His interest in the secret war grew the more the thought about it. The secret war also made him curious about the history of war between supers.
He thought to ask Wrath for information about wars that she has witnessed on earth since the advent of the tower of destiny. But then he remembered that they were not on speaking terms, so he decided to go online for the information.
He didn't let her frozen state bother him as he did it. It is something she has been doing recently. She would freeze and not move for days. Her arms wouldn't move at all, and her smokey form would remain static as if she were a statue, not a shadow.
The only thing that changes about her is her position. But that's because she is attached to him and he is always moving. So he drags her along wherever he goes. It truly shows him how much of an unwilling passenger she is.
But he didn't acknowledge that fact, and he won't let her make him feel guilty about it. He would like to tell her to blame Icon, but he is not on speaking terms with her. So he kept his wisdom to himself and read through the development of wars since the arrival of the tower of destiny.
What he read made him realize that war is a constant of human nature. In the past, men fought for safety, wealth, land, resources, and slaves.
Sometimes they fought for stupid reasons like love, hate, insults, and religion. He only considers these reasons stupid because they fought for intangible reasons that bring no real benefits. But that is his opinion.
Either way, when the tower of destiny came, society as a whole changed, including the motives and process of war. For one, governments and the demarcations between nations fell or became irrelevant.
Secondly, land had became abundant after so many people died and many cities fell. So there was no need to fight for land. No one, no matter how stupid they were, was fighting for land. But that didn't stop war. It just changed why war was fought.
At first, war was between war bands fighting for food and control of clean water sources. But that rarely ended well because incursion zombies would interfere. Incursion zombies were stronger than both sides and would attack both sides at the first opportunity.
Whoever won at the end of the day might become too weak to defend their outposts, which allowed incursion zombies to overrun it. Between the incursion and the incursion zombies, humanity had a lot more to worry about than luxury items like clean drinking water and canned beans.
So these kinds of war were phased out in favor of smaller conflicts between individuals and small groups. But then a big war usually breaks out when someone manages to build a large city that isn't affected by incursion. Someone or a group of people will think they have a right to this city.
Most iconic of all was the war between the US army and the Unity Corporation. It was a war that took place just 45 years ago. Unity Corporation built a large city free from the effect of the incursion. The remnant of the US government wanted it. So they fought to the death.
A lot of people thought the US government would win because they were one of the few still in possession of functional nukes. Not that it was a good idea to use nukes in a fight for a city. Fortunately, it never came to that, as the war ended in less than a week.
The war is iconic because the US government actually fielded a whole army to forcefully take over the city. It was the largest army in the world back then.
They had about 20,000 soldiers, some hundreds of tanks, and many supers with them. And yet they lost in a single night with no survivor among the 20,000.
Most of the week that the war lasted for was just the time it took them to announce the war and move into the vicinity of the city with their army. But unlike all the noise they made when they were setting themselves up for war, there was no noise or fanfare when they lost. Their defeat was silent and chilling.
It was the first real fight between the old world power known as the government and the new world power known as the corpos. The defeat of the US army marked the official downfall of the old power.
Till today, the public still doesn't know how they lost. But he has some ideas as to how that defeat happened. The fact that no one has ever managed to wrestle the control of a city immune to incursion away from the people that built the city is giving him confidence in his guess.
In his mind, he can picture entities that can't be recorded who are capable of splitting mountains and causing earthquakes. If one of them is responsible for building a city, then no one should be able to wrestle it from them.
The more he read, the more he shook his head in wonder. He sniggered and said, "You don't have the technology or power to build your own city, but you dare to attack those who have the technology and power to build their own cities. You must be truly confident in yourself. Or in this case, overconfident."
New London also faced a group of people who wanted to take over the city by force. They even tried to nuke the city. But the nuclear missile was derailed by an unseen force, which caused it to miss its target and hit the ground far away from the city. This is what created the radiation zone outside of the city.
With his curiosity satiated, he returned to preparing for his advancement game. Meanwhile, the secret war continued while preparation for the open war was kicked into high gear.