Chapter 214 - Mind Your Step

It was too damn quiet, but there wasn't anything they could do about it. Making any noise, any form of disturbance would likely ruin the entire mission.

There were too many Watchers lying dormant around the city. It would all be ruined even if a single one of them woke up and stirred up the hive. The Infestation would tear the entire city apart, brick by brick, to find the disturbance...

And they'd probably lose their only guaranteed chance to acquire the sample they needed.

What Reed and Lu'um were seeking was a genetic sample of the Emperor. 

Reed already had the necessary materials to bring the dead back to life, even if they were only clones. With his taboo mastery of the flesh and the soul, he had actually cheated Death more thoroughly than even the Ancient Mulians had accomplished. 

While the Ancient Mulians had created an impeccable immortal gene to prolong their life indefinitely, once someone died in an irrecoverable way — such as being thoroughly destroyed or atomized — it was impossible even for them to bring a person back from the dead. 

Even they had not yet mastered how to precisely control matter-energy relationsh.i.p.s to undo something that had already happened. The only method they had to undo a matter transformation was to reverse the flow of time and prevent the change from happening, but that in and of itself presented its own major headaches, making it an unfeasible alternative...

To be fair, though, Reed had not mastered how to undo matter-energy transformations, either.

What Reed was doing amounted to recreating the deceased individual's body and filling an artificial soul with a copy of their memories. Technically speaking, he wasn't bringing the original person back from the dead, but rather, he was creating a facsimile — a perfect reproduction — of the person that died. Nevertheless, it was a game-changing accomplishment, no matter how you spun it...

When Lu'um heard about Reed's resurrection process, she felt as if her whole world had been rocked to its core. Words could not convey the terror in her heart. Though Reed had jokingly called the process 'playing God,' but she knew better.

That isn't playing God... That is an act of God.

Even if they are copies, they are perfect copies. It contradicts everything we thought about the nature of the soul... And it opens up a can of worms I don't want to think about...

As far as the Ancient Mulians knew, the extra-dimensional anchor known as the soul was a unique construct present in every living thing. There were no two souls that possessed identical features in terms of size, form, or wavelength.

Although an individual's consciousness and memories were products of the mind, the soul seemingly had an unclear role in the processing, recollection, and awareness of memories. 

To the best of their knowledge, some Ancient Mulians hypothesized that souls were, in fact, the root of a person's existence.

This was based on the fact that beings who had their souls extracted from their bodies no longer react to any stimuli. Brain death was always the result of soul extraction as if the flesh truly was nothing more than a vessel for the soul...

Others conjectured that souls were a higher dimensional organ and that reality as they perceived it was a lower-dimensional refraction of actual reality. This far-fetched theory was based on the recognition that the Ancient Mulians had indeed discovered that there were higher dimensions than their own. 

There were countless theories about the origin, function, and structure of the soul, but the bitter truth was that the Ancient Mulians only possessed a few hard facts on the subject. 

And one of the hard-earned facts the Ancient Mulians had worked for asserted that souls were unique entities. 

It terrified Lu'um to know that Reed had discovered a method to create artificial souls. The idea that any living being could be brought back as long as one possessed a DNA sample was too great a power for anyone.

If anything, she thought it was a far greater potential threat to the stability of the multiverse than the immortal gene that the Ancient Mulians had created. 

The moment this technology left their hands, it'd spell the end of the world. She knew that if her people got their hands on it, they'd utilize it for the sake of fighting the Infestation, but they would eventually abuse it, without a doubt.

An endless army of Ancient Mulians that would never grow old or ill and would never truly die.

A never-ending flood of veteran Ancient Mulian soldiers would engulf every corner of the multiverse. In such a scenario, it was entirely possible that they would be able to drive the Infestation out of the multiverse through sheer numbers alone, but... 

No... It'd just be trading one devil for an even fouler monstrosity. Without end, the Empire would become an everlasting tumor that'd plague the multiverse just as bad as Infestation, if not worse. 

Once they drove the Infestation out, they'd become an Infestation of their own.

The only reason the Ancient Mulian Empire was as stable as it was during its prime was because every single aspect of the empire was carefully controlled. The laws, the rituals, the number of worlds they were allowed to colonize, even the amount of Ancient Mulians that were allowed to be born every year. 

They seemed like a free-spirited race on the surface, but they lived heavily restricted lives in reality.

It was a necessary sacrifice, given how powerful they were. Terraforming worlds, seeding planets with life, forging stars, building interstellar megastructures — a single rogue Ancient Mulian had the potential to cause an unprecedented amount of destruction...

