Chapter 7: Scouting Threats
High above the cradle of civilization, where the curvature of the Earth was a gentle, breathtaking arc against the black void of space, the air was thin, cold, and utterly silent.
The MC hovered motionless at fifty thousand feet. He required no oxygen, nor did the freezing temperatures of the stratosphere affect his localized, impossibly dense physical form. He was a stark, pale silhouette against the blinding brilliance of the sun, entirely undetectable to the world below.
His recent integration of pure cosmic energy had fundamentally altered his relationship with the Marvel Universe. Before, he was a jagged, foreign puzzle piece forced into the board, his sheer presence threatening to crack the table. Now, the golden-flecked black tattoos of the Absolute Seal regulated his output to match the universal background radiation flawlessly.
To the dormant Celestials, to the cosmos at large, he was invisible. He was nothing more than an empty pocket of space.
He closed his eyes, relying entirely on the sensory network he was actively building.
Kagura Shingan. (Mind's Eye of the Kagura).
Combined with the absolute visual processing power of the Rinnegan, his sensory perception did not merely expand; it exploded outward like a conceptual shockwave. He cast his awareness across the Mesopotamian basin, sweeping over the sprawling plains, the winding Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and the jagged mountain ranges to the north and east.
He was not looking at the physical terrain. He was reading the energetic telemetry of the planet.
He saw the golden, slumbering, incomprehensible mass of Tiamut resting deep within the Earth's mantle—a localized sun of pure Celestial energy waiting to hatch. He carefully skirted his awareness around the core, avoiding any direct contact that might rouse the sleeping god.
Instead, he focused on the surface. He focused on the noise.
Humanity was a fascinating species. Even now, in 5010 BC, gathered in mud-brick proto-cities and scattered nomadic tribes, they generated a collective psychic resonance. It was weak, chaotic, and driven entirely by primal emotions—fear of the dark, hunger, the desperate drive to procreate. To the MC, the human settlements appeared as clusters of flickering, fragile candlelight in the spiritual dark.
He zeroed his focus on the largest cluster of candlelight.
It was a sprawling settlement situated between the two great rivers, a place that would, in millennia to come, evolve into the first great empires of Sumer and Babylon. Currently, it was a chaotic sprawl of thousands of humans. They had erected crude defensive palisades from baked mud and timber. They had organized into specialized labor castes: hunters, gatherers, toolmakers, and shamans.
And, moving seamlessly through the shadows of this primitive metropolis, was a single, distinct node of cold, controlled Yin chakra.
Tala.
The MC tapped into the Absolute Seal's network, establishing a secure, telepathic uplink with his first Contractor.
Report, the MC's voice echoed within the vast, silent architecture of his own mind, transmitting instantaneously to the young woman miles below.
Down in the bustling, filth-ridden streets of the proto-city, Tala did not flinch. She was currently crouched in the suffocating heat of a communal smokehouse, her physical presence entirely veiled by the localized shadow-manipulation he had granted her. To the human workers curing meat mere feet away from her, she simply did not exist.
Master, Tala's response came back, her mental voice crisp, analytical, and completely devoid of the terror she had possessed before her rebirth. Infiltration of the primary river settlement is absolute. My presence is undetected. I have spent the last cycle monitoring the hunting parties and the tribal elders.
What is the status of the chaotic beasts? the MC inquired, his awareness hovering over the city like a predatory satellite.
Their numbers are increasing exponentially, Tala reported, transmitting a burst of visual data—memories she had stolen by eavesdropping on terrified hunters. The humans call them 'Mahhu,' the mad ones. The hunting parties report that the eastern hunting grounds are entirely lost. Entire herds of aurochs have been slaughtered, not for sustenance, but for sport. The beasts do not eat the meat; they merely leave the carcasses to rot.
The MC analyzed the data. Standard Deviant behavior. Their corrupted genetic programming commands them to dominate and cull, but lacks the ecological restraint of natural predators. They are a weapon of mass extinction firing blindly.
There is a pattern, Master, Tala continued, her intellect shining through the telepathic link. The attacks are not random. I have mapped the coordinates of the lost hunting parties and the destroyed outlier villages based on the survivors' tales. The Mahhu are moving in a synchronized front. They are pushing out from the northern and eastern mountain ranges, converging on the river basin. They are drawn to the density of the human population.
