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Carl's POV

He put it on the news, and as it happened, it brought about a huge stir. Of course, he did not hesitate to also announce that we were already on the matter and we were going to do something about it very soon. But different people had already started talking and riling up the crowds. Nobody really cared about that part - the part where we were already on it. Instead, everybody seemed to only focus on the bad side, claiming that the long reign of peace had come to an end and that war and civil war were about to start.

It was completely ridiculous, the kind of notion that those media practitioners would promote just to get famous and sell their products. But honestly, it was a little annoying at the same time. As for the minister, he obviously didn't do it on purpose to get everybody to act like that in reaction to the news. It was clear from what he said, and from the channel that he had control over, that he wanted everyone to be calm but still wanted them to know exactly what was happening since it concerned them to a very large extent.

I wasn't offended at him and decided that the people should think whatever the hell they wanted to think. I knew that he would try to calm them down as much as possible and decided to leave it to him. Right now, I was about to go for a meeting, and that was the only thing I really wanted to do at that moment.

I got to the meeting hall and gathered with the rest of ministers, trying to just confer with them about this. Most of them dismissed the matter and claimed that it was a bad idea for us to actually ask the people about something that we weren't sure about yet. But I just told them to be alert and to look out just in case something else happened.

I was still in the meeting with the rest of the elders when suddenly I got a phone call, and at the same time, the minister's phone rang. He looked at me with a frown on his face, and I realized that he was the one who sent me the message.

"Could anything be the matter? Why would you be using such an electronic device in a meeting with all of us?" Elder Zhang asked, looking a little offended.

"Another attack has been confirmed," he said, his voice a little croaky and his face white. I looked at the message on my phone, hardly believing my eyes, but there it was.

"Is it accurate?" I asked Robert, wanting to know whether he had any way to brush this off like the elders wanted to. Honestly, I wasn't really supportive of brushing off something that could actually mean something, but naturally, I wanted to dismiss it and do everything to keep the peace. It was just a kind of natural instinct of mine, but it seems that I couldn't be any more wrong, and if I kept on denying the fact, it would be disastrous and too late for me to curb it when the time came.

"Yes," he said, "it's not wrong, it's completely real. Another attack has been confirmed in another one of our allied parks." He looked at me straight in the eyes. "Someone's doing this, and that person is doing it targeted. There's something wrong. It's time to break up our forces and bring disunity among all the parks. That's why he's attacking from the weakest ones up."

There was a dead silence after he said that as everybody started to think about it. Clearly, they wanted a solution for it, but it couldn't be that easy to think up something when the danger only seemed to be multiplying every time we thought about it.

"That person is moving so fast," an Elder said. Finally, "it must be a group of people."

Elder Yang continued for him, "A large group that is trying to orchestrate something. We should do our best to find that group and their hideout. The moment we have that information, we can simply send a troop over to wipe them out, and that would be the end of this little rebellion."

I looked at them, nodding in response to their fired-up responses. That made a lot of sense, and it sounded easy when they said it, but in reality, it was much more difficult than that, and I was pretty sure that they knew it themselves, yet they were still speaking in such a manner.

"All right then," I said, "how do we find their hideout? We don't even know the name of the group that is doing this or what they are seeking because if we know the motive, then we can be able to predict a couple more things about them."

"Well, their motive is obviously to break the unity of the spark," Yang said in response, shrugging as he looked at me. "What else could they want to do right now?"

"Well, it makes sense that they would want to destroy the unity of this very strong and peaceful single unified pack, but what could be the reason for that?" I asked, looking at him in challenge. He was trying to simplify this, but the point was that it couldn't be simplified. It couldn't be ever simple because it was already complicated from the start, and he needed to handle the situation the way it was instead of trying to run away from the fact.

He was silent now. So, I looked at them all and continued, "I'd say that we instead try our best to predict their next point of attack. If we can find out what they are going to go for and where they would be striking next, then it would be very easy for us to intercept them and then ask a couple of important people some questions. Then maybe they can lead us to the base of everything, and then we can end it once and for all."

A couple of them looked impressed at my reasoning, but a couple of them did not. I couldn't be really bothered about it because I knew that it was the most solid plan we could ever come up with. So I looked at my Minister of Defence and told him to draw a map of how things were going.

He was still on it, standing up to do his analysis, when the Minister of Information, Robert, stood up and said, "There's a pattern for this thing, and I can already see that it's going to be the Crestwood niche next that they would attack. If, of course, the patterns go right - there are only three instances right now so we can't really predict much from them. We need a couple more touches on the trend line in order to make sure that it's really solid."

"It's more than enough," I said, looking at everything he did on the map and seeing that it made a lot of sense. This man was a bit too proactive. It made me wonder a little about how he was so good. His speed in doing all this made me nod in appreciation. He was about the most diligent one of us right here.

"So you think they are going to attack the Crestwood niche next?" I asked him before turning to look at the Minister of Defence, knowing that the answer was correct. "I'll suggest you position some soldiers there in anticipation for when they come there, and then we can take them out immediately."

"Yes sir," he responded, and then I stood looking at them all with a smile on my face.

"Okay, dismissed," I said, and everybody started filing away. I was about to go back to my room from the conference hall when I stopped, seeing the Minister of Defence typing a couple of messages on his phone. I came up to him wanting to have a conversation, and he stopped just short of pushing the send button.

"Wait," I told him, and he looked at me and bowed.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" he asked me.

"Yes, please, one thing," I said, not knowing whether this was a good idea but wanting to try it anyway. I looked at him as I spoke, trying to maintain eye contact with him throughout. "I want you to send my son on the mission in charge of your men there," I said.

He widened his eyes in surprise at that, but I kept on looking at him without flinching. "He's a young lad, and he needs to get experience. He knows a lot of things, and he's very good at fighting. Let him head a division, the one you sent there, and then handle this mission by himself. I think it's high time I start giving him some responsibility." I finished saying my piece and looked at him not knowing what he was thinking right now.

He looked at me, still looking a little shocked. I waited for him to give me a response.