Back at the temporary military headquarters, Ray looked around the room he had been lead into, noting a number of people who looked liked military analysts of some kind, each of whom were watching Ray's recording on a central screen with certain interest.

The fight was being replayed again for the gathered audience, but Ray's thoughts were still somewhat clouded by thoughts of the earlier battle. Even if it wasn't his fault, Matias' injury was something he felt bad about; the two of them being rather close in age, it almost felt like watching a friend get hurt. Not to mention to policeman the day before. That was the first time he had ever seen a dead body up close. Now he had seen several.

"Well, this is pretty good." The bald commander commented, barely taking his eyes off the screen. "Say, how do you feel about giving Washington a visit? The boys at the pentagon want to see you. Good career starter for a man your age."

To be honest, that was not what Ray had hoped for. This was a competition, and even if he somehow could manage to remain in first place, the rewards were supposed to be related to the number of kills. Theoretically this could be extended without limit, measured only by his own limitations and the capabilities of his summons. His lip curling in the slightest frown as he tried to remember the commander's name, certainly James had mentioned something about it earlier... Morgan was it?

"Mr. Morgan, sir. I hope you understand where I'm coming from, at least until this event concludes I was hoping to spend that time more productively. If you had things like today, clearing out goblins or similar that is, I would appreciate it if I could count on your support in that regard."

"Competition... can't there's not a general curiosity what these so called rewards might be, but to be honest its a complete unknown. Most importantly, Pentagon's caught a definite liking to you. They're already getting antsy about putting a potential national asset like you in harms way, leaving you out here in an unsecured location like this. I can only imagine what they'll be like after they see this tape."

To be honest, Ray didn't like being in harms way either, but he still wanted the rewards.

"If I may. Would it be acceptable for my summons to operate independently?"

"I'm not sure I follow what you mean."

"My familiars don't require any commands to operate. They're intelligent, capable both of following directions as well as reasoning on their own. I hadn't realized that until recently, but my spider familiar in particular seems to be more capable without me involved. As you've witnessed, it's a top-class fighter, capable of dispatching even abnormal monsters, while I have no such gifts. The best case scenario would be if we could send it into an area with a high density of monsters, where it could hunt on its own."

The man considered Ray's proposition, mulling it over like he would a meal. Digesting the implications.

"So you head up to Washington, and we ship your spider to some monster infested shithole to have the time of its life?"

"Yes, that's pretty much what I was going for."

The commander nodded his head, finally looking like he was interested in pursuing Ray's suggestion.

"That sounds like as decent a proposal as any I've heard. We've got some real problem areas starting to pop up." Turning his attention for this first time in a while to the room of analysts.

"His clearance come through yet?"

"Thirty minutes ago sir, it's in those documents I handed you earlier."

"Good." Morgan turned to Ray with a grin, "normally it doesn't come through this quickly. We had to get you quite the exception." Pausing for a second. "From the top." He said while gesturing in a upward pointing motion with his index finger. "DoD head himself had to sign you those papers."

Ray's eyes lit up a little with surprise. He was drawing that much attention.

"Give him the situation report, the monster map one, we need him in the loop for this."

One of the analysts followed Commander Morgan's orders, running off into another room before hurrying back with something that looked like a tourist roadmap of the US, with red and black marker marked all over it. Laying the set of maps out over the table while smoothing out any creases.

"Your going to want to take a look at this." The middle-aged analyst said with a hint of excitement in his voice.

"What am I supposed to be looking at here?" Ray asked questioningly.

"Ray is it? Excuse the somewhat antiquated technology here, but the situation is developing too fast to prepare a normal presentation. Most of the mapping software we use for situation planning makes certain assumptions about the geography that over the last 24 hours have made it obsolete."

"Uh, hold on a second, what do you mean by assumptions about the geography?"

"That's what I'm getting to. It's really hard to believe this but we have reason to think the US may not look like it used to, both shape and size wise it's been altered significantly. Cities that used to be within eyeshot are now sometimes hundreds of miles away. Land has been added between spaces that previously did not exist. This is the Pentagon's conclusion after looking at the evidence, but verifying things in such an uncertain situation has become more challenging than you would think."

"Hard to verify? What about our satellites, if there's new land, can't we just use those to take a look?"

"There are no satellites." Morgan chimed in.

"?"

"That's correct, we've been able to confirm the destruction of all US satellites. Data transmitted by our satellites before crashing indicate that they re-entered Earth's atmosphere unexpectedly before burning up. The working explanation is 'loss of orbit' due to unexplainable fluctuations to Earth's gravitational pull."

"Say it in plain English for him," Morgan added. Wearing an expression like he had a secret that he was just dying to tell someone.

"The Earth got bigger."

Ray raised an eyebrow again.

"Take a look at the map here, we've drawn in red marker the places where the distance is reported to be different from before. Cities and population dense areas were left pretty much intact, but practically everything around them has been stretched to accommodate new areas. We don't understand yet how this is possible."

"What are the black markers supposed to be then?" Ray noted a number of digits on the map that looked like they were being used as symbols.

"Monster zones. Take these." The man took a stack of papers, still warm from being run through the photo-copier machine. On the face each page there was a five digit number-letter combination in bolded font at the top, the remainder of the page was full of pictures of monsters and the descriptions of the monster.

Finding his current location on the map, he shuffled through the papers to the corresponding index.

A17BO:

Goblin zone

...

"Not entirely accurate yet, but we thought it best that we give you this information to you as soon as possible."

Giving a polite smile, Ray nodded appreciatively before Morgan cleared his throat loudly, getting both of their attentions in the process. 

"I'd hate to interrupt you two, but if you want to lend us out your spider, we've got more than a few places that could use the help. Pentagon wants you in DC by tonight at the latest, if you want to do this then we're going to need to get a move on."

"Where to?" Ray said, smiling a whole lot brighter now.