Глава 8

Then hurry up and make a decision!

Do as I told you!

'I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to get anyone hurt.'

This has to be a dream, right?

A dream where everyone is just hanging around quietly, smiling.

I need to wake up soon. You always wake up from dreams. If you don't wake up, it's just the same thing as not moving on.

I need to go forward.

Seal the hatch! Dispose of all Infection sources! Quick!

Let's go. Let's go.

I won't look back.

I think... I figured it out.

I need to tell them this.

Right, I need to tell them.

Being alive is a good thing. Being alive is precious. Being alive is painful. But some of my friends... have walked a long, long road.

Now I remember.

I need to tell them.

It's a good thing to be alive.

Let's go.

Goodbye, my home. Goodbye, the person who sang for me. Goodbye, Talulah. Goodbye, Sasha.

Goodbye, my friend.

Kal'tsit swipes her finger across the control panel, and the sarcophagus's low, thunderous roar immediately dissipates.

It's all over now...

We put an end to the sudden disaster.

...We've fulfilled our obligations and completed our mission. Chernobog's core city has lost its power source.

I can guarantee that this facility won't be reactivated within the next few years.

For the next few hours, the core city will only be able to use the energy it has stored to power its engines. Once that is used up, the entire city is nothing more than a hunk of scrap metal.

We've done all we can here. However, if we want to bring it to a halt before it crashes into Lungmen, we'll have to use the emergency brakes.

That's Amiya's mission, and only Amiya has what it takes to fulfill that mission.

Is the city going to be abandoned here?

If the Ursus Empire still wants it, then let them have it.

You aren't afraid of them putting it in service again?

There were two things that happened here that had to do with me.

The first of those happened some twenty years ago.

About twenty years ago, a small mining company controlled by the Boris Group of Ursus unearthed a strange set of equipment in the southern mountains.

News about this quickly traveled to the conglomerate's leader—Marquess Boris.

At the time, the Count made a bold decision. He tried to build an industrial city with all the necessary facilities and equipment with the expectation that his conglomerate could shake its reliance on the military-controlled mining industry and the arms trade.

Now, the equipment could have been some inheritance passed down by the gods or a device of Sarkaz witchcraft. That doesn't matter. As long as it worked, it would give the Boris Group the breakthrough they needed.

Of course, it could also have been nothing but worthless scrap, and any amount of research would not have produced any meaningful results. It could also have been something perilous. Something that could level multiple settlements in the blink of an eye.

They put together a team of talented scientists. All of them were young, sick of working with elementary theories, embittered by society, in need of money, and had been marginalized by academia for years.

You were on the team.

That's right.

Soon after I left Columbia, I found out about this through my own networks. I joined the group—in order to keep them from blowing the entire city up.

I am something like an expert on the topic, so, one way or the other, I ended up becoming the scientists' mentors.

Now, Chernobog wasn't just your average emerging city. It used to be old and run down.

Before the scientists realized what the device's true purpose was, I allowed them to siphon a certain amount of its energy to provide Chernobog a resource other than Originium. Not much, but certainly not negligible.

Marquess Boris was beyond elated. He paid all that money, and he certainly got his money back.

He was someone who really knew how to do business.

Chernobog quickly developed, and droves after droves of people were drawn to the city, seeking opportunity.

Many smaller cities joined the Boris Group as well, either out of respect for Boris himself or because they were awed by how generous the man was with his money.

With Chernobog propelled to the fore, the scientists' research also reached an important breakthrough.

I... probably should've stopped them.

Go on. It's okay.;......;You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.

Let me continue.

Brilliant as they were, a few of my students uncovered the device's secrets on their own. First, they realized that the energy they were siphoning was generated only as a side effect of the device's operations. A kind of hibernation mode...

Its original purpose was for the device to keep functioning normally.

There was also one other thing that they realized. The energy that they had been siphoning for Chernobog was but a small fraction of the energy the device could actually provide. Just a tiny, tiny fraction.

At first, they were ecstatic.

This had to potential to greatly reduce Chernobog's reliance on the Originium mining industry.

If they could put together something similar to the device, then Ursus would never have to worry about energy again, and the mining and refining process of Originium would also become much simpler.

