Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 44: Heart of the War Drum (1)

Dragon Raja 3

Anjou closed his notebook and looked around at the men sitting on both sides of the conference table.

Officially, he was said to be attending a glamorous soirée in Paris. In reality, he was in a meeting room 120 meters below the campus. Truth be told, Anjou didn’t want to be in this meeting, especially considering the attire of these people—he felt like standing up and leaving. Their outfits were uniform, yes, essentially a bunch of men in standard uniforms… but why full-body protective suits? They even wore rubber boots, protective goggles, respirators, and portable oxygen tanks.

The room was filled with the heavy sound of breathing through respirators—whoosh—hiss—whoosh—hiss. A dozen pairs of eyes stared at Anjou through the protective goggles.

“Gentlemen, before we begin, I have a question. Why do you always wear biohazard suits every time we meet? It makes me feel like a filthy pathogen, like you don’t even want to breathe the same air as me,” Anjou frowned.

“Principal, please don’t take it personally. Of course, you are not a pathogen. Pathogens are microorganisms and parasites that cause disease, and biologically speaking, you do not belong to that category,” someone corrected Anjou’s scientific ignorance.

“If I’m not a pathogen, why are you wearing oxygen masks?” Anjou tolerated it.

“We’re just allergic to your body odor, Principal. Honestly, in Valt Alheim, you amount to a pollution source. Every time you come down here, we have to crank up the air ionizers to the maximum… but your body odor is simply too strong!” Another person looked Anjou up and down as if examining a stinky gorilla.

“It’s not body odor; it’s my custom-blended cologne!” Anjou endured again.

“Is it cologne? Based on our instrument analysis, it smells like a mix of Turkish kebab, seaweed soup, and moldy cheese… Your taste in cologne is quite unique, Principal,” a third person commented, showcasing his expertise in the domain of smells.

“It’s sandalwood, seaweed, and fresh cigar leaves…” Anjou continued to endure. “But you’re making me sound like a meal.”

“Maybe not the kind of meal that would stimulate anyone’s appetite,” a fourth individual said with regret, as if lamenting an unteachable piece of rotten wood.

Anjou started regretting coming to Valt Alheim for the meeting. Every time he came here, he felt like he was drowning in a sea of madmen—where insanity was the norm, and being sane simply wasn’t an option. The collective name for these maniacs was Gear Department.

Valt Alheim, in Norse mythology, means the Land of Dwarves. The most skilled dwarven craftsmen in the world resided there, forging weapons for the gods. The Gear Department named their underground base Valt Alheim, showing immense pride and self-assurance.

The Gear Department is only an abbreviation; the full name is the Institute of Alchemy and Scientific Engineering Applications. The department’s experts don’t conduct theoretical research. Their work focuses on turning scientific and alchemical theories into practical applications… though ninety percent of those applications end up being explosives. In that sense, the Gear Department should be renamed the Mad Bombers’ Camp.

Despite their obsession with explosives, the Gear Department folks take personal safety very seriously. Their drinking water is distilled and passes through thirteen levels of filtration and purification. The air they breathe undergoes dust removal, ionization, purification, and humidification. As for the food they eat… they only consume junk food, but they’re trying to prove that hamburgers, fries, and cola are healthy.

Above their heads, there are nine layers of different isolation barriers, including a three-meter-thick concrete wall, a fifty-centimeter layer of high-strength armor, and lead-zirconium alloy plates resistant to nuclear attacks. The layers are filled with copious amounts of graphite powder in between. According to the Gear Department’s calculations, even the U.S. military’s most advanced Blu-117 bunker-buster bomb couldn’t break through their barriers. Solar flares can’t affect Valt Alheim, and biological weapons would be completely neutralized by the graphite layers. Even a Dragon King-level enemy would have a hard time doing anything to Valt Alheim unless they unleashed a Yanling on the level of Shiva’s Tandava.

In recent years, the Gear Department had grown more and more paranoid. Their imagined enemies were no longer limited to U.S. military bunker busters and nuclear weapons; they started to consider apocalyptic-level disasters, like asteroids colliding with Earth. After watching the movie 2012 together, the Gear Department began discussing the possibility of glaciers melting and Earth being completely submerged in floods. They then wrote a request to Anjou for additional funding to construct a tenth waterproof isolation layer. This way, even if a deluge engulfed the world, Valt Alheim would remain intact, like Noah’s Ark preserving humanity’s spark.

Anjou jokingly suggested that they dig an emergency tunnel from his office to Valt Alheim, so if the end of the world came, he could roll into Valt Alheim for refuge. But the Gear Department’s director, Arkadura, actually refused, stating, “In a doomsday-level disaster, it’s only right that we take refuge. All of humanity’s civilization is preserved in our brains. Protecting ourselves is protecting humanity’s spark. But what’s the use of you surviving, Principal? You are a leader, and a leader should perish with the majority. After the apocalypse, humanity won’t need a leader; it will need engineers to rebuild civilization. We will propagate like Adam and Eve, teach our descendants how to use advanced tools, teach them logic, philosophy, science, and alchemy, and pass on the flame of civilization from generation to generation. We will also tell them the story of how the Principal sacrificed himself for humanity.”

Anjou could no longer hold back. He patted Director Arkadura on the shoulder, “My dear Director Arkadura Ahmed Muhammad Farooq, I am very touched that while doing your job so well, you also have the foresight to consider being called upon in a time of catastrophe, to save humanity and continue civilization. Even at your age, you’re still willing to take on the responsibility of Adam and Eve, personally ensuring the continuation of humankind! But I think there is still something missing in the plan—after all, as an all-male department… you don’t have an Eve. What kind of Eden would it be with over a hundred Adams?”

The Gear Department was indeed an all-male department because no woman could last even a week in it. There was once a brave woman, valiant as a Valkyrie, who applied to join the Gear Department. She was so strong and courageous, trying her best to act like a madman, eating junk food and playing next-gen mindless games, winning the affection of the entire Gear Department. But she still lost to Director Arkadura in the end. The courageous lady entered Arkadura’s office, waiting for her final interview. A urinal was hung right beside Arkadura’s desk, opposite the sofa she sat on. Arkadura wasn’t sitting behind his desk waiting for her but was standing there, peeing while glaring at his crotch and shouting loudly, “Stay strong! Stay strong! Little Qiang, don’t lose heart! You cannot die! If the world ends someday, we’ll still need you to carry on human genes and the flame of civilization!”

The courageous lady fled in disarray.

Anjou’s words obviously hit Arkadura’s sore spot. He suddenly deflated, held his head, thought for a long time, and finally shook his head in frustration, “It seems even I overlooked something. In that case, the plan to save human civilization has failed.”

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