Chapter 1254: Post-War Processing (7)
The true identity of District 19, where Lennok arrived for a private meeting with the Vulcan Mayor, was the very place where the project had ultimately failed.
It was the last Regression, conducted in Kaiser Bajour’s name. The very place where Kaiser had met his end at Ethan Bajour’s hands.
The pristine white laboratory scene, where the memories of that day’s burning destruction were, unbelievably, neatly organized.
From beyond the transparent corridor, a blond boy, the Vulcan Mayor, walked as if to greet Lennok.
And even the guardian who had always been by Jenny’s side since Lennok started working as a freelancer.
“…Jordan.”
He knew.
That when he discussed the plan with his comrades before starting the Subjugation Operation, Jordan had also been absent, preparing for something.
That the old man who had always protected Jenny had, long ago, been involved with the project and was Kaiser’s personal physician.
That his skill in medicine, and his strangely familiar demeanor with coroner’s work, might have had a reason.
That there might have been unfinished stories between Kaiser and Jordan.
He thought he knew, yet he never expected to encounter Jordan like this.
Outside, mana particles collapsed incessantly.
The interior of District 19, reached by traversing a Demonic Realm that no ordinary human could endure for a moment.
To meet Jordan like this, beyond The Gate, in the depths of the laboratory—
“The way back will be very dangerous.”
“…”
“The air outside is worse than expected. It’s not a place one can simply walk through unprotected.”
Lennok said with an expressionless face, looking at the silent Jordan.
“Perhaps I’ll need the help of Jordan, who knows this place well.”
“…I apologize, Van.”
Jordan quietly replied to Lennok’s softly veiled words.
“To finally stand before you after everything is over, a shameless old man like me.”
“…”
“But… please understand that this was all I could do.”
Beside the smiling boy, the old man raised his gaze.
“I will gladly accept whatever you decide to do with me, but before that, there’s something I want to show you one last time.”
“Does Jenny know about this?”
“…”
“She doesn’t, does she?”
“Your nature, always so considerate of Jenny, was something I was grateful for.”
Jordan closed his eyes.
“You cannot imagine what a blessing it is for a great wizard like you to retain such humanity… or how grateful I was for it.”
“…”
“Lord Kaiser couldn’t do that until the very end. And the young master, too, even as he hated him, eventually began to resemble him little by little…”
Jordan spoke softly in the quiet silence.
“Perhaps it is an unavoidable fate for those who inherit the Bajour bloodline. That’s why, in a way, I considered it fortunate that Jenny lost her Talent for Reversing Heaven.”
“…”
“Perhaps it was by averting my eyes and turning away from everything until now that I’ve reached this point. But…”
Jordan gazed at Lennok with a profound look.
“Nevertheless, because you were here, he was able to meet a proper end.”
“…”
“Instead of being utterly ruined by rewinding an unstoppable regret, he was able to depart as a Seeker. Van, I—”
Jordan closed his eyes and murmured, as if shaking off the regrets in his heart.
“I believe that alone has given us a result far beyond what we deserved.”
“…Jordan.”
“In this cruel world… how many could depart, reflecting on their first choice? And how many were corrupted, broken, and disfigured?”
Jordan raised his head.
“If we could twist the worst ending we prepared for from the very beginning, then perhaps the attempt to change fate wasn’t in vain. If you were here to tell us of our failures, that alone might have held meaning.”
“…”
“I think that’s enough now.”
Jordan opened his eyes and gave Lennok a soft smile.
“So, I must now do what I have to do.”
“What… do you mean by that?”
Jordan did not answer Lennok’s question.
Instead, he simply turned and began to walk ahead down the brightly lit, pristine white corridor.
As Lennok quietly watched his retreating back, the blond boy standing beside him tapped his sleeve.
“We should get going too. With Jordan as our guide, we’ll arrive quickly.”
“…You.”
“Now that I think about it, my greetings were belated when we met at the hearing, weren’t they?”
The boy smiled and bowed his head slightly with a polite gesture.
“Arjis Ormeon. I serve as the Vulcan Mayor. A pleasure to meet you.”
“…”
A light and unpretentious greeting, unbelievable for the most powerful figure in a mega-city.