They are drawn to the psychic noise, the MC corrected internally. And perhaps, subconsciously, to the ambient cosmic radiation leaking from the Celestial seed at the core. The humans have built their cradle directly on top of the most energetically active zone on the planet.
They will besiege this settlement within the turn of the moon, Tala concluded. The mud walls will not hold them. The humans possess only flint and fire. It will be a slaughter.
A slaughter is inefficient, the MC replied coldly. Humanity is the camouflage that masks my macro-movements. They are the future labor force required to unearth the artifacts of this world. Their extinction is unacceptable. You have done well, Tala. Maintain your position. Gather information on the human leadership. Identify those who possess tactical value. The beasts will be managed.
Understood, Master. I return to the shadows.
The connection severed, leaving the MC alone with the cosmic silence once more.
Tala's intelligence had confirmed his hypothesis. The Deviants were not solitary wanderers; they possessed a rudimentary, hive-mind-like tactical instinct. They were organizing.
The MC opened his pale lavender eyes. The intricate tomoe within his Rinne-Sharingan spun, layering a conceptual holographic map over his physical vision of the Earth below.
He began to systematically scan the northern and eastern mountain ranges, actively searching for the corrupted, sickly gold-and-black energy signatures of the Deviants.
There, he noted, a pinpoint of red light appearing on his mental map. A small pack. Four baseline units. Moving through a valley.
He scanned further east. Another cluster. Twelve units. One possessing a heightened bio-electric signature. An Alpha.
He spent the next hour acting as an orbital cartographer of death. Every time his sweeping Kagura Shingan brushed against the repulsive, cancerous frequency of a Deviant, he logged its coordinates, its estimated mass, and its trajectory.
Slowly, a terrifying picture emerged.
The mountains were crawling with them. There were hundreds of Deviant signatures, ranging from small, hyper-lethal scouts to massive, lumbering siege-beasts. Tala was correct; they were slowly being funnelled down through the canyons and passes, moving inevitably toward the densely populated river basin.
But what caught the MC's attention was not the scattered packs. It was the source.
Deep within the Zagros Mountains, nestled in a massive, subterranean cavern system that had been violently hollowed out by acidic secretions, was a blindingly loud concentration of corrupted cosmic energy.
It was a Deviant Hive.
The MC shifted his position in the stratosphere, gliding effortlessly toward the coordinates of the mountain range. He dropped altitude, descending from fifty thousand feet to a mere five thousand, hovering directly above the jagged peaks of the Zagros.
He focused his ocular prowess, peering straight through miles of solid rock and earth.
The sight within the subterranean cavern was a masterpiece of biological horror. It was a sprawling, organic metropolis built from calcified bone, hardened resin, and rotting biomass. Thousands of Deviants swarmed through the tunnels.
Unlike the scattered hunters he had encountered before, this was a fully functioning ecosystem of monsters. He saw bloated, immobile Deviants acting as living incubators, violently birthing new, mutated horrors into the dark. He saw worker variants regurgitating bio-matter to feed the young.
And in the center of the cavern, resting upon a throne of fused limestone and bone, was a creature that defied reason.
It was a Warlord variant. It was bipedal, standing easily thirty feet tall, clad in an exoskeleton of shifting, iridescent dark metal that was not forged, but grown. It possessed no face, only a massive, vertical maw lined with concentric rings of crystalline teeth, and a crown of glowing, golden sensory horns that pulsed with raw, unrefined cosmic power.
The Warlord was not just a beast; it was a node. The MC could see the faint, corrupted energetic tethers connecting the Warlord to the minds of the thousands of lesser Deviants in the cavern. It was commanding them. It was the general orchestrating the slow, inevitable siege on humanity.
Fascinating, the MC thought, his expression remaining an impassive mask of cold marble. The Celestials designed them to be adaptable. In the absence of an apex predator to cull them, they have evolved a militaristic hierarchy to maximize their destructive efficiency.
If the MC did nothing, this Hive would unleash a tide of biological annihilation that would wipe the Mesopotamian basin clean of human life. The timeline would be irreparably altered. The Eternals, arriving in ten years, would find a barren wasteland ruled by monsters.
