The Genius Evolution Store

Chapter 177: Dumbo

"Ugh..." The commander opened his eyes. "Where am I?"

The commander had believed that he would die after taking that attack, so he looked left and right, trying to figure out his location. "Am I in hell now?"

"Sir?!" There were two soldiers guarding outside. As soon as they heard his voice, although weak, they immediately entered.

"You’re awake?"

"Did you guys follow me to the afterlife too?"

The two soldiers looked at each other.

"What are you talking about, sir? You’re still alive."

"I will call the doctor first. You should tell him everything."

"Got it."

They immediately split up.

A few minutes later, the doctor nodded, satisfied. "Everything is fine. It’s good that he has woken up. We’ll monitor you for a few more days."

"Thank you, Doctor." The commander nodded to him.

"It is I who should thank you." The doctor smiled and politely nodded to him before leaving the room.

The commander looked at his hand. His left hand remained intact, but his right hand was missing.

"I see. So, Nathan betrayed us." The commander let out a long sigh.

"According to the adjudicator, they have Nathan in custody."

The soldiers thought Nathan had been captured, but the commander knew how the adjudicators worked. If they said they had someone in custody, they must have died. They would remain in custody forever.

The commander smiled wryly. "I guess I should go back soon."

"Sir, you need to rest."

"I can’t rest more than this. Nathan is already gone, so the city doesn’t have a leader to supervise anything. I can still do things other than signing documents." The commander laughed.

They were trying hard to stop him. Fortunately, the mayor came soon after hearing the news about the commander waking up. The mayor managed to stop him and ultimately handle the situation personally.

The city was recovering. Many people who were injured in the beast wave started to get up one after another. Some started working as their injuries were minor. Some had their families on their side.

...

Meanwhile, Auric had been ’kidnapped’ by Maya and Arnie early in the morning. He was quite surprised that they actually came at five in the morning.

"Aren’t we supposed to meet at nine?"

"We moved up the schedule." Arnie shrugged. "Chill. Let’s have some breakfast."

"..." Auric’s eyebrows twitched. "I’d appreciate it if you had just informed me of that beforehand."

"No one knows about it. That’s how we keep people safe." Arnie shrugged. "Right now, you are one of the potential targets of this organization. We have booked the flight for ten, but by going early, we can at least throw off the timing. That’s just a basic precaution."

Auric frowned but didn’t say anything.

In the end, they arrived ahead of schedule. The people had just started working, so their movement wasn’t exactly noticeable to most people.

It didn’t take too long for them to reach the ruins.

Auric was quite surprised because the laboratory was located underground. It was diagonally positioned from the ruins, but more importantly, part of this place actually overlapped with the ruins.

"There is a place like this?" Auric observed the room carefully, monitoring the flow of energy in this place. For the first few rooms, Auric didn’t notice anything different.

However, it all changed the moment he entered the fourth one.

"This is..." Auric gasped. The amount of energy in this place increased drastically.

"This is what I want to show you, and maybe you can tell me more about this place."

"I’m not exactly sure what you want me to say? Don’t you already have an assessment?"

"Yes, I do."

"Can you tell me about it?"

"I would like to hear your opinion first. I don’t want the information I currently possess to end up affecting your judgment."

Auric crossed his arms. "Okay..."

The left side of this room consisted of several giant tubes and ovens. In the giant tubes, Auric could see a large amount of energy, which was so concentrated that it was as though there were hundreds of beasts stacked together.

However, the ovens might have been cleaned to a certain extent, but he could see some energy still lingering around.

On the right side of the room, Auric could see some machines, most likely operating the ovens and the tubes. In addition, there were a lot of shelves. It looked like the books had been removed for further investigation.

"..." Auric walked toward the ovens and inspected them more closely. The ovens seemed to be connected to the tubes. "What is this oven used for?"

"You tell me."

Maya frowned. "You sure you don’t want to say anything? If you don’t cooperate, my student will just hide the information as well."

"Threatening me like this... my old bones really can’t handle it." Arnie let out a long sigh. "Well, in short, we believe the ovens are used to process the materials, most likely trying to extract the beast essence. They should be evaporating the liquid within the beast essence and moving it to the tubes over there."

"I see. So, this must be the first sample..." Auric walked toward the tubes. "Judging from the elements, one of them should be from a species called Flying Fish. A type of river fish. However, the ruins cover a sports center and some shops. Is there any way for the fish to enter the ruins?"

"Why do you ask?" Arnie frowned.

"Because the other energy seems to be coming from a beast with a wind element. Let’s see, the rating should be around 2.7 out of 5. That’s the same as the ruins, so the beast used for this experiment is either from the ruins itself or another beast that perfectly matches that number. Maybe they get it from another place, I don’t know unless I know what the beast is. There are a total of three beasts known to have these elements, so which one is it?"

Arnie was quite surprised that Auric could see through all that. Even his team had a hard time figuring out this information. They had to test a lot of things to figure out the details.

