Chapter 179: Thoughts of a Scientist - Markets and Multiverses

Leon, head researcher of the ancient institute, stared at the reports he had received of the break-in a few hours ago.

They left him scratching his head in utter bewilderment.

According to the surviving soldiers, last night the test subject ‘Felix’ had broken out of his confinement. In addition, Aplos had also broken free… only to be slain by Felix.

Along the way, Felix had also somehow stolen several other important artifacts that were housed in the ancient studies facility. Leon wasn’t actually sure how in the world Felix had even done that. There weren’t any signs that the boy had broken into the rooms. Somehow, the rooms were just… empty. Perhaps Felix had ripped open the walls, stolen everything, and then welded the walls back together somehow? The doors were built to be impossible to open without the correct keys. Leon had no idea how he had managed that.

Most bizarre of all, Felix hadn’t broken out alone. Two different groups of guards had reported that three other children had broken him out. The other three had all been female, and none of them had been older than six years old, at most. Most of the soldiers thought that they three were even younger - perhaps four or five years old.

And every single one of them had powers.

This was the part that made Leon’s head hurt the most.

Potions that granted people abilities were rare. There were only a few thousand of them manufactured in the country every year, and that was after industrial fertilizer potions had become more commonplace and the alchemical revolution and industrial revolution had turned potions from a commodity for the rich and powerful to something even commoners could buy by the dozen. The ingredients for ability potions were rare and hard to grow, and a skilled alchemist was needed to control the reactions between ingredients during the potion creation process. Otherwise, an ability potion would explode instead of giving its drinker a special ability.

They were an item for the rich and wealthy, or for highly promising soldiers. One of the biggest draws the underground facility had for soldiers to take jobs defending it was the research facility’s yearly allotment of four ability potions.

And yet, seemingly out of nowhere, three kids who had all taken ability potions had appeared out of nowhere and broken Felix out of the facility.

And even more strange than the fact that nobody knew of the four kids beforehand, some of them had demonstrated more than one ability.

Leon, of course, knew that it was completely impossible to get more than one power from an ability potion. Every single potion could grant its drinker one ability, and once someone had gained an ability, it was completely impossible to ever gain another one. Any ability potions they drank afterwards would just be wasted. People who had the opportunity to drink an ability potion had to think very carefully about what ability they wanted before choosing a potion to drink, because there were no second chances.

And yet, the little girls who had rescued Felix had demonstrated the ability to use multiple powers. One of them, the little girl with pure blonde hair and thin limbs, had somehow teleported objects around, and also seemed to have the ability to kill or seriously injure other creatures in a way that nobody quite understood. She was also unusually perceptive, although that might not have been the result of an ability potion.

Upon hearing the physical description of the girl, the commander had wondered if whoever had actually rescued Felix thought he was stupid.

Nobody that could afford an ability potion could possibly be impoverished. That was like saying that someone had dozens of Sterlings but couldn’t afford basic food, when a decent meal for a kid was less than a tenth of a sterling. Ability potions were worth several times their weight in gold.

Apart from the blonde-haired girl, another of the girls with strawberry-blonde hair seemed to have s the ability to shoot silver bolts of force out of her hands, and had displayed the same unusual perceptiveness the blonde haired girl had displayed.

The girl with copper hair had demonstrated the ability to physically outperform even an adult male, despite only being four years old. This clearly meant that she had drunk a superstrength potion, since a four year old having more strength than an adult was well beyond what could be accomplished with any training or genetic gifts. However, she also seemed to have the ability to command metal. And she ALSO had displayed unnaturally good perception.

Leon was starring to wonder if the girls had access to some sort of item that enhanced their perception. That would explain why all of them had some sort of vision-related ability. However, Leon had no knowledge of any item that could allow someone to see behind them, through walls, and in basically all directions all the time. But the idea that someone had developed technology that Leon, one of the head researchers of the country, couldn’t understand was worrying in its own right.

And even if the unusual perception could be attributed to some sort of equipment, that still didn’t explain how some of the girls had demonstrated multiple abilities.

