Chapter 145: World Wars

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The first Great War arrived and battlefields popped everywhere. As planned, Erik's business, the Ravens' Mercantile Group used its influence over the countries to relocate as many civilians as they could. Of course, they were not forcing people from their homes. They only moved those that wanted to be moved, which was the case for most of them. While on the normal human's side of the war this was happening, on the supernatural side, at the moment, there was only one faction that was profiting massively with it. Vampires. The bloodsuckers were taking advantage of the chaos in the battlefields and in the cities nearby them to renew their 'cattle stock'. More than once they had tried to attack convoys of refugees for some 'easy goodies'. For their rotten luck, some of these convoys were from the people of Erik's business and as soon as they approached it, an alarm was sent to the Security Division of the Ravens' Mercantile Group, and a squad of people trained to fight the supernatural was dispatched. The battles were very anti-climatic. That was because most of the attackers were too cocky about their superiority and ended up being dispatched during the first trade of blows. The ones who managed to resist it were soon dispatched by the combined effort of the team. Some of their 'victims' called them cowards for not battling them one-on-one. Mostly just laughed at that and mocked them by asking if they were some kind of encrusted knights.

"This is a battlefield. If you want a one-on-one battle, you should have looked for someone to play chess with."

This was just one of the various answers that they received before quickly being gotten rid of. Needless to say that no survivors were left behind. The Group was composed of various people from all over the supernatural world that were at some point 'lost' or victims that were helped by Erik or one of his wives. Wizards, witches, mages, priests, exorcists, devils, half-devils, youkai, werewolves. The division had a lot of experienced people that were eager to fight and help others just like they were helped to. They even had two Cerberus and two Grims as their canine unit. Both had been rescued by Calypso from an illegal breeding facility that was near a place where she was delivering a special batch of ingredients. At the head of this division was Joan together with Musashi as her second in command when the Knight-Samurai was not doing anything for her King.

To facilitate their Work, Erik decided to 'open' The Nexus for some select employees and their families while opening a training facility for them. Quick enough, a small village started to form inside the exclusive dimension and with the addition of new people, said village soon evolved to the size of a small town that offered education and medics for the townsfolk. When Erik took the dimension for himself, he was not expecting this to happen, but it was a welcome happening. The extra people in the huge place gave it more life. Of course that every new resident, together with their families was submitted to a thorough screening. This process was to assure that only trustful people would enter the place.

The first World War was soon over, leaving behind scars all over the places that had been a battlefield for it. While things calmed down on Europe and countries started to recover, the United States of America went through an economic boom while selling industrialized products to Europe. But that didn't last much. Soon enough, the countries affected by the war started to restart their own industries, making the need for products coming from the United States of America redundant. The sudden overstock of goods with no one to buy them made the country enter into a financial crisis that was aggravated by the crash of New York's Financial Market in nineteen twenty-nine. Ravens' Mercantile Group was not affected by it in the slightest since their roots were too deep to be shaken with just that. It helped too that the group didn't have shares available on the market since the Ravenclaw family owned the whole lot of it. Erik took advantage of this sudden crash in the prices and started to buy some businesses that were close to being bankrupt and expand the Group's business. Soon enough, Ravens' group had quadrupled their size, which demanded Erik's attention to restructuring everything.

Easy enough, Erik quickly restructured the business, which was now named Ravens' Group. To solve the problem of who to sell while the country still recovered from the financial crisis, Erik decided to turn the new industries production to feed the Group. Since they needed to renew the ship fleet until the market recovered they would be feeding themselves. The Ravens' Group pockets, meaning Erik's pockets, were just that deep.

And just as the market in the United States of America was starting to recover, almost a decade after the crash, news arrived that the Germans started a heavy expansion paired with the persecution of some minority groups. It was the start of the Second World War. Ravens' Group's job at reallocation started anew with it soon after declaring the end of their neutrality for the first time since its creation, five hundred years ago. Their focus now was on helping the persecuted groups aside from the people near battlefields too. The German High-Command didn't like even a little that the giant Ravens' Group was had broken their neutrality to go against them and ordered the immediate seizing of the Group's properties. Unfortunately for them, Erik had already predicted that move and ordered the moving of all visible assets outside of German territory, leaving behind only empty husks for the horror of the people that had to give the news back to the High-Command.

Raids to the concentration camps were frequent too together with the use of mind-altering spells. On German papers, the prisoners have all been executed when in truth the great majority of them had been reallocated to 'greener pastures'. Unfortunately, Ravens' Group's efforts could not save every single person since they could not be everywhere at any given time.

As the war developed together with the battles becoming more bloody, Erik discovered some alarming news from his 'spies' inside the German High-Command. Apparently, someone was pulling the strings behind their backs. And this someone was from the supernatural world. Kokabiel, the maniac warmonger Fallen-Angel had been influencing the heads of the German High-Command since the beginning and now in continuing to wage a war that was obviously lost for their side. The Fallen-Angel looked highly amused while doing it. Obviously, Erik had called Azazel to ask the Governor General about his 'black sheep'. Azazel washed his hands at Kokabiel's behavior, saying that the Fallen-Angel was acting on his own accord, again. Erik rolled his eyes at that and said that Heaven had got news about Kokabiel's actions too and was sending an exorcist to deal with him. Azazel asked Erik if he knew how were the chances of the exorcist against Kokabiel, obviously concerned about the possible loss of the life of the exorcist and the reignition of the Great War. Erik just smiled at the Fallen-Angel through the transmission and closed it as soon as he said two words to the Sacred Gear fanatic.

"Vasco Strada."

While Erik laughed loud at Azazel's face just before closing the call, he prepared himself with some cameras to record the eighty-two years old ex-exorcist punching Kokabiel's very punchable face.

And he was not disappointed. The buffed bald old man managed to land some beautiful punches to the wannabee vampire's face. That, together with his wielding of Durandal, forced Kokabiel to flee with his tail between his legs, figuratively speaking of course.

The fight was beautiful and Erik had managed to catch every angle of Kokabiel's defeat at the hands of another human. Copies of this video would find themselves mysteriously appearing all over the supernatural world, much to Kokabiel's shame. Soon enough, Azazel sent a public letter stating that Kokabiel's actions were their own and in no way reflected Grigori's posture. He finished by stating that Kokabiel would be severely punished for this transgression. With the warmonger back on a leash, the conflicts in Europe started to slow down, and after the invasion of the Allied Forces over a beach in France, the war seemed to be lost for the Axis. That is until Erik got the news that Japan was not giving up on the war. History was repeating itself at this point, and since he knew the next thing that would happen, Erik talked to Amaterasu to evacuate all youkai from the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima claiming that he had received a tip from spies in the army. A lot of lives would be lost, but there was nothing that he could do about it since the Shinto had their politic of non-interference and Erik would not risk his employees' life. This way, at least the youkai population would be saved from being disintegrated by the nuclear heat.

Soon after the bombs were dropped and the two cities were erased from the maps, Japan surrendered, thus officially ending the Second World War.

Erik was thankful that he had not heard about a 'Captain Steve Rogers' or Howard Stark appearing on New York, ruling out the leakage of Marvel Universe into this one. The mess would have been immeasurable if it happened.

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On the magical side of Europe, Gellert Grindelwald had been defeated by one Albus Dumbledore with the help of some unlikely figures. But what happened on that side are words for another chapter.

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