Dragon Raja 2; Chapter 17: A Birthday Cake is the Grave of Youth (6)

Dragon Raja 2

Footsteps echoed sharply. The control room door was shoved open, and in walked Schneider, dragging Guderian. These two spineless cowards had left Manstein alone to hold the fort, and there was no reason to think they’d come back to help.

Guderian looked like he’d been pulled out of bed, still wearing a Pikachu-patterned sleeping cap. It was very much in line with his sense of style.

“What happened?” Manstein snatched the cap off Guderian’s head and tossed it aside but directed the question at Schneider. Guderian looked half-asleep, wearing an expression that said, “This has nothing to do with me; I’d rather go back to bed.”

“We lost a piece of information in China,” Schneider’s voice was low and hoarse, enough to make one’s skin crawl.

“Ha!” Manstein scoffed, thinking to himself, Losing a piece of information in China? Is that all? You two, one of you wearing a Pikachu sleeping cap, went to sleep while the other used the excuse of revising a paper, leaving me alone here for twelve whole hours. In those twelve hours, I’ve cleaned up after seven of your operational teams stationed all over the world, paid out a total of $120,000 in cleanup costs, prevented a gunfight, and am in the process of dealing with a fabricated nuclear crisis. And now you rush in to tell me you’ve lost some information? You could’ve lost your wife, and I wouldn’t care… Not that you’d even have a wife with that widower’s face…

 With a loud smack, Schneider slammed a file onto the table.

Manstein caught a glimpse of the dark red seal on the cover. His weary mind, dulled by overtime work, suddenly felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over it, making him instantly alert.

The seal’s design depicted a giant serpent holding its tail in its mouth, forming a circle, with scales vividly detailed. In the middle were the bold black letters “SS.”

“Top-level classification…” Manstein murmured.

Tasks at Cassell College, like bloodline ranks, were divided into different levels. The priority levels were ranked from A to F in descending order. Special tasks that surpassed all levels were designated as S-Rank, which rarely occurred. The “Bronze Plan” mission against Dragon King Norton at the Three Gorges Reservoir was temporarily upgraded from A-level to S-level.

But SS-Rank was an exception among exceptions—not necessarily more dangerous than S-level, but extremely special. Such tasks were issued directly by the School Board, bypassing Principal Anjou.

The nuclear crisis just now had been classified as an A-level mission, already elevated to the diplomatic level. And this piece of information had an SS-level classification… What information could be so critical that it had those shadowy members of the School Board losing their calm? Could it be some scandal involving the School Board?

“Yes, it’s something the School Board wants,” Schneider nodded.

Manstein nodded and clapped his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen, let us speak in private.”

Everyone else in the central control room stood up and left in single file. As the financial expert passed by Manstein, he asked in a low voice, “Should we sell in phases?”

“That’s not important right now; make your own decision,” Manstein waved him off, tossing the $1.2 billion deal to the financial expert to handle. Right now, there was only one matter of importance to him—this SS-level mission. When it appeared, everything else took a backseat.

“You can’t leave!” Manstein grabbed Guderian, who was trying to slip out at the end of the line.

“You said you wanted to talk privately,” Guderian scratched his head. “I don’t understand any of this stuff.”

“But you’re the on-duty professor,” Manstein sighed. “An SS-level mission is not something any of us can decide on alone. With the principal absent, the on-duty professors must make the decision together. You need to be here.”

In the large central control room, only the three of them remained. The door closed tightly. No one dared eavesdrop on a secret mission from the School Board. Though the college had a liberal atmosphere, the rules were still strict.

“What is it?” Manstein asked.

“You’d better not ask,” Schneider replied. “You shouldn’t know about this at all. It was supposed to go directly through the Execution Bureau’s process, but because of an unexpected incident, we had to inform you.”

“With a mission of this level, the Execution Bureau should’ve gone all out. How could anything go wrong?” Manstein asked.

“We did go all out, formulating a detailed plan. We successfully obtained the information and had our best personnel escort it back to headquarters, but the item was lost on the way.” Schneider gestured.

The projected image changed to show a glass-domed building shaped like a turtle shell, resembling an airport waiting hall, but completely deformed. The high-strength aluminum alloy beams were twisted like pretzels. The simulation illustrated the process of the disaster: as the ground shook, the beams twisted inexplicably, as if gripped by a pair of massive hands. Thousands upon thousands of glass panels detached, plummeting downwards.

“I’ve seen that hall before, it’s the South Train Station!” Guderian suddenly said.

“Yes, you’ve seen this building, in Lu Mingfei’s hometown. When you went for the interview, this new station was still under construction, and it was just put into trial use this summer. The glass dome was made of 3,200 high-strength glass panels, and the aluminum alloy frame was designed to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 8, using the most advanced architectural technology. But this morning, Beijing time, it was destroyed in a magnitude 3 earthquake. The 3,200 glass panels fell vertically, like 3,200 blades slicing down at once,” Schneider paused, “and at that moment, our operative carrying the information was waiting for the train.”

“He died?” Manstein asked.

“He was cut to pieces,” Schneider said softly. “It was Raymond.”

Deploying Raymond, codenamed “Deep Cod,” showed the Execution Bureau’s caution. Only elite operatives in the Execution Bureau had their own code names—both as recognition and to prevent accidental name leaks.

Raymond graduated from Cassell College’s Mechanical Department in 20XX, an A-rank operative whose Yanling was sequence number 28, “Solar Flare.” He could radiate light at an intensity of up to 4,000 lumens within his domain. The intense light couldn’t kill enemies, but Raymond’s domain was like a 50-meter-diameter giant incandescent bulb. Any opponent trying to approach him was stepping inside a light bulb where they couldn’t even open their eyes. This seemingly low-level Yanling was regarded as an absurdly strong “bug-level” power. Yet Raymond died, without even having the chance to use “Solar Flare.” His opponent had no eyes; it was the 3,200 pieces of glass falling from the sky.