One of these days, someone was going to ask Maria Thoma for parenting tips … or accuse her of horrific abuse, because no normal set of kids turned out the way hers had.

  She actually had written a book, but it was more about what not to do, how not to spoil kids, because easy solutions to resolving tantrums would almost inevitably lead to further issues down the road, and equally, giving gifts in excess to feel like your kid’s hero would eventually lead them to feel that that kind of excess was normal.

  Jens Weingand, German Ambassador to the UN, leaned backwards in his office chair and sighed.

  Technically, the term “ambassador” was outdated, as was “United Nations,” considering that this body he was a part of was actually the government of the entire globe, but changing either had been … difficult. Also, terms like “World Government” had nasty connotations, and the proposed “United States of Earth” had been shot down not only because it sounded to much like the United States of America, but apparently, there’d once been a proposal to rename the USA into that, on grounds that “the other nations of the Earth will inevitably join eventually anyway.”

  Of course, the proposal in question was over two centuries old, and had been widely ridiculed even in its time, but if there’d ever been any chance of the renaming going through, that bit of trivia would have killed it.

  Then again, keeping the name “United Nations” was hardly the dumbest or longest-lasting bit of weirdness that had resulted from tradition.

  After all, in Jerusalem, in the church of holy sepulrche, there was a ladder that had been left there just before a treaty had come into force that required any changes to the church to be signed off by six major denominations of Christianity, and because getting them all to agree on anything was functionally impossible, the ladder had been standing there for at least four centuries, most likely longer, depending on how long it had been there before first being reported.

  Yeah …

  But the general weirdness of humanity was beside the point.

  There wasn’t much reason for anyone to get bad at the announcement that had been made, but seeing as he’d been the one who’d arranged for Dr. Thoma to speak, so he’d likely catch some of the flak from that.

  Granted, the declaration of “hey, there’s trouble out there, you might want to go find it before it finds you” wasn’t the least bit problematic, but someone would no doubt figure out a way to get upset about it nevertheless.

  Though Weingand had to admit one thing: even without being told what the speech was about, he’d fully expected it to be something explosive.

  After all, the first time Dr. Isaac Thoma had addressed the UN, just after the Leviathan had been summoned and was presently only being temporarily held back by summoning blockers, he’d basically gone “I’m not asking for world peace here, but if you can’t suck it for two weeks, we’re all dead.”

  And it had worked, for the most part, as evidenced by the fact that the Earth hadn’t been flooded and drowned all humans who weren’t on ships at the time, though there’d still been a few people who’d tried to enrich themselves during the crisis … only to promptly regret it as it became clear that one of the world’s more mysterious powerhouses had decided their [Skill]set was more suited to guarding the backs of those doing the fighting, than directly attacking the World Boss.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  The Ghost.

  It had started with dead rats nailed to walls, buckets of blood/red paint thrown over warlords, and other warnings of that type, though as work mounted and resources grew scarce, things had, supposedly, rapidly deteriorated into more juvenile warnings like stink bombs, and according to one particular version of the story, skunks kidnapped from the local zoo and let loose in military command centers.

  Granted, that particular situation was unlikely to repeat itself, but even so, a warning of threats lurking out there in the dark, and the subsequent mad scramble to locate said threats and/or fortify in case the threats came to them, would cause quite a bit of chaos.

  And chaos tended to beget meddling S-Rankers who felt, rightly or wrongly, that there was a situation in need of fixing that they could, in fact, fix.

  Cue clusterfuck.

  Not to mention that, between the oldest of the Thoma siblings speaking in front of the United Nations, and the youngest setting his own record with a legendary starter [Class].

  The only reason that young man hadn’t been mobbed was that, for one, he’d actually shared all the information that could reasonably be expected to share … and the media had long since learned what came from unnecessarily bothering the Thoma family.

  Oh, news stories about them were fine, and no one was going to get upset about being asked for quotes, but when it came to the more harassment-like behavior, especially from gossip rags, there was a hard and unyielding policy of tit for tat retaliation.

  Not illegal, not amoral, not even overly extreme.

  Simply put, anyone who decided to pointlessly intrude into their private lives would have their own private business exposed in turn … except it would only be what could be obtained without crossing any legal lines. Then, that information would be followed, still only within legal territory. And finally, all that would be released, twenty-four hours, to the millisecond, after the thing that had caused the whole mess had first hit the net.

  The policy had started when a gossip rag had tried to make a huge scandal out of a single picture, taken by a paparazzo, of then seventeen-year-old Viktoria Thoma and her first girlfriend.

  One day later, every scrap of dirty laundry of not just the reporter, but also the photographer and even the owner of the magazine had wound up strewn across the web.

  When asked about it, the explanation was blunt and to the point.

  “People who make a living invading others’ privacy have no right to demand their own to be protected, especially when they’re hiding the kinds of skeletons those guys were. I let the other guy pick the level of exposure; I just make sure things are equal.”

  Of course, there’d been pushback, that had been completely and utterly inevitable, but eventually, the gossip rags had learned where the line was, and the reputable reporters had been sufficiently reassured that they weren’t in the line of fire, no matter what they did.

  Unless what they were into was libellous, but that was a whole other kettle of fish.

  The point was, even without Isaac Thoma’s return being confirmed, no one would have dared harass his younger brother.

  Now that he was here, however?

  Well, he’d proven pretty definitively last time that secrets only existed in his vicinity because he wasn’t bothering to uncover them.

  And finally, there was the revelation that that [Skill] was reusable …

  Of course, Isaac Thoma had simultaneously confirmed that A, it had one hell of a cooldown, B, one of his two 5th Evolution [Classes] was fundamentally about fighting World Bosses, and C, strongly implied that the [Skill] was a part of that [Class], though much stronger proof both existed and was publicly known, with the context of the first two points.

  So many people had let out a sigh of relief, realizing that, unless they fucked up during a World Boss battle, and to a degree to which it would draw his ire from the rampaging calamity, they wouldn’t be on the receiving end of this [Skill].

  Though that required someone to have put two and two together, and all due respect to his colleagues … charisma was much more important in politics than brains.

  All told, right now, the situation gave the appearance of “crisis averted.”

  Appearance.

  Though Jens Weingand had a bad feeling that the times he found himself living within would be considered to be the prelude to utter chaos in the history books.