Someone in the group ALSO seemed to have the ability to make themselves invisible or distort vision somehow. Leon wasn’t quite sure what the ability was, and none of the Soldiers seemed to know either. But if Leon had to guess, the strawberry-blonde girl probably had the illusion ability. The other two girls had displayed two abilities each, while the strawberry-blonde girl had only displayed one ability. It would make sense for her to actually have two abilities, with illusions being her second gift.

Felix also demonstrated the ability to command metal.

The entire scenario was so utterly ridiculous that Leon didn’t know what to think.

The best explanation that he could think of was that maybe another group of ability users had quietly broken into the facility to help Felix escape, and had remained invisible the entire time. This could at least account for the mismatch between reported abilities and the number of people present. If someone had the ability to create fake images, it would also explain why a four year old could apparently waltz into one of the most heavily guarded military facilities in the country, steal nearly a fifth of the artifacts inside, rescue Felix, and then walk back out unharmed. Obviously, the four year old girls didn’t exist at all. If they were illusions meant to attract attention, it would at least make a bit more sense.

But even that explanation had its own problems. If people were breaking into the base, why create illusions of four year old girls at all? Anyone with a brain would obviously be able to tell that four year old children didn’t go around breaking into military bases. The very thought was so utterly ridiculous that Leon didn’t know why someone would even bother using children as a cover for their actions. It would make more sense to at least create illusions of adults breaking into the facility - that would have at least made some sense.

Leon resisted the urge to tear his hair out in frustration at just how little sense everything made, as well as the thought of just how much he had lost yesterday. Thousands of sterlings of equipment and rare, ancient artifacts had been stolen.

On top of the catastrophic financial losses yesterday, the facility had also lost Aplos, the most important part of the base.

It wasn’t a surprise that Aplos had broken out yesterday. The creature was an ancient imperial guardian of the Zelyr, the most infamous ancient empire in the world. Even though nobody was quite sure how the Zelyr had created half the ancient artifacts that they had created, everyone knew that the Zelyr had done things nobody else before or since had accomplished. Aplos was an artificial life form that exemplified the madness and creativity of the old Zelyr, and capturing the creature alive had proven a huge strain on resources and manpower.

However, unlike Felix, who had also been assembled from ancient artifacts designed to create artificial life, Aplos was a creature born of thought over matter. How people perceived the creature, and what they assumed its capabilities were, played a massive role in determining exactly how strong the creature and what its abilities were. There were limits, of course - one couldn’t simply imagine that the creature was a benevolent god, train a group of people to believe the same thing, and create an unkillable benevolent deity. There was an upper limit to how strong the creature could become based on other people’s imagination.

But the creature could become hundreds of times stronger than the average soldier if enough people believed it was stronger than them, and even the exact location where it was located could change if enough people believed it was watching them. Once someone else learned of Aplos and how it worked, all it would take for the creature to escape was a few people who weren’t fully convinced that it was securely locked away in its cage, and the creature would slip out. That was why the soldiers who worked in the base were carefully vetted before being allowed to learn of the creature’s existence, and their belief was then used to anchor the creature to the room it was imprisoned in.

Since someone had broken into the facility, they must have heard of Aplos and wondered what the creature was - or had already known how the creature worked and exploited that to bring the creature to them.

Leon had no clue why they had killed Aplos, instead of bringing it away and then studying it. Perhaps they had sought to  cripple the ancient studies of Vern? Leon could certainly understand other nations sabotaging the research abilities of the country, especially since the other countries of the continent were so threatened by the birth of the steam engine.

Leon shook his head in frustration.

There were just so many weird parts about the rescue of Felix last night. The invaders had seemed frighteningly powerful, but had hesitated to kill witnesses. They had pretended to be three underage girls for some reason, even though there was no logical reason for that. They had managed to rip through one of the most heavily guarded facilities in the country, but Leon had no idea who the real infiltrators possibly could have been.

Leon frowned.

An idea started tugging at his thoughts. One that he hadn’t thought of before now.

