Tokyo: The Player Behind the Scenes.

Chapter 300, Section 47: A Nation of Talented Individuals (Happy Qixi Festival)

"Quick! Get on the boat!!"

A sailor stood on the side of a small fishing boat that had just started moving, shouting hoarsely at the crowd on the dock, his face full of fear and anxiety, "Forget about the luggage, my life is more important!"

Compared to this fishing boat that actively accepted others, many other moored yachts simply drove off without waiting for anyone else.

Some boats that were temporarily requisitioned by the authorities would voluntarily dock to maintain order and allow people to board, but there were too many panicked people, and people were constantly being pushed into the sea.

"Ladies first! Ladies first!" Someone tried to block the boarding ramp.

"You'd better go into the sea and become a sea ghost first!" Then a muscular man rushed out of the crowd, kicked the man into the sea to feed the fish, and turned around to shout, "Children first, anyone with a child can pass them to the front!"

The docks of St. Lucy were packed with people, behind whom stretched a continuous white wall of fog, the roar of gunfire, and the flickering flames.

In this situation, anyone with slightly weaker physical fitness or who is not careful will be pushed to the ground.

The child's cries were drowned out by an even louder commotion. Someone was clutching a box full of valuables when he was knocked down by someone behind him. The box rolled over, scattering banknotes and jewelry all over the ground. He shouted, "My money!" and rushed over to try to protect it, but was instantly trampled and buried by countless feet.

This hastily constructed defensive line ultimately failed to hold out for long.

The port fence was smashed open, and a mutated crocodile the size of a small car rushed out.

Its rough scales were stained with blood and craters. Its one blind eye quickly locked onto its target. It opened its huge mouth, which was full of dagger-like teeth, and bit down on a guy trying to climb onto a container. It pulled the guy away from its mouth, and the scream stopped abruptly, leaving only the sound of bones shattering and the satisfied gurgling of the crocodile's throat.

The few remaining officers began firing, but the bullets struck the crocodile's skin, leaving faint dents and unable to stop its advance.

In the sky, flocks of ravens and bats, their eyes glowing red, swooped down, attacking the eyes and throats of the crowd with their sharp beaks and claws.

Many people covered their faces and fell down screaming, blood dripping from between their fingers.

What's even more devastating are those half-humans.

Several figures in tattered National Guard camouflage uniforms emerged from the edge of the fog, their movements slightly unsteady.

Their skin was cracking and peeling, revealing grayish-green scales underneath; their fingers were twisted into sharp claws; and they were making incomprehensible hoarse noises.

One of them still had half a terrified and distorted human face remaining on its face, but its eyes were filled with pure wildness.

Not long ago, their frontline defenders were trapped in the white fog, but now they picked up their remaining rifles, or even used their mutated limbs, to launch indiscriminate charges against their comrades and panicked civilians.

"Tom! It's me, Jerry!!"

A young soldier looked at his former comrade charging towards him and cried out in despair.

His response was a swift, bloody claw sweeping across the battlefield. The soldier barely managed to raise his gun to parry, but the gun was instantly bent, and he was sent flying backward. His head slammed into an exposed iron rod, which emerged from his mouth.

His eyes widened as he was suspended in mid-air, swaying back and forth.

The resistance quickly crumbled.

Gunfire became sporadic, further panicking the already disoriented crowd. People were being pushed into the sea every moment. The boats were too full or couldn't wait any longer, so they sailed away, leaving behind a group of citizens crying and wailing.

The bolder ones would leap into the sea, trying to catch up with the departing ship without being eaten by the monster.

Behind them, the thick fog resembled a giant shroud prepared for the city, covering the streets, houses, and squares inch by inch.

The lights became cloudy in the fog, and then went out one by one.

Cries, screams, gunshots—all human sounds were completely swallowed up by the churning, deathly white mist.

At the harbor, a few small boats, barely crammed with people, roared laboriously as they wobbled away from the now-hellish dock.

The people on the ship crowded along the gunwale, their faces ashen, tears welling in their eyes as they gazed at the coastline.

The entire port of St. Lucy, once a bustling treasure coastal town famous for its recreational fishing, is now nothing but an endless, slowly creeping gray-white expanse.

The dock, which was just crowded with people, is now gone. There are no lights, no sounds, only a deathly silence like that of a tomb.

The sea breeze carried with it a strong, pungent smell of blood.

The survivors stared at the white expanse that had buried everything, their lips trembling as they repeatedly uttered words like "My God, My God."

Further south along the Treasure Coast lies West Palm Beach, the northern gateway to the Miami metropolitan area, where defenses are equally crumbling.

"We've been breached! There are just too many things!"

A desperate shout came through the radio, which was then drowned out by a violent explosion.

Boom boom boom!
Off the coastline, the navy's cannons roared.

The shells whistled as they crashed into the area where the thick fog met the city.

Fireballs exploded one after another, and the shockwaves briefly tore through the fog, revealing the figures of monsters advancing in all directions.

