Chapter 475 The Luck Strategy
475 The Luck Strategy
Three days later.
Aron, having taken as much time as he could to whisk his family around the globe on a world tour, had finally returned to work.
[The total number of awakeners in the world is estimated to be 237,058,766. Of those, 225 million are imperial citizens, of which 130 million have awakened to elemental mana and are in training, 70 million awakened to derived mana and are in training, and the remainder are still undergoing their evolutions. We currently have no way of identifying affinities before they wake up, so we don’t know how many of them will fall into which category,] Gaia reported.
[Also, during this period, another 8 million potential awakeners were registered by their parents, due to the care they want their children to receive in our medical pods. There are 11.5 million adults who registered along with them. That leaves an estimated 4,000,612 non-citizens currently undergoing the awakening process. However, due to inadequate care, the actual number of unaffiliated awakened humans will likely be much lower.
[There is good and bad news beyond that, which would you like to hear first?]
“Bad news first, Gaia,” Aron sighed. It seemed like the rocky days of the empire’s founding hadn’t ended yet. novelbIn
[Bad news is, we believe that the cult will have a number of awakeners among them. The good news, however, is that we managed to roll up another seventy-seven cells thanks to the brain data of the newly registered citizens, and obtained some intel. The cult calls itself the ‘cult of the progenitors’ and has absorbed all of the previously flourishing UFO religions, save those of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, as well as almost all of the smaller cults that sprang up after the initial discovery of the visitors. That’s where the majority of their suicide attackers came from, and from one of the cells we rolled up, we discovered a recruiter so we know what the cult looks for in its recruits.
[It’s only a matter of time until we can find their leader. We still don’t know how they’re communicating, but it’s an efficient method of communication, as before we could work our way up the cult’s chain of command, they activated their cutout protocol and the trail went dead. This despite not having any warning that our operatives were coming for them, so there must be some sort of safe call or check-in system at work there that they change every time it’s used.]
“Candi with an I is at it again,” he grumbled to no one in particular. A lot of people in their low-income housing project had turned to humanity’s oldest profession in the wake of what he was calling the “Great Hiring Freeze”, as they were desperate to put food on their table and keep clothes on their backs as they hunted high and low for any job that would take them, and his neighbor was one of them. “I really hope the imperial labor agency can find jobs for everyone. I don’t know how much longer I can stand listening to this thump-thump-ooh-la-la bullshit!” The volume of his voice increased with the last few words until he was yelling at the bare wall behind him and pounding it with his fist.
“Shut up already! Nut and run, asshole, and don’t forget the tip for miss Candi-with-an-l!”
“Jeremy Samuel Rogers! I raised you better than that! ” his mother scolded from the kitchen.
He sighed again and slumped his shoulders. “I know, mom. I’m sorry,” he said in a contrite tone.
“I’m sorry to you, too, Candi-with-an-l!” he shouted at the wall behind him. “You work it, girl!”
As he was “interacting” with his neighbor, his AR glasses flashed and a figure appeared directly in front of him, wearing the flashy gold, red, and black dress uniform of the Emperor’s Aegis.
“Is this Jeremy Rogers?” the figure said.
“I am. Who are you?”
“I am Yamaguchi Takeyama from the Emperor's Aegis. Standby for extraction,” the man said, then disappeared without fanfare.
“Mom, uhh... I think—”
Before Jeremy could finish his sentence, the doorbell of their apartment rang.