The Mulian Royal Family used culture, laws, and most importantly, their overwhelming military strength as tools to create and enforce peace among their people, not other races. Had they not done so, the Ancient Mulian race would have likely descended into universal, if not a multiversal war against itself.

Ten thousand interstellar Mulian kingdoms vying for supremacy over reality would have torn the multiverse to pieces. 

All it'd take for that nightmare to become reality is for this technology to fall into the hands of two opposing Ancient Mulian groups.

It'd create an endless war since neither side would be able to die, and it'd eventually grow bigger as these two groups recruited more people onto their sides. They'd siphon this reality dry of its resources before that war would ever conclude...

This technology can NEVER leave our hands. Though I am sure that Ka'an has designed contingencies to prevent its misuse and theft, I will not feel comfortable until I inspect and review every detail of his plans myself.

Neither the Royal Family nor the Council can ever learn about its existence, either. They'll never stop trying to obtain it if they do discover that we possess it... 

Lu'um internally sighed. I don't even want to imagine what would happen if they learned that we resurrected the Emperor, either...

The ruins of Talfano City were littered with dormant Infested as far as they could see, ancient remnants of a battle that occurred long ago.

It was once a bustling city filled with sun-tanned folk and gorgeous living buildings made of living cactus-like trees, giant hybrids of natural succulents that once existed across the desert. 

At present, though, it was little more than a cratered, desolate wasteland. There was barely anything left of the place, giving credence to the idea that the city had been the site of a particularly violent battle. Only a couple of large, dead tree-buildings still stood, a somber tombstone of the beautiful jewel that once existed here. 

Lu'um silently gestured to Reed and pointed a large hole in one of the remaining tree-buildings. Reed nodded in agreement, and he slowly brought their ship a couple of hundred meters above the building. 

According to the information that Uncle Bernard gave to Reed, the hidden inheritance the Emperor had left for Reed was located deep beneath the city, in a hidden stash room.

Below Talfano City's surface existed a large root network that served as an undercity.  This undercity housed the necessary infrastructure to support the millions of people who once lived in this desert oasis... 

Once again, we have to deal with the consequences of the Ancient Mulian doctrine of living with nature in the literal sense. Just look at this goddamned mess... 

Were it not for the environmental suits they were wearing, the toxicity present in the area would have killed Lu'um in a matter of minutes. Reed did not require a suit as he was more than capable of transforming into something that could survive in this contaminated environment, but he wore a suit nevertheless. 

He didn't want to change into a monstrosity in front of Lu'um just for the sake of convenience. But more than that, he didn't want to be reminded about his inhuman nature. He didn't want to ever grow accustomed to not being human. He was determined to hold onto his remaining humanity no matter the cost he would have to pay... 

Everything seemed rather tame in the beginning when they entered the building. Still, once they started to descend further into the heart of the undercity, it became apparent that the situation beneath Talfano City was anything but normal. 

Contrary to their ship's initial scans, they discovered that beneath the surface layer of the city, the undercity was... still very much active.

How did we miss all of THIS? Have we not been scanning nearly deep enough? Is this how they've been hiding their forces from us?

I should have considered this possibility, but I didn't think the Infestation would actually repurpose old infrastructure for their own benefit like this. This is... I've never heard of them doing something like this... 

The undercity had been transformed into a grotesque base of some kind. Anchor-Root had spread across every single inch of the place, to the point the undercity had lost all semblance of its former structure. Because of this, the maps of the undercity Reed and Lu'um had brought with them proved to be of little help. 

Thick, fetid flesh-roots filled with processed organic matter took up and blocked passageways that would have easily led them to the heart of the undercity that they needed to reach. 

The more Reed saw, the more he became certain that they had finally found their answer to their missing numbers problem. 

F.u.c.k.

As far as Reed understood, the Infestation had never shown that they could strategize in preparation for the future. Even under the command of higher-ranking Infested form such as a Pupa that possessed intelligence, the Infestation had always followed a doctrine of pure destruction. 

They were reactionary at their core, instinctively exterminating life wherever it was detected. And although it was known that they could strategize, not once had the Ancient Mulians seen the Infestation use their own foe's tools against them for their benefit.

It was completely unheard of... until now. 

Though Reed and Lu'um could not speak with each other and share their thoughts, they still arrived at the same conclusion. 

There's something out there, something new.

A creature that is not only intelligent but also capable of making complex decisions. And it's a highly-ranked being to boot, capable of forcing lesser Infested to obey its will.

An administrator-type Infested. 

...And it has been preparing for its prey's eventual return.