There were crocodiles with exoskeletons, black cats leaping among the ruins, and countless spiders, each bigger than a washbasin!

Amidst the flames and bombardment, severed limbs and building debris flew everywhere.

However, the defensive line was too long, and in the gaps between the artillery fire, more monsters surged out of the fog like a tide, filling the void.

"The rear hasn't finished evacuating yet. Hold the line! Hold onto the buildings! Don't let them break in!"

"Moo!"

Upon hearing this order, the on-site commander stared at the white mist with a mournful expression.

A giant elk, larger than any they had seen before, tore through the fog and appeared before everyone's eyes.

Standing over four meters tall, its enormous bony antlers are as outrageous as a battering ram. With each charge, it can easily smash through a brick wall or overturn an armored vehicle.

It was charging toward a street corner fortification heavily guarded by the National Guard and local police. The soldiers behind the fortification were pale-faced, and the firepower of their rifles was no different from insecticide in front of it.

"RPG, quick, RPG!" someone roared.

A soldier hoisted a rocket launcher, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

The rocket, trailing a plume of flame, struck the elk's shoulder, the explosion causing its massive body to pause slightly.

But when the smoke cleared, it didn't even shake its head, only a charred patch remained on its shoulder. Its angry roar was so loud it hurt people's eardrums, and it charged forward even more ferociously.

The defensive fortifications were directly penetrated.

The antlers were embedded with the corpses of several soldiers who couldn't get out of the way in time, but the giant deer continued its charge towards the direction of the on-site command.

The commander felt a chill run down his spine; despite being inside the building, he felt utterly unsafe.

At that moment, a group of unusually large dandelion seeds floated across the sky, but few people paid attention to them, except for the person in charge on the floor.

"That is."

In a daze, he saw a slender figure fall straight down from the dandelion, a green ribbon shooting out from its arm, wrapping around the antlers, and riding on the head of the deer.

"Quiet," she said, her voice trembling.

As she spoke, the ground suddenly opened up, and several thick, dark green vines, as thick as giant pythons and covered with thorns, tore through the asphalt road, like living venomous snakes, and instantly wrapped around the deer's four legs and neck.

The vines tightened rapidly, giving the giant deer the same treatment as Shang Yang, forcing it to lie down on the ground.

"Moo-!!"

The elk let out an angry howl and struggled frantically, its powerful muscles bulging, snapping two vines in two.

But immediately more vines sprouted from the ground at the break, layer upon layer, binding it tightly to the spot.

That wasn't all; the tips of the vines, sharpened with barbs, stabbed fiercely at the deer's eyes, nostrils, ear openings, and hindquarters.
The elk let out a pitiful cry, its massive body trembling and convulsing violently, and the once dark green vines quickly turned red.

Its struggles grew weaker and weaker, its skin lost its luster and became shriveled.

In just half a minute, the terrifying behemoth collapsed to the ground as if all its life force had been drained, turning into a dried-up corpse covered in vines.

Hirosue Eri landed on the ground, slowly got up, and swung her golden twin tails.

Before them surged even more mutated creatures, and behind them, giant plants relentlessly burst from the earth. "Sigh."

She preferred to confront demons rather than execute these creatures.

A fleeting feeling of pity crossed his mind, and the lines on his arm glowed.

"Stop them."

The command center in Atlanta.

On the giant holographic sand table, the map representing Florida is being gradually eroded.

This place gathers information from satellites, close-up cameras, and communications. When a green dot representing a town turns red, it means that a state of war has begun. If the dot goes out, it means that it is covered by white fog.

"General! The outer defenses of Lake Placid have collapsed. Monsters have entered the city, and the evacuation is stalled. Too many crocodile-men have emerged from the nearby lake!"

"St. Lucy Port has been confirmed to have fallen completely."

"This white fog can spread out to sea; the Florida Keys probably can't stop it. Where else can it go?"

Bad news kept coming in, and the voices of the staff officers and generals were already hoarse, their uniforms soaked with sweat.

Orders were issued incessantly, attempting to deploy every available reserve force, every fighter jet still capable of taking off, and every stockpiled missile to the crumbling defense line.

This is their homeland; who knows how much this white fog can devour?

"Protests have come from Cuba and Mexico, demanding the right to know about the incident."

"Let them go!"

"No, no, let the diplomats handle it, let them take in the refugees."

Letting Cuba and Mexico take in Afghan refugees sounds like a hellish joke.
The president would certainly not agree to such an embarrassing request.

"Air Force, have the remaining bombers avoid the core area! Bomb them at the edge of the dense fog! Saturation bombing! Don't be stingy with ammunition! We need time, even if it's just one more minute!"

In the sky, bomber formations circled high above the fog, dropping tons of bombs and missiles on the edge of the white fog.

The flashes of fire from the explosions formed a shimmering band of light on the map. This intense firepower at least offered a slight psychological comfort to the soldiers fighting valiantly on the front lines; they had not yet been abandoned.

