"Harold, sticking with Lord Oliver is your real big break. Work hard—the sky's the limit," Klan said enviously from the side.
As a Source-Artifact User himself, he'd have loved to follow Oliver, but the man's status was so exalted he couldn't even get in line.
The group stayed inside the church until after ten p.m., when five vehicles finally pulled up outside.
Rumble—!
"They're here!" At the sound of the engines, Harold and the others waiting in the church jumped to their feet.
At the door, a black sedan stopped and Malo, clad in a dark robe, stepped out with a grave expression.
The three who'd come to greet him—Harold among them—bowed respectfully. "Patriarch Malo!"
Malo didn't spare them a glance; he strode straight into the church. Only when he saw Oliver sitting on a pew sipping porridge did his face relax.
He sat down beside the bandage-wrapped Oliver and asked, "You all right?"
Slurp! Oliver downed the porridge in one go.
Clack! The bowl hit the table. Oliver turned to Malo, exasperated. "Old man, one look at these bandages tells you I'm not. I was nearly beaten to death in there."
"But you're still breathing," Malo said, leaning back with sudden levity.
Tap-tap-tap!
Just then, hurried footsteps echoed from outside.
A two-metre-tall middle-aged man strode in, wearing a brown pin-stripe vest over a white shirt. The pressure rolling off him made the three at the doorway momentarily forget how to breathe.
He bellowed the moment he entered, "Nephew, who dared hurt you this badly? Your uncle's here to settle the score!"
With that he marched up to Oliver.
Harold, puzzled, whispered to Klan, "Who is that? The pressure's suffocating."
Klan answered softly, "Lord Oliver's uncle, head of the García family. He never joined the Church, but even among Dominators he's a powerhouse."
He spoke with utmost respect; at this distance the man could certainly hear them.
Harold nodded to himself. No wonder Malo became Patriarch—besides seniority and strength, the family boasts two more Dominators. Only such people can keep a region stable.
Inside the church, Oliver looked at his uncle Barney García, surprised. "Uncle Barney, you came too? Aren't you always tied up with family business?"
Barney straightened, his expression turning stern. "I'm here for revenge. No one touches a García. Once you've rested, the three of us—your grandpa, you, and I—will go back in, drag out whoever's hiding and kill them."
Malo, eyes narrowing, added solemnly, "Your uncle's right. We're here to deal with whoever did this to you."
Malo was confident: with three Dominators acting together, no enemy of the same rank could stand against them.
Oliver, however, shook his head. "Grandpa, Uncle Barney, things aren't that simple. They're up to something. They know they injured me, yet they haven't left—almost as if they're waiting for even stronger people to walk in."
The more he spoke, the grimmer his face became. He'd been crushed by Monsters inside before even meeting the city's master.
If the enemy had let him escape on purpose so he'd bring back stronger reinforcements—just as Harold had—then the situation was worse than he thought; he didn't want to gamble with his family any further.
Malo lapsed into thoughtful silence. His grandson's warning rang true; outrage had kept him from considering it earlier.
He glanced at Barney and found Barney looking back; both saw the same heaviness in each other's eyes.
If Oliver was right, then this affair ran far deeper than they'd imagined.
"Old man, which faction is stirring trouble on our turf?" Barney's mind sifted through the Empire's major powers; the Revolutionary Army and Seven Rings topped his list of suspects.
Malo shook his head. "No point guessing. I'll inform the other Patriarchs and the Pope. Till then we seal the place—no one gets in."
One question still nagged at Malo: was the White Fog really a Source-Artifact User?
What Source-Artifact User would stupidly stay put and wait to be attacked? Such behaviour easily drew Dominators—or even Calamity Envoys—into action... On Blue Planet, a white metallic tower a hundred metres tall, seventy metres long and wide, rose dozens of kilometres from Research Base No. 1. Completely sealed, it had not a single window.
At its base, Jiang Yan and Xie Gongming arrived at the entrance.
Xie Gongming gazed up in awe. "Monsters really are handy; under their nonstop work this tower was finished in under half a month."
The entire structure shimmered with faint energy that blocked every external force.
At the gate stood several 'humans' in suits, watching their surroundings with vigilance.
"President! Deputy Director Xie!" they chorused respectfully when they saw Jiang Yan and Xie Gongming.
Since the Research Department had been founded, Xie Gongming had naturally become its deputy director.
Clack!
The hermetically sealed gate slid open, revealing a golden glow within.
Jiang Yan and Xie Gongming stepped inside. The interior was a single vast hollow; from the ground floor they could see the ceiling a hundred metres above.
At the centre stood a special golden cylinder seven or eight metres tall, wrapped layer upon layer in flesh.
Around it writhed metre-wide lumps of meat encasing huge pieces of gold. The room's light came from the reaction between gold and flesh.
Jiang Yan felt his mental perception drastically dulled.
He sighed in admiration. "Gathering the world's top minds and the Monster Association's bio-tech, humanity's first laboratory dedicated to remodelling Souls is born—an astounding creation."
Every gold-and-flesh lamp on the walls was crafted from Mental-type Monsters—another use for monster weapons, forming Monster Instruments that replicate and block all energy interference.
Beneath the tower lay Monster Instruments comparable to Fifth-Level Awakeners;
once activated, they could provide steady energy to sustain the Souls of those inside.
The instruments were powered simply by electricity converted from the grid.