He could, of course, destroy the Hive instantly. He could drop a Tengai Shinsei (Shattered Heaven)—pulling a meteor from the upper atmosphere and flattening the entire mountain range. He had the chakra capacity to do it without breaking a sweat.
But that would be a profound waste of resources.
A meteor would obliterate the Deviants, vaporizing their precious cosmic energy before he could harvest it. Furthermore, a localized extinction-level event would undoubtedly spike his energy signature, potentially alerting Arishem or other cosmic observers to his presence, ruining his carefully crafted camouflage.
No, a god did not use a hammer when a scalpel was required.
This Hive was not a threat to him. It was a farm.
The MC raised his right hand, looking down at the golden-flecked black tattoos that spiraled up his forearm. His Conceptual Refinery Matrix was hungry. He had increased his capacity by four hundred percent, and he needed raw, cosmic material to fill that void.
He began to calculate the logistics of the harvest.
"System query," the MC commanded internally. "Assess the total localized cosmic energy volume of the subterranean Hive."
[Analyzing... Total Corrupted Cosmic Energy Volume: Class-7 Biological Hazard. Equivalent to a minor planetary extinction event if unchecked.]
"Calculate the optimal harvesting rate to prevent ambient energy spikes."
[To maintain perfect passive camouflage, the host must not extract more than 5% of the Hive's total volume per solar cycle. Sudden, massive energy vacuums will register on universal monitoring networks.]
Five percent a day, the MC mused. A slow, methodical culling. A war of attrition that they cannot comprehend, let alone win.
He established a new telepathic uplink, routing the connection through the Thrall Contracts bound to his Acolytes.
Ur.
Miles away, resting at the perimeter of the glowing violet forest of the Forbidden Zone, the enhanced human leader snapped to attention, dropping to his knees, his obsidian spear clutched to his chest.
Master, we hear and obey.
The time for random hunting is over, the MC declared, projecting his newly formed mental map directly into Ur's primitive, but rapidly evolving, tactical mind. I am downloading the coordinates of forty-two localized clusters of the chaotic beasts. They are scattered across the northern foothills.
Ur gasped as the spatial data flooded his brain, his single-tomoe eyes—a minor mutation granted by his extended exposure to the MC's chakra—spinning as he processed the information.
You and the Acolytes will form hunting squads, the MC instructed. You will not engage the massive swarms. You will operate on the fringes. You will hunt the isolated packs, the scouts, and the stragglers. You will utilize guerrilla tactics. Strike hard, sever their heads, and drag their corpses back to the valley. The Refinery must be fed daily.
We shall become the shadow that hunts the monsters, Master, Ur vowed, his bloodlust utterly subservient to his god's cold logic. We will not fail.
See that you do not. The MC severed the connection to Ur. His human fangs would handle the borders, ensuring the Deviant numbers were constantly trimmed and providing a steady trickle of fuel for the Absolute Seal.
But the Hive itself—and the towering Warlord variant commanding it—required a personal touch.
The MC did not descend into the mountain. He did not engage. He was a creature of absolute patience. He had mapped the board. He knew the positions of the enemy pieces.
He raised his hand, forming a single, complex hand seal.
Hiraishin no Jutsu. (Flying Thunder God Technique).
He didn't use a physical kunai. He didn't need to. He focused his Yin Release, molding a microscopic, conceptual anchor of his own chakra, completely masked by his cosmic camouflage. With a flick of his wrist, he shot this invisible anchor down into the mountain, burying it deep within the limestone ceiling directly above the Deviant Warlord's throne room.
The anchor locked into place. It was a permanent, undetectable beacon.
I will return for you, the MC thought, looking down at the mountain one last time. When my capacity requires expansion, I will harvest you piece by piece.
The scouting mission was a complete success. He had identified the primary threat to his future labor force, mapped the enemy's infrastructure, and established a sustainable, long-term farming operation that would exponentially increase his cosmic fluency over the next decade.
The prehistoric world was terrifying to the humans who lived in it. To the Deviants, it was a chaotic playground.
But to the Ten-Tails, hovering silently in the stratosphere, the world was merely a laboratory. And the experiment was proceeding flawlessly.
With a slight shift in gravity, the MC turned away from the Zagros Mountains, accelerating back toward the Forbidden Zone to prepare the Conceptual Refinery Matrix for the coming influx of corpses. The real work was about to begin.