BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM

The attacks continued throughout the journey. Thaids Erik couldn't identify harassed them in swarms. Each encounter ended the same way, though—with dead thaids falling to the earth below and Erik growing stronger.

Flying thaids were strong, and the experience they gave was massive. Erik gained a couple of levels, but now that his war ended, he didn't care that much.

"These mountains really are getting worse," Erik said after taking care of another group of aerial bastards.

At some point, he decided to fly below the trees, which significantly lowered his traveling speed but at least prevented nasty encounters. Besides, flying high far from the mountains was possible; doing so in such close proximity was suicide, even for him.

If wyverns were deadly on Mannard, here on Mur, they must have been even worse. There were thaids, such as the Cerulean Bird, that even Erik could fight against yet.

While their attributes were similar now, Erik was still weaker, and that thing got much more mana than him. A single attack, if the beast felt threatened, would spell Erik's doom.

Even with Essence Flow, Erik simply didn't have a large enough mana pool to protect himself from an attack at max power, even if he tried.

There were things he could do to kill the beast or the wyverns, such as getting the Three-Headed Void ravagers' brain crystal power. With essence flow, Erik could turn everything into sitting ducks.

Though he had no time to search for those beasts, kill them, and steal their powers. Besides, they usually flew in large flocks, so even killing them wasn't as simple as one might assume. Regardless, Ella came first now, and he was close to the lab, anyway.

Three hours into their flight, the Lorogia Mountains came into close view. The mountain range was as tall as it was large, and the surrounding region was enormous.

Mur was many times larger than Mannard, so everything was bigger, even areas.

Ancient peaks stretched toward the sky and obscured the sun, their slopes covered in a forest that had reclaimed much of the old world and that hid uncountable dangers.

Even those were bigger. Somewhere in those mountains lay the remnants of the Silverline Corporation facility.

Erik checked his position. They were almost there. He created thousands of Dark Shapes to scout ahead and avoid thaids that would make him lose too much time. The Chimaeric Demons's formation spread, but they kept surrounding Erik.

Then they got even lower than they already were.

The forest below looked untouched, as if civilization had never existed here. But Erik knew better. Somewhere beneath that canopy lay answers—or at least, the possibility of them.

They touched down in a small clearing; the coordinates placed them within a few hundred meters of their destination. Erik surveyed the area, noting the unnatural silence. There were no birds, no insects, nothing. The forest held its breath.

"We are here…" He said.

[Yeah…]

They moved through the trees, following the faint traces of what might have once been a road.

Vegetation had long since reclaimed it, but the ground remained oddly level, too uniform to be natural.

Then he saw it. A concrete structure jutted from the mountainside. Most of it collapsed but was still recognizable as man-made.

Burnt vines and moss covered most of the surface, but the Silverline Corporation logo remained visible, weathered but intact.

They had found it.

Erik stared at the ruined entrance. Scorch marks blackened the concrete around what had once been a door. The metal frame hung twisted and melted, exposed to extreme heat by whatever his father did.

[Lucius really did a number on this place,] Ella said.

[I'd say he was thorough, but that might be understating it. Did he have something against architecture?]

<He was trying to keep you from the blackguards,> Erik said. <Making sure no one could track where he took you and that no one could use the data here to make another one of you.> He paused.

<Can you imagine what the blackguards would have done if they got the blueprints to make you?>

[Yeah... Some random dude on the street would have been kidnapped and his brain taken out to make another super soldier like you. Just that world domination would have been its end goal.]

<You are damn right…>

Erik stepped closer to examine the damage. The destruction wasn't random. Lucius had targeted specific areas—the entrance, what looked like communication devices, and anything that might have contained data or tracking devices.

<The blackguards must have found this place eventually,> Erik said.

[Oh, I'm sure they did. Probably spent weeks sifting through the rubble, hoping to find something useful. Can you imagine their faces when they realized everything electronic had been melted into slag?]

Erik smiled at the image. The blackguards prided themselves on their intelligence network. Finding a destroyed Silverline facility with no recoverable data must have frustrated them to no end.

<They probably left after that,> he said. <No point guarding ruins, not with the powers they had back then and not with the thaids roaming this area.>

[Especially ruins that look like they went through a small war. Your father made sure the entire entrance section was unusable. Look at those support beams.]

Getting inside would have made a lot of noise, and noise would have attracted thaids the blackguards were not strong enough to face back then.

Based on what Lucius said, the blackguards came here in the millions on Mur, but just a hundred thousand survived for the battle against him after years, at least if they hadn't fled.

Erik followed her observation. The steel beams that should have supported the entrance had been destroyed, causing the collapse. It would take heavy equipment to clear the main entrance.

Not that humans needed it, given their strength. Not completely, at least.

<Good thing we're not looking for documents,> Erik said.

[No, we're looking for memories in a place that's been burned, blasted, and abandoned for decades. Much better odds.]

The resignation in her voice made Erik pause. He understood her doubt. What could have survived Lucius's destruction and decades of abandonment?

<We'll find something,> he said. <Lauren said there was a basement lab; let's see if we can find an entrance. Maybe that was spared by the fire.>