Then, fear began to sink in. If all that energy was used to forge weapons or begin a conquest, Ursus would undoubtedly be engulfed in a sea of flames yet again.

Now, fortunately, the scientists were all good, upstanding people. They wanted to prevent disaster.

And unfortunately... that didn't change a thing.

When the Fourth Army got involved, the scientists had already realized just how serious the whole situation was.

And by the time my students were ready to have the device sealed, the secret police had already figured out all of their weaknesses.

Ilia was a leader amongst the scientists. He was both righteous and stubborn, qualities that went hand in hand.

The secret police knew that kidnapping his family would only unleash the hatred in him, so they picked someone else.

Sergei, my oldest student.

He was Skullshatterer and Misha's father, a very indecisive chap.

The secret police hardly even threatened him, and that was enough to destroy what little determination he had.

The fear of losing his family and his respect for his colleague and their work tormented him, and in the end he chose what must have felt like a compromise to him.

He turned over the experiments' objectives and data to Marquess Boris.

The reality is he shouldn't have trusted anyone. A drowning man will clutch at a straw, yet that straw could also be the very thing that ends up killing him.

The Count didn't protect the scientists. He protected just Sergei and allowed the military to carry out an attack, which then turned into a massacre.

The Count didn't have the power to protect the scientists. He could barely even hold his head up in the presence of the military's top brass.

Even though the military and the nobility had lost much of their influence after the Great Rebellion, that didn't change the fact Marquess Boris's family was new money. They bought their noble status from another family.

Sergei managed to save his children, and the price he had to pay was to watch the murder of all of his colleagues in the Core City's sarcophagus.

After all the bodies were removed and the blood cleaned up, a new lab was set up for Sergei, built on top of his crumbling mentality.

Needless to say, Sergei never again produced anything meaningful with his research, and with the loss of all of their distinguished, albeit overly honest, scientists, Ursus's research on the device ended up in quite the mire.

After that, everyone simply forgot about the place. No one cared. Nothing could be changed.

After the secret police and the garrison packed their bags, the Count and Sergei had the placed sealed... The whole process was uneventful, too.

The equipment was kept running, and the energy just kept flowing from the sarcophagus to Chernobog's core city. Perhaps powering the entire city, even.

For Sergei's service and sacrifice, the Count nominated him to the position of the City Council secretary.

Oh, and this happened after Sergei's son, Alex, was found to be Infected and exiled.

The Count finally had the power to stand up against the military, and factories big and small began to spring up around his core city.

The Fourth Army no longer had him under their thumb. All they could do was watch Chernobog leave its circle of influence.

In the years since Chernobog began its operations, Marquess Boris also managed to make an enemy of Grand Duke Baikal, one of the advisors of the Third Army and the biggest beneficiary of the Farscope Refinery, thanks to their disputes over the prices of the raw materials used in manufacturing.

The Grand Duke ordered several clandestine attacks on the city, but none of the attempts were able to shake the city. It had already become one of Ursus's most important cities.

The Count then arranged matters so that the military was not allowed to garrison in Chernobog, so the armies could only do as the emperor told them, and stationed in the city's surroundings to defend it. To keep a watchful eye on the place, so to speak.

What's more, Chernobog is not bound by the military and the old nobility's rules. One after another, copycat cities began to emerge all around Ursus. The desire for minerals and products drove the masses to seek out better ways.

Instead of being mere slaves that reek of filth and blood, they wanted to become slaves of a higher purpose.

And that's where the problem lies.;......;Is this why Chernobog fell?

Not completely.

I personally think that the moment the scientists... my students died at the hands of Ursus's greed, Chernobog was doomed to fall.

But be that as it may, I never used that as an excuse to forgive myself.

Now, thanks to everyone's kindness and fortitude, here's something I considered: Suppose it was used for the benefit of others, and suppose it was able to provide us a different path...

Ursus's scientists would've used it for the greater good—Though I can see how that would've turned out.

The person I used to be would never have arrived at that conclusion. It would just lead to the deaths of even more people. No matter how magnificent everything may seem in the beginning, in this evil world, our benevolence will always be twisted into something else.

In other words, Dr. {@nickname}.

I was the one who sent them to the slaughterhouse.

I did nothing except stand there and watch them die.