Felix had been built from a variety of modern research and ancient technology. One of the most famous ancient empires in the world had accomplished feats involving ability potions that even modern empires couldn’t replicate.

The Ancient Zelyr had done quite a bit of research into making artificial humans, who were supposed to be much stronger and more powerful than regular people and work as the perfect super soldiers. This technology had died out when the empire collapsed, hundreds of years ago, leaving behind nothing but a name in history books.

Leon had been rather disappointed when Felix hadn’t displayed any such abilities, but it was obvious that Felix had been lying. Several soldiers had seen him use an ability to control metal, despite Felix never having been given an ability potion. Perhaps Felix had been born abnormally smart, and had decided that it was best to keep his abilities to himself until he could escape?

Perhaps one of the other nations that stood against Vern had also been researching how to create super soldiers. Worse, they had clearly come much further than Vern. Unlike the facility under Leon’s control, whichever nation had broken Felix free had clearly already built and then raised a few child supersoldiers that were loyal to their nation. Loyal enough that the children hadn’t escaped, even when they had been sent on a mission to rescue one of their compatriots alone.

With Felix freed from his captivity by other children like him, it would be easy for that nation to raise Felix as yet another loyal soldier.

The impact of a few soldiers with exceptional potion abilities might not be able to single-handedly control larger battles, but Leon had never thought that was the real potential of the super-soldier program, as much as the higher-ups disagreed with him.

Leon had always been much more worried about surgical assassinations and disruptions of supply lines. Even if someone with abilities couldn’t single-handedly swing a large battle in favor of either size, several small squads of incredibly powerful soldiers who could move quickly and sabotage the supply lines for an army could still represent a massive problem, if led by a good commander.

And now, another nation already seemed like they had created such a soldier squad. Even if the people involved were only children, they had already demonstrated just how dangerous an artificial life form created by mixing old and new technology could be.

The more Leon thought about it, the more he was convinced that he was correct. The idea of several invisible people pretending to be six year old little girls rescuing Felix seemed utterly ridiculous. The idea of a few little supersoldier girls rescuing a ‘fellow human experiment’ made much more sense.

Leon sighed, and started writing his report to the higher-ups. He shuddered at how insidious and powerful the strike against Vern’s ancient Zelyr studies had been. Even if studying the old Zelyr was far from the most important aspect of war technology, the coalition was looking for any advantage they could get against Vern. A powerful, already activated set of assassins and saboteurs wasn’t enough to tilt the war against Vern - but it would certainly make it harder to proceed.

He also alerted the higher ups to exactly what his soldiers had reported the little intruders had looked like. If anyone managed to spot them, perhaps they could at least prevent the saboteurs from hitting any other important aspects of Vern’s industry. However, he doubted the reports he had were enough to locate the little intruders. ‘Blonde little girl,’ ‘strawberry-blonde little girl,’ and ‘copper haired little girl’ just wasn’t a very detailed description, and not many soldiers had survived an encounter with the little intruders. Felix, at least, they could provide very detailed and accurate descriptions of, which was something. But considering the fact that one of the intruders could alter perception, perhaps any description of them was wrong from the beginning.

Searching for the little intruders might be an exercise in futility.

Still, they had to at least try. The little girls who had rescued Felix represented a deep, underlying threat to Vern’s war effort - and when nearly half of the continent was allied against Vern, they couldn’t afford to let any potential threat slip by.

Author’s Note:

(this is a repeat of yesterday’s author note, so skip if you have already read it).

So, update.

My thumb still hurts.

It has been about a month now.

It still hurts.

I will probably go to the doctor this weekend or early next week to see what they have to say, since some of the other injuries from a month ago have largely healed, but my thumbs still quite hurts. Depending on what the doctor says, I may need to not write much next week, or even start my vacation earlier if the doctor says I need to. We’ll see what they have to say. Fingers crossed that it’s easy to fix, but I’m letting you guys know in case things slow down earlier than expected. I’ll keep you updated.

Thanks and sorry for potential future schedule disruptions,

-Acaswell

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