He appeared before Lennok, as if the fact that he hadn’t shown himself publicly for decades was a lie.
But Lennok wasn’t surprised by the Mayor’s appearance or voice.
Because, as the Mayor said, he had already seen him once during the hearing.
And he had also seen what form the Mayor took in another memory.
“The form I saw you take during Kaiser Bajour’s Regression was very different from now.”
Lennok looked down at the boy with a chilling gaze.
“If your age, face, and even gender are different from decades ago, is that itself a type of your ability?”
“Ah, if you know that much, then you did indeed follow Kaiser’s Regression to the very end and returned, didn’t you?”
The Mayor tilted his head, smiling brightly.
“Well, I did think that without doing so, it wouldn’t have been resolved, but this is unexpected. I didn’t think you’d say it yourself.”
“…”
“Even just by subjective time, it must have easily surpassed several centuries. Did you observe all those iterations to the very end to confront Kaiser?”
“There’s no need for me to deny or hide what I had to do once the Subjugation Operation was over.”
Lennok met the boy’s gaze with a chilling look.
“Didn’t you also know that, which is why you tried to contact me as soon as the war ended?”
The causality Kaiser left in this world through the Black Consumer Project was vaster in scale than any other attempt.
It was clear that Kaiser’s failure, from the moment the Imperial Palace intervened, was the largest in the history of the Third World.
Therefore, there was no way the project’s stakeholders wouldn’t have sensed it the moment Lennok completely annihilated Kaiser.
The Mayor, too, must have summoned Lennok to District 19 to meet him as soon as the war ended, for that very reason.
If one had been investigating the project’s secrets, if one knew about District 19, one couldn’t possibly be uninterested in this summons.
Knowing this, Lennok had simply prioritized meeting Jenny first.
Because he thought it was more important to bring a conclusion to Kaiser’s story, which he had pursued for so long.
He had tried to prioritize honoring the pioneer who was similar to him, yet ultimately not the same—
Yet, not only Jenny, but the afterimages of the project still lingered here.
And with a project stakeholder Lennok had never expected.
“I understand what you’re thinking, but I hope you won’t be too displeased.”
The boy offered a wry smile, looking up at Lennok’s cold face.
“As you well know, Jordan is now an ordinary person with no power whatsoever. He had no ill intention to deceive or hide something from you.”
“…”
“On the contrary, he is immensely grateful to you. He even believes he could give his life for you right now, if you wished.”
The Mayor, glancing back, offered a wry smile as he watched Jordan walk ahead.
“Well, even if not, he already seems to have decided his own ending.”
“I don’t feel betrayed. Nor do I have reason to be displeased that he kept something from me.”
Lennok replied with an indifferent expression.
“However, the fact that he didn’t tell Jenny… that’s not a very pleasant story to hear.”
“Ahahaha, hearing that, I understand why Jordan trusts you so much.”
The boy laughed.
“You are an astonishingly humane Transcendent. It’s almost unbelievable that someone who has reached such a level can ‘still’ be like that.”
“…”
“Most of the geniuses who shone like stars throughout history couldn’t do that. They would subconsciously look down on those less capable than themselves, harbor no expectations, and… eventually come to regard them as less than mere insects.”
The Mayor asked in a casual tone, as if it were nothing.
“Considering that, can’t you understand a little why Jordan couldn’t tell anyone about his role and kept it hidden?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“You would know if you saw what I did with him during Kaiser’s Regression.”
The boy said, walking along the pristine corridor.
“We made a deal regarding the project. In exchange for focusing all the mega-city’s resources and capabilities to help him, the City Council would take over the project’s scenarios that Kaiser had excluded.”
“…”
“Even if it failed to reach success, there were countless valuable pieces of information among the world-scale scenarios. For example, there’s the Grand Canal Scenario.”
“Grand Canal Scenario?”
He seemed to recall hearing about it in passing during Kaiser’s Regression.
As Lennok fell into thought upon hearing the strangely familiar term, the Mayor spoke casually.
“It was a plan to open all waterways on the continent and connect the world’s water paths into one. It was a discarded plan after failing early in the project, but for it, Kaiser personally explored every waterway and underground stream across the continent.”
