Book 6 Chapter 9.6 - Only Darkness is Eternal
Only a place like Maca City with its population of fifty thousand could truly be called a city, completely different from the borderland territories. Even though there were large amounts of slum housing, at least there were orderly roads, and even sewers dug up. There were designated areas for trash as well, moreover dealt with at regular intervals.
A small brook ran through Maca City, the northern river shore where the viceroy residence resided. The wealthy district surrounded the viceroy residence, built along the river.
Maca City didn’t have walls. As the borderland region where Sun Empire’s viceroy resided, this city was surrounded and protected by several dozen suzerain territories, so it wouldn’t directly suffer the attack of a powerful enemy. In Sun Empire where everything was divided up based on ability levels, if there really was an enemy not even the suzerains and assistants could withstand, then no matter how tall or thick a wall was, it still wouldn’t do anything.
At the northern river shore was a close to hundred meter tall, grand stepped pyramid building. It was extremely massive, forming a stark contrast with the surrounding short buildings. This was Sun Empire’s borderland Viceroy Murray’s viceroy residence.
The pyramid style viceroy manor was entirely orange in color. During times when the sky was brighter, even if the sun didn’t fully reveal itself from behind the clouds of radiation, it would still shine dazzlingly like a raging flame, as if it was illuminated by blazing sunlight. Meanwhile, the inside of the viceroy manor was large and spacious, design outstanding, displaying an architectural skill that surpassed even that of the olden era. Murray resided at the top of the pyramid, below that the viceroy’s office system. The middle floors were where the viceroy’s guards were stationed, the lower floors where the garage, storehouse, and factory were. Beneath the ground was where the emergency shelter and secret projects remained.
Narrow roads extended out from Maca City one after another, winding towards the empire’s central region.
Unlike most of Sun Empires’ high status aristocrats and suzerains, northern Viceroy Murray was a pure black man. From certain perspectives, his face could still be considered handsome, but it always carried an intense smile. Meanwhile, the spider web-like scar at the side of his face added quite a bit of malevolence. With Sun Empires level of science and technology, eliminating this type of scar was easily done, but in the empire’s high levels, no one would do such a thing. In the empire, scars were viewed as the medals of men. For the sake of obtaining a perfect scar, there were even those who worked as scar carvers, while those good at the craft even received considerable incomes.
Even in Sun Empire with widespread abilities, Murray with his 230 centimeter height still towered above most Combat Domain ability users. Murray was standing before the long window this early morning, his eyes narrowed, watching Maca as it just started to come alive. This was a city full of vigor, and he liked things with vigor. The muscles on his exposed upper body were sharp and bulky, the endless training year round making sure that every fiber was at its peak state, flowing and powerful. The empire’s traditional multicolored long dress surrounded his lower body, his bare feet stepping on the uncovered rock floor.
Murray liked the feeling of looking down, especially this feeling of looking down on most of the city from close to a hundred meters above. This gave him the feeling of controlling all life. Each time he felt this, it would slightly alleviate the gloominess in his mind.
Murray’s lineage was noble, or at the very least, half of his lineage was extremely noble, while the remaining half wasn’t too bad. However, purely because of his skin color, he who had a rare nine levels of abilities was kicked out from the empire’s core hierarchy and was seemingly exiled to this savage and primitive northern region to serve as a viceroy. Whenever he thought of this, especially when he thought about those individuals in the imperial capital who would snicker endlessly because of it, Murray would feel a great murderous intent. Meanwhile, he was someone who immediately took action on thoughts, so it was unknown just how many slaves under Murray had died for mysterious reasons, even free residents and nobles losing their lives at times. Murray had never concerned himself with the number of slaves that died. Those from the native tribes were quite good at breeding. Many natives starving to death each year from a lack of food, so when the number of slaves became much fewer, they could just get more from the forest depths. In Murray’s eyes, within the primitive rainforest that covered several hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, there might be a few black-skinned monkeys behind every tree, an inexhaustible supply of slaves.