"The pool seems to be connected to the river. We don’t know how the connection was formed, but we do know that the fish enter through that channel. Regarding the wind element beast used for the experiment, it is called Pear Squirrel. Do you know it?"

"Yes, I’m aware. Still, the fish shouldn’t enter this place. They’re called flying fish for a reason. They’re more likely to jump from the water than enter into a hole. Are they catching those fish by force?"

Arnie was amazed. "Yes. There were channels to try capturing the fish."

"From the looks of it, they’re trying to fuse these two materials here, but it’s impossible. The two energies are still split here. Is there anything else in the next room?" Auric asked, pointing at the next door.

"Yeah." Arnie sighed. "Follow me."

Arnie opened the next room. Auric could see that the tube from the previous room was linked to the next room. But he was much more amazed by what he saw.

He could see the energy from the barrier in this room. This room didn’t expand much further into the ruins.

Instead, it stopped at a certain point and just expanded to the side.

"So, the barrier is in this room."

"Yes. Don’t enter the barrier, or you will be in a lot of trouble."

"I feel like there will be a dumb idiot among the staff that actually gets into trouble because of the barrier." Maya teased jokingly.

"That idiot." Arnie clicked his tongue.

"So, there is one..." Auric gasped.

Arnie shrugged and extended his hand. "Why don’t you focus on your examination?"

"Fine." Auric turned around. "From the looks of it, they’re lining up those tubes with the barrier."

Auric approached the barrier closer to inspect it, while asking inwardly, ’I’m really curious. Can I touch the barrier? Will I be fine?’

"I was worried about you in the past because your skill might not be enough, but I guess you can do it now. Just be careful. You should be able to treat yourself." Lindwurm confirmed.

Auric thought for a moment and extended his finger to the barrier.

"Auric!"

"What are you doing?"

Both Arnie and Maya panicked. They immediately tried to pull Auric away.

After talking about a certain dumb idiot, they didn’t expect Auric to do the same thing.

"Relax." Auric smiled wryly and showed his finger. "It’s already fine."

In just an instant, Auric had gotten rid of the energy from the barrier. Because of this experiment, Auric understood the principle of the barrier.

As he expected, the barrier energy might stick to the body, but it wasn’t entering the circulation. Hence, the energy didn’t prevent someone from evolving.

However, there was something else he noticed. While it was true that the barrier didn’t interfere with the energy, he noticed that this energy would flood his body if he touched the barrier longer than he did.

The barrier would consider his body as a part of the barrier and immediately flow inside him.

After being exposed for a minute or two, his body would be drowned by this dense energy.

"You..." Arnie was speechless. He didn’t know what to say to Maya’s student.

"Are you insane? Do you have a death wish or something?" Maya glared at Auric.

"Relax. I’m fine." Auric smiled. "I need to do that to understand what’s going on here."

Maya’s eyebrows twitched. "Yes, it doesn’t need to be you. We can just pull a random criminal or a scavenger to do the experiment for us."

"Now, that’s quite cruel."

"We are adjudicators. We chop heads, we split people in two... A little hurt is not exactly cruel." Arnie looked away. "I mean, by our standards, not the general standard."

"..." Auric shook his head helplessly. "Anyway, I’m fine, so..."

"Are you going to do something reckless again?" Maya asked, her hands still holding Auric. She didn’t intend to let go if he was going to do something crazy again.

"I know, I know. I won’t do anything rash again."

Maya was skeptical, but she ultimately released him. He was their best bet to figure out what the organization was up to and how the poison worked anyway.

Auric sighed and walked back to the tube. "Let’s see..."

"The liquid enters from the inside. They shouldn’t be fused yet, but the liquid in this tube is already mixed.

"The energy from the barrier has a higher density, which makes them heavier. And the energy rating is the same.

"It looks like the barrier is pushing that specific energy and trying to compress them. It can be said that the barrier is compressing the two water and wind energies, making them unable to move in any direction other than toward the other energy.

"After a prolonged period, the barrier must end up mixing them." Auric glanced to the sides. "All these tubes are the same. Is this the only place? The ruins have four elements, but all I see is the combination of two."

"There are more." Arnie nodded. "In the entrance, there are multiple corridors, right? They segregated the lab based on the elements."

"That makes sense."

Auric looked down. "They must have extracted the liquid first and filled this tank to the brim before pumping it into another room. I assume that’s the last room..."

Auric pointed at the last door.

"Indeed. That room is an integrated room where they store all the products."

"Can I?" Auric pointed to the room.

"Sure." Arnie led them inside the last room. There were even more tubes and a few empty ones.

As Arnie said before, they had gotten the poison from this place. They managed to produce a large amount of poison to the point where they could simply spread it on the road.

"Still, to be able to produce this much poison, they must need a lot of materials. Can’t you check their money trail?"

"We’re doing our best on that." Arnie waved his hand.

"Okay. I think I have seen everything. What do you want me to tell you about?" Auric asked.

Arnie’s expression turned solemn. "I..."