“…”
“In that process, maps of all the continent’s underground streams and waterways remained as actual records. You can imagine how valuable this information is, can’t you?”
Lennok, too, understood what the Mayor was trying to say.
Water paths and underground streams are not independent entities, but environmental elements intimately intertwined with each other.
If one could fully understand the location and flow of all such underground streams, it would even be possible to artificially interfere with the underground streams or waterways outside Vulcan.
There would be countless ways for the City Council to indirectly profit without directly announcing or revealing this.
“They manipulated underground streams used in Yin-Yang Arts or Feng Shui to conduct or disrupt large-scale rituals. They artificially blocked or polluted the waterways of surrounding cities or autonomous regions to force trade with Vulcan, and also extracted payment in exchange for purifying underground streams.”
As Lennok was speechless, the Mayor turned his gaze, smiling faintly.
“Other scenarios, though different in content, were no less valuable in information. In some ways, there were scenarios containing numerous pieces of information that could make even the Grand Canal seem insignificant.”
“So that was why the City Council was able to grow this city to such an enormous scale.”
Lennok lowered his gaze.
“Information the Regressor obtained by turning the entire world upside down. You lent a hand to the project, making that a condition of your deal?”
“No matter how bizarre and catastrophic a failure it was, if something was attempted, there’s always something to gain from it somewhere.”
The Mayor replied.
“We no longer cling to nation-scale Ascension Rituals. Because we’ve seen how cities that dreamed of ascension in such a way have fallen. That’s also why we made a deal with Ars Nova to change fate.”
“…”
“Machina, Yorta, Kundara… The conclusion we reached after observing countless cities across the four continents was that answers relying on the power of scale ultimately hold little meaning.”
The boy said that, and then moved his steps.
“Kaiser knew that better than anyone. That’s why, even while endlessly repeating the project, he sought to remain an ‘individual’ until the very end.”
“…”
“What remains here is precisely that result… a form of arrangement Kaiser made to leave behind a replacement for himself until the very last moment.”
At that moment, the corridor’s area began to expand, subtly but steadily.
With each step following Jordan, the surroundings opened up, revealing a clear view of the entire research complex below.
As Lennok watched Jordan’s figure become completely enveloped in the halo of light, the boy spoke.
“Jordan could serve as a guide here because he worked as Kaiser’s personal physician and knew Kaiser’s physical condition better than anyone.”
“…That.”
“Because he left deeper causality here than any other project stakeholder, he can still be here decades later.”
The boy, still smiling, glanced back.
“So, to completely sort out Kaiser’s ending… shall we go down?”
“…”
Lennok silently cast his gaze toward the far end of the illuminated corridor.
The “sorting out of the ending” the boy spoke of. He felt as though he vaguely understood what it meant.
At the end of the corridor, where Jordan’s figure had disappeared. Something the Mayor spoke of existed there.
Something irreversible would remain here the moment he confirmed it.
“It’s alright.”
As if guessing Lennok’s thoughts, the boy nodded.
“The project is all over, and only his remnants remain here. There will be no further continuation of its maintenance in any way.”
“…”
“More importantly, Jordan wants to show you himself.”
The Mayor asked.
“If this is the end, won’t that be enough?”
“…The end.”
Whose end, exactly, did he mean by “the end”?
Before his thoughts could continue, Lennok slowly stepped forward.
Whoosh!!!
With each step, the dazzling light receded, and the landscape of District 19 revealed itself before Lennok.
Beyond the transparent glass walls, thousands of laboratories stretched to the horizon.
Thousands of glass cells, all transparently visible, spread out from the corridor where Lennok stood.
But as Lennok looked down at the scene of the laboratories, he understood everything in that instant.
“This place is…”
Why Kaiser of the past had called District 25 a “testbed” for the project.
Why other restricted zones had transformed into Demonic Realms where mana particles collapsed.
Why District 19 was detached from the flow of time, as if time itself was broken, compared to other districts.
Why District 19 had been called “Kaiser Bajour’s Tomb.”
“…”
Inside Restricted Zone 19. The scene of thousands of glass laboratories stretched out far below his feet.
In every one of those laboratories, thousands of Kaiser Bajour’s corpses were enshrined.