Warlord – Chapter 33
Jerry kept his head down as he led Aaron and his men to the monitoring room of the base. Aaron had number of people under his command. He had an assistant who was expert at processing information who began to collect the records and related information from the system of the base.
Crimson Knight had the rights to have their own private armies. The size of the army directly reflected the strength of the Crimson Knight. Aaron had the financial support of his family so he was able to maintain an army size of hundred.
His army consisted of 90 ordinary soldiers, an expert on information processing, a tracking expert, a biochemical expert and seven second-order ability users.
Aaron needed to pay 100,000 every month only to maintain the daily needs of his army. It didn't include the fees and costs for equipment maintenance, salary and so on. Aaron knew Crimson Knights who had private armies numbering in thousands of people so the army that he had wasn't much of a big deal.
Normally, an army of a hundred people would be a threat to a small or medium-sized colony. Aaron's third-order elemental ability isn't included in that combat power.
Both Council and Aaron felt that his strength was enough to investigate the 'anarchist.'
Jerry was very humble as he reported everything that had happened on that day to the red-haired youth. Jerry's body was slightly trembling at the end of the report. He felt that he was standing close to an arsenal which was about to explode any moment. The ability users from the element domain always exuded their traits from their bodies. It was plausible that Jerry was able to stand by Aaron for so long without fainting.
Every ability user had their own unique style. Only the ability users above tenth order could close their breath and seem like an ordinary person. Aaron was far from reaching that level and he had never intended to restrain himself. He was proud of what he was. According to Aaron only the cowards who were afraid of challenge would try to close their breath.
The assistant completed his work. Hans had messed up with the power supply of the base the moment he had entered the base. As a result most of the monitoring devices hadn't recorded anything. Only the equipment that had spare batteries were able to capture the video.
There were only three devices that had recorded Hans and Zero's battle. The assistant sorted, edited and finally formed a complete video. He transferred the final work into a portable tablet and showed to Aaron.
The video was 1 minute and 23 seconds long. Two thirds of the video was about the chase. The last picture which showed them depart the base was deeply imprinted in Aaron's mind.
The biochemical expert reached the base by afternoon. He was responsible for extracting the blood sample of the