Chapter 199: Signs of Change
High above the Amazon rainforest, a military helicopter flew through the sky, the constant thumping of its rotor blades carrying far enough for the inhabitants below to hear it even from that altitude.
Plenty of eyes turned toward it, some curious, some frightened, others carrying a look of sharp, calculating interest.
Among those many eyes, however, there were a few that would have stood out had anyone been close enough to notice them.
The eyes of intelligent creatures.
They watched the helicopter like predators stalking their prey, waiting patiently for the right moment to make their move.
Inside the helicopter, five people sat in silence, their expressions serious as they mentally prepared themselves for what they were about to do.
They were dressed heavily from head to toe in military gear, modified far beyond the standard issue, sleek and advanced, fitted with an assortment of equipment, small and large, unlike anything conventional.
Among the five, two in particular sat close together, apparently in the middle of some kind of discussion. A man and a woman.
"I really didn’t expect them to throw us straight into a mission like this," Seraphine’s voice rang out, tinged with complaint, as she adjusted one of the gloves fitted to her military suit.
The glove was thin, almost like a second layer of skin fitted over her hand, laced with strange lines running along her fingers that converged into a small circular device set into the back of her palm.
She seemed absorbed in working on the device as she griped to the man seated beside her, none other than Evan.
"Well, all that training over the past few months was leading up to this, wasn’t it? From what I’ve heard, the situation’s been getting worse across the central-south region," Evan said, having long since grown used to the girl’s constant complaints.
He glanced down at his own military suit, nothing especially bulky or flashy about it, though far from ordinary either. Apparently, it had been developed using new mana-based technology, engineered to withstand conditions of every kind, equally effective at absorbing hits and dealing them.
Then his gaze shifted toward Seraphine, and he suddenly found himself unsure where to look.
Her suit fit more snugly, far more than his, tracing every curve of her body perfectly, doing absolutely nothing to hide her figure, if anything, it seemed to accentuate it further.
He’d noticed the same held true for every female suit he’d seen, and it clearly wasn’t a matter of the women themselves; it was the suits.
He couldn’t help but think that whoever had designed them had taken a very particular interest in the process.
Three months ago, the exam had taken place, one that turned out, to his surprise, to be a screening test for detecting traces of mana in a person’s body.
Apparently, the situation with mana had reached a point where a growing number of people had begun developing supernatural abilities, something that had inevitably started causing all sorts of chaos, since it was random and wasn’t limited to humans alone; it affected beasts and plants too.
Because of this, the government had created a new force dedicated specifically to identifying these individuals while also recruiting those who proved useful.
Evan had learned about it through Seraphine, who had told him she was going to enlist.
For some reason, he had decided to do the same.
He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d made that choice, but the reality was that he was here now regardless.
During the exam, ninety percent of the candidates had tested negative, no trace of mana whatsoever, but the remaining ten percent had come back positive, each carrying varying amounts of magical energy in their bodies.
He’d been one of the last to be tested, which gave him time to get a clear sense of how the exam actually worked.
He quickly realized that what felt to him like a barely noticeable trace of mana in his body was apparently, by current standards, well above average. That realization led him to suppress those particles of mana before his own turn came.
Not because he was being excessively cautious, but because, based on the little he knew of how things had eventually fallen apart in his old world before it became a dying husk of a place, he understood that showing everything wasn’t necessarily the wisest choice, not when he wasn’t yet strong enough to protect himself.
If there was one thing he’d come to understand clearly, it was that no matter the circumstances, being too exposed without the strength to back it up meant ending up in someone else’s hands, people who wouldn’t hesitate to use you for their own purposes.
Judging by today’s mission, this was clearly another one of those cases.
An unusually high concentration of mana had been detected in this area, which had led to the discovery that several magical creatures had taken root there.
It hadn’t taken more than a day for the higher-ups to give the order to send a team out to sweep the location and assess the situation, not because they cared about determining whether it posed a threat, but because, depending on what they found, they could decide whether it was worth the effort to eliminate it or simply exploit it for their own gain.
It had happened plenty of times over the recent period. Squads that had already been active before he joined had made trips to all sorts of locations, chasing resources that did nothing to benefit anyone at large, only a select handful of individuals, the ones sitting comfortably behind desks, issuing the orders.
Today was shaping up to be one of those occasions, and Evan understood that these people weren’t looking for a way to minimize the damage. They were only interested in finding a way to profit from it.
It was one of the reasons the situation had spiraled the way it had, back in the past, and Seraphine had been more than clear on that particular point.
’According to what Seraphine told me, we should still be in the early stages.’
Evan remembered everything she had told him back in that dimension.
His gaze remained fixed on empty space for a moment before eventually shifting downward, toward the floor of the helicopter.
But although it appeared as though he was simply looking down, he was actually looking far beyond it.
His spiritual perception extended well beneath them, sweeping across the rainforest below and examining a vast area in an instant.
A faint greenish glow mixed with subtle shades of blue flickered briefly in his eyes before disappearing.
"Seems like there are already quite a few E-Rank beasts." he murmured to himself, already able to sense several powerful presences among the various signals he picked up from the area below.