Chapter 453: Chapter 453: Beware of Assassination_1
After returning from Thorn Iron Prison, Aiden immediately contacted Abigail and her team to start exchanging the intelligence they had gathered.
Organizing the timeline of new intelligence Aiden obtained separately from Heinz and Father Bales, it went something like this:
More than a decade ago, the Dragon Spine Empire’s ground forces acquired a Divine Artifact related to authority and initiated the "Magic Man" project. Professor Dodge was involved in this project and voluntarily had his seriously ill son become a subject in an attempt to desperately save his life.
Unfortunately, it seemed the experiment failed, and as a result, Professor Dodge broke with the military of the Empire. Subsequently, the Empire charged him with crimes and imprisoned him to maintain control. Ultimately, Dodge escaped from prison using the Hand of Oblivion he had stashed away, becoming a fugitive.
Two years later, Dodge, harboring hatred for the Empire, sold vital intelligence to the Harvest Mother Cult and the Gistas intelligence department and personally assassinated several officials related to the project. During this period, he requested the cult to cultivate a progeny body for his son twice.
Then, the Gistas Kingdom’s intelligence bureau spent two years infiltrating and ultimately performed a coordinated attack to destroy the Empire’s military base researching the "Magic Man" project. However, the project did not cease there. The key materials and data from the Empire fell into the hands of the Gistas Kingdom’s intelligence bureau, which restarted the project in Sunset City, naming it "Infection."
Due to various factors, the "Infection" plan was not progressing smoothly and was shelved for a time. But it suddenly made advances in the last two years, after which the Gistas Kingdom secretly used the Revenge Templar mercenaries to ignite the war between two minor southern countries. The war led to a large influx of refugees into Sunset City, seeking asylum in the south of Gistas, and the Kingdom’s military took the opportunity to abduct these refugees for mass experiments.
"...That’s the intelligence I’ve received in the last two days," Aiden finished, looking around at the others by the long table.
Aside from Abigail and Qiqimora, the discussion now included Lamia, the Queen of Magic Potion who was exceptionally skilled in biological modifications. Having discovered Gistas Kingdom’s "Infection" project, Qiqimora and her team brought her into the research group.
The three Great Witches seated there said nothing, all three pairs of eyes staring intently at Aiden, with Qiqimora exhaling plumes of mist in the encompassing grey fog.
"Why aren’t you all saying anything?" Aiden was a bit unnerved by the intense scrutiny.
"Your Excellency’s ability to gather intelligence is truly admirable. You’ve uncovered so many state secrets," Abigail said.
"Not bad," Aiden responded with composure.
"Did you plant your own spies in the military?" Lamia asked suspiciously.
Aiden thought to himself that her suggestion was indeed not far from the truth.
"Be careful, I feel like both the Empire and Gistas are about to start putting a bounty on your head," Qiqimora chimed in.
"Now you know as well. We’re all in the same boat," Aiden said with a shrug.
"I don’t mind. I’m the only real fugitive here." Lamia flicked out her forked tongue, "I could sell you out at any moment."
"Alright, let’s get down to business. Surely you folks haven’t made absolutely no progress, have you?" Aiden pressed.
"How could we not?" Lamia twisted her snake tail, adjusting her sitting position, "We’ve roughly deduced the authority power used in this plan."
"Really?" Aiden was a bit surprised, as that was indeed a significant breakthrough.
"The authority power used to create demonic hybrids should be ’Chaos’, and it seems to be a Divine Artifact imbued with divinity, breaking the biological barrier between humans and demons, forcibly merging the two into one being..." Lamia said with excitement, "This is way more thrilling than life alchemy, hehe, kid, do you know about the biological separation between humans and demons?"
"I do, the Throne of Life’s authority doesn’t extend to demons, right?" Aiden replied calmly, having just recently had a lesson with Father Bales.
"Wow, you know quite a lot. Haha, Abigail, looks like your little charade has been seen right through!" Lamia laughed disdainfully.
"Shut up, get to the point," Abigail responded coldly.
"To forcefully combine different biological entities seems quite brutal," Aiden remarked, "What’s the success rate like for such experiments?"
"I don’t know, but predictably, it will be ridiculously low. Randomness is a key aspect of the ’Chaos’ authority, but sometimes this randomness can trigger miracles that wouldn’t occur under normal circumstances, provided the sample size is large enough. We’ve studied in batches several sets of experimental materials they’ve processed and noticed a great deal of randomness in the proportions of the demonic infiltration and the human body, leading to our conclusion." Lamia explained, "From these results, it seems that the ancestors of these demonic hybrids must be such miraculous individuals, not only incorporating demonic power stably into the human body but also passing it down through generations."
"To stably mass-produce demonic hybrids, the critical keys to the success of this project’s research must lie in how to increase the success rate as much as possible and stabilize the form of the artificially created demonic hybrids. Based on the information you provided a moment ago, Warden, the Empire probably got stuck on these two tough points." Qiqimora said, "And Gistas seems to have found a direction on top of this."
"What sort of direction?" Aiden inquired.
"Our guess would be the ’Balance’ authority. Remember the core area with the fixed population? That must be influenced by the ’Balance’ authority. It could be a Divine Artifact, but it might also be a person with mastery over this authority," Qiqimora answered.
"Are you sure?"
"Not certain, but it’s the most likely possibility," Abigail chimed in, "That chamber exhibits a fixed state of balance, with a fixed upper limit on the number of living people that can exist, not easily altered. We did some elimination and concluded that ’Order’ and ’Balance’ are the two types of authority that could do this. Declaring rules using ’Order’ can also achieve this, but ’Order’ and ’Chaos’ are the two poles of the same Throne and would repel each other. They couldn’t combine ’Order’s authority with ’Chaos’ to create the demonic hybrids, but ’Balance’ can."
"Our information on the ’Balance’ authority is scant, so this is just conjecture," Qiqimora said, "Warden, if I recall correctly, you have established a good relationship with the lady from the Scales of Smile, right? Why don’t you confirm with her?"
"You’ve managed to gain the favor of the Scales of Smile? Kid, you seem to have a rich source of information," Lamia suddenly let out a raspy laugh, "If you start moonlighting as an infobroker, you’d probably make money fast, huh?"
"I’ll pass, I’m not keen on making the assassination list."