Director Hoover stood in front of the sand table. He could no longer perform any micro-management or command. Everyone present was more professional than him when it came to combat. After all, he was only an intelligence officer, and it was good enough if he could determine the general direction.

He was more concerned about Lake Okechobi than the front lines.

Everyone knows that this is the core of the matter, a matter of life and death.

Time ticked by, each second accompanied by the expansion of the white fog on the map and the loss of thousands of lives.

"Haven't we heard anything back yet?" Hoover turned to his assistant, his voice trembling with anxiety. "Didn't they say the arrangements for the supernatural have already been made? There should at least be some news, right?"

The assistant's lips moved, and he was about to mechanically shake his head and say, "No, Director," just as he had done countless times before.

But then, his gaze habitually swept over the huge real-time satellite monitoring screen next to him.

Suddenly, he froze. His eyes stared wide-eyed at a certain area on the screen.

He wasn't sure, so he pulled up the data to check.

"Chief! Director!" The assistant's voice trembled with elation, even cracking slightly. "Fog! White fog...it's stopped!!"

Inside the command center, centered on the core command area, all the noisy commands, communications, and keyboard clicks seemed to be silenced in that instant.

Everyone turned around abruptly, their eyes focusing on the satellite screen.

"What did you say?!" Hoover rushed to the screen, his voice rising.

"It's stopped! Just a minute ago, the white fog stopped expanding!"

The assistant excitedly pointed to the clear boundary line on the screen, speaking rapidly, "In the past minute, its expansion boundary line has not moved outward by a single meter. The data comparison confirms that it is correct!"

The news was slightly uplifting, but no one cheered, and no one relaxed.

A mere minute's pause is too short; it may just be a brief period of calm, or more likely, a prelude to a more violent outburst.

The staff held their breath, the generals clenched their fists, and Hoover stared intently at the screen.

A few minutes later, new satellite imagery data began to appear on the screen.

"Back off!"

One of the staff officers exclaimed in alarm, "The fog is receding! It's contracting!!"

Satellite images clearly show that the gray-white boundary that originally seemed to devour everything like a greedy maw is now shrinking towards the center of Lake Okechobi, at a speed even faster than when it was expanding.

"A reliable report has come from the front: the white fog is rapidly retreating!"

"Those monsters, they've gone berserk!"

"Repeated: The monster has lost its organization! Its aggression has decreased!"

Confirmation information from forward observation posts and combat units began to flood into the command system.

Without unified command and the driving force of that mad will, the mutated creatures, though still ferocious individually, had degenerated from a disciplined and fearless terrifying legion into a chaotic and disorganized herd of beasts, and the situation was instantly reversed.

Faced with a reorganized human army possessing superior firepower and fortifications, they could no longer pose an overwhelming threat. The defensive lines quickly solidified, and they even began to organize effective counterattacks and mopping-up operations.

The people in the command center stared in disbelief at the satellite image as the thick fog receded rapidly, returning to the Great Lake at an alarming speed. Even more strangely, as the fog dissipated, the area that should have been exposed as the Okechobi Lakebed was now completely devoid of water, as if the lake itself had been sucked away with the fog and vanished without a trace.

Isn't this a good thing?
"You survived!"

Hoover slumped into his chair, his legs weak. The dramatic ups and downs had been too much for him; he had a slight headache.

The people in the command center finally dared to cheer.

Amidst this complex and joyful atmosphere of surviving a catastrophe,

The heavy blast-proof doors of the command center slid open slowly to both sides with a hissing sound as the air pressure was released.

The first to appear was the Grand President.

Someone behind him was holding something that looked like a fill light, which was so bright it hurt people's eyes.

He strode in, surrounded by a group of senior staff and the fully armed Talos squad.

"Gentlemen," the Grand Commander beckoned to them and began, "I will continue to lead you to victory, just as the sun will surely shine on America again!"

A hush fell over them as they stared at each other in bewilderment.

The generals smirked. Damn, the speed at which they were vying for credit was a bit too fast.

Leon suddenly appeared out of nowhere and was the first to clap his hands: "Your Excellency, look! Under your brilliant command, the white fog is beginning to recede!"

These words drew everyone's attention, wondering who was so shameless.

"Even ghosts and monsters fear the sun, and you, President, are the eternal sunshine of America. Under your command, Florida survived this terrible calamity! Everyone will be grateful to you!"

There are experts too!

Upon closer inspection, it was none other than the original commander, Hoover.

This security agency is truly full of talented people; no wonder it's an agency directly under the President.

"Commander-in-Chief, we have received the location signal transmitted by Muramasa Takii," Leon reported.

The president nodded and issued an order: "The resolution of this crisis would not have been possible without Miss Muramasa's help. I order that a helicopter squadron be arranged to bring our heroine back safe and sound."

"And while you're at it, arrange an expedition team to investigate the Great Lake." He emphasized, "Investigate it thoroughly."

(End of this chapter)