation would teleport out to the underground bunkers, along with the equipment that was to be used. For transport, they'd made these ugly but sturdy vehicles, wide and rectangle-shaped, with reinforced armor, it kinda looked like a powered up bus...the shape made it really difficult to flip or knock over, and instead of regular wheels, it had the same things that tanks used to move. 

Those weren't all though, they had also made some jets, though they'd only had enough time to fully manufacture five. After all, no one alive today had ever worked on building an aircraft before...the knowledge was there, sure, but there was no technical skill or experience with that, so it took a while, even with the Sanctuary's advanced technology. 

Each jet was big enough to carry ten people, so fifty people, which included me, along with my sister, would be riding in them as a part of the aerial assault team...the jets themselves didn't have any weapons attached, so I'd have to equip the jetpack-drones and jump out, the others were all X-Warriors with Manifestations that allowed them to fly. 

I'd start by bombing them with my Dark Attribute smoke bombs, though those weren't going to be as effective as I'd like, since Wights had way higher resistance to radiation than the humans of the Sanctuary did...we'd confirmed that with Hebi, by me 'accidentally' setting off a smoke bomb when I was with him, and as it turned out, he felt nauseated and dizzy, but when they scanned his body while he was in a Healing Pod, it was clear that it'd have taken a LOT more smoke to kill him. 

Specifically, a fatal dose would require about ten smoke bombs per Wight...there's no way I could ask Ruby to make me a hundred thousand smoke bombs. I did tell Director Silva about her off the record, though I avoided mentioning her name. Unfortunately, the Director said that, as a official of the Sanctuary, contracting a private creator would be a huge legal no-no, though was pushing to abolish that law. 

She agreed with my notion that it was a law that worked against the Sanctuary, but there was little she could do about it, she didn't have a lot of influence in that area. While each Quadrant had its own set of laws, rules and regulations, those were mostly regarding minor issues...when it came to more major issues, common laws were applied to all four Quadrants, as well as the X-Warrior Zone. 

And changing those particular laws weren't easy...one of the five bodies would have to raise an opposition against the law they want to remove or change, and then...it's simply just put to a vote. Each of the four Quadrants and the X-Warrior Zone would vote, and a minimum of three votes would be required to make the change...if three or more voted in favor of maintaining the status quo, then that's that. 

In terms of tax profitability, the law prohibiting private creators from publicly advertising their inventions worked in favor of the governments and major corporations, I didn't fully understand the economics of it, but the point is...even if Director Silva was to file an opposition to change this law, in all likelihood, all four of the Quadrants would vote against it. 

Like it or not, there's stability in monotony, and I suppose wanting to maintain that isn't exactly a bad thing, for instance, if they did change the law and say, an invention that makes stealing easier is invented, that'd be a huge problem...that said, wouldn't it be better to know what's happening when and if such a thing happens? 

For instance, if that same invention was created, while the law remains unchanged, and then is auctioned off anonymously online...there's a chance that it'd never be found out. Well, anyway, it doesn't matter all that much to me, Ruby can make just about anything I throw at her, so I don't care about that law. 

And as for this operation, I was fairly confident in my own survival. The Wights didn't have any real long-range weapons, no sniper rifles or anything like that...and the guns they did have, which were pistols and assault rifles, only had a limited supply of ammo. They had apparently begun making their own gunpowder and stuff, but it was still on a very small scale, so not an immediate concern. 

The Wights in total numbered more than the humans of the Sanctuary did, but their technology was several times more primitive...the technology in the Sanctuary far exceeded the technology that had been around during WWIII, while the technology in possession of the Wights were technology that had already existed at the time. 

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The underground bunkers that Japan constructed had spaces set aside for growing plants, fruits and vegetables, and they also had tapped into underground streams for water supplies...most of the water wasn't free of radiation contamination, but they'd managed to find ways to filter the water. It still wasn't exactly radiation-free, but it was safe enough for them, with their high tolerance for radiation. 

With food and water secured, bodies that could survive in the toxic environment the world was in, and a growing desire to leave the underground bunkers, they emerged back to the surface. A surface where Mutants ran rampant all over the place, buildings were severely damaged, with crumbling walls and overgrown weeds. 

Thanks to their evolved bodies, which according to Hebi, varied greatly, some had more than two arms, others had multiple tails, long jaws like crocodiles and so on...and that gave them a way to fight and fend off the Mutants. 

They also restored buildings as much as they could, at least enough for them to be liveable in, they used all the broken down vehicle parts to make patchwork vehicles, managed to extract a fuel source by digging up old gas stations, and with that, transport was revived. 

The underground bunkers had been constructed in the areas that used to be known as Hiroshima, Shimane and Okayama. Once they emerged from the bunkers, they managed to set up radio communication using parts of the broken down remains of technological devices in the surface, and then split up into two teams, one that would go northeast and occupy more of Japan, and the other would head southwest towards Fukuoka. 

Despite splitting up, the two groups had remained in constant contact, and apparently, the majority were in agreement that the humans of the Sanctuary need to go. Initially, they had grudgingly decided to attempt peaceful coexistance with us by making contact with us, after some of them voiced opposition to going to war with us. 

That's why they sailed over to South Korea, went through North Korea and Mongolia, till they arrived at where their current campsite was. And then, first contact happened...a team of them ran into a team of X-Warriors, who panicked and killed some of them, but were then killed themselves in retaliation, since the Wights outnumbered them. 

They started calling themselves Wights after that, since apparently, those X-Warriors were screaming stuff like 'monsters!' during that incident. And then, they began ambushing teams of X-Warriors, killing them and taking some captive...once the Sanctuary learned about what was going on, the decision that was made...was to wipe out the Wights, starting with their base camp to the southeast of the Sanctuary. 

And that about sums up the whole cause of this upcoming battle. What a mess...this attack on their campsite, it was going to be a massacre, and I'm fairly confident that it'll work, but...even if we wipe out all ten thousand of them without a single casualty on our side, which is basically impossible, that won't be the end of it...truth be told, ten thousand was barely a fraction of their entire number. 

Over a hundred million humans had been evacuated into the bunkers during WWIII, after that many died, an exact number is unknown but according to Hebi, it was at least thirty million, and could have been upto double that amount. After the survivors mutated and evolved, one especially notable biological change was noted...they only needed four to five months to make babies, instead of nine like the humans in the Sanctuary. 

On top of that, the babies reached adolescence about twice as fast as we did, after which they'd age at a rate similar to us...that's how I found out that Hebi was actually just fifteen years old. He'd matured physically about five years ago, which meant that he physically reached a similar state that humans in the Sanctuary take eighteen to twenty-one years to reach. 

So while he'd seemed like he might be a few years older than me, he was actually about five years younger. His personality made a lot more sense though, he definitely was on the immature side. Anyway, to get back to my point...the quick birth and maturity rate of the Wights meant that their population swiftly rose up again, and was currently over a hundred million again. 

Which means that even if we managed to kill every single one of the Wights at the campsite, it wouldn't even so much as dent their overall numbers. And those numbers will only be further agitated with ten thousand of their people killed...this could be the start of a long and ugly war. That would suck, to put it lightly. 

But hey, it's not like I have the power to change all that...I simply didn't have the influence to pull off something like that. And it's too late anyway...we move out in less than forty-eight hours... 

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