However, Murray also had to admit that being a viceroy had its benefits. For example, the expressions on those domineering suzerains’ faces whenever they saw the conversion price list would always make him feel extremely pleased. There were many methods for Murray to feel pleased, the problem laid in the fact that there was only one method to make Murray happy each day. Meanwhile, guessing these ways became a type of gamble for the suzerains, or perhaps a game of intelligence that exceeded their IQs.
However, there was one thing that was certain. The more unhappy these suzerains were, the more happy Murray would become.
The area of the pyramid’s upper floor exceeded three thousand square meters, this floor fifteen meters tall. In this extremely vast space, Murray built a massive private palace. The palace was rich with a great southern style, brightly colored, mural paints, bone tools, and all types of tribal masks decorating the walls. The ground was made from rough and uneven rock, the dark reddish-brown luster and unique tactile feel all arranged to Murray’s preferences. As the borderland region’s viceroy, the area Murray was currently in was a three hundred square meter scenery viewing hall. Before his eyes was a 150 centimeter tall window that stretched horizontally for over ten meters. The so-called windows were actually openings directly carved out from the pyramid outer wall’s giant rock, full of a rough and savage feeling. This type of style was appreciated by much of the empire’s higher level, these people feeling that this savage feeling allowed men to feel more wild.
Four young ladies wearing light muslin clothes quietly entered the scenery viewing hall while carrying copper basins and bath towels. They were all bare-footed, noiseless as they moved on the stone surface. The young ladies crowded around Murray, removed the long dress, and then picked up the copper basin full of perfumed oil, pouring it over Murray’s body, and then used special ivory boards to scrub the dark, shining, and study steel-like skin. The fragrance was made through a special ancient method, rumored to make one’s muscles tougher and more powerful.
The young ladies had to use ladders to reach Murray’s shoulders. Their division of work was precise, well-coordinated, technique skilled as the sparkling oils were silently applied to Murray’s body. From the distance, it was as if four swans were dancing about a black reef.
At this time, a slight vibration could be felt from the ground. Murray knew that it signified the activation of the lower floor’s five breeding tank systems. These five life breeding systems were Sun Empire’s most advanced third generation mass-produced system, able to produce all different types of creatures from properly mixed biological data. Their main use is to cultivate human soldiers with specific abilities, for example, most of the soldiers defending the viceroy’s residence came from these five sets of equipment, the secondary use to prepare various biological weapons. Meanwhile, aside from the production of guards, the five systems’ main purpose was to create house pets Murray was fond of, or to provide him with large beasts to hunt.
Sun Empire was lagging behind in science and technology compared to the rest of the world, but the biochemistry field was abnormally developed. The third generation breeding systems could produce a two meter tall robust mature human in six months, and if a year’s time was used, it could produce a several dozen ton, ancient dinosaur-like colossus. Control modules, operating system, breeding tanks, these types of technologies all greatly surpassed that of the olden era. Meanwhile, the culture fluid and biological templates were the empire’s core secrets. Even with Murray’s authority, he still had to purchased finished goods from the imperial city to use in the five systems.
Murray understood clearly that these five systems’ true use was in mass-producing human soldiers with four or five levels of ability. Aside from being unable to reproduce, they weren’t much different from ordinary people, and their effective lifespans reached twenty years! Meanwhile, in the empire’s core region, there were a few fourth generation breeding systems that could stably produce soldiers with around six levels of abilities, occasionally producing seventh level soldiers. This was the main reason why Sun Empire expanded more and more with each passing day, the reason why the core region could control over ten million square kilometers of land!
However, Murray didn’t feel that using such a precious strategic resource to produce beasts to hunt was wrong in any way. Further north was the great sea, everything between Maca City and the great sea poor, savage, land that had practically nothing, not a single decent opponent to be found. Maybe the blood-sucking fly that could propagate the deadly black fever could be counted as one? Since there were no enemies, what was the point in creating expensive concocted soldiers?
In the eyes of Maca City’s residents, the pyramid would forever be splendid and brilliant. Even if it was night, expensive electricity was used to power bright lights, making it red like a flaming torch.
Everything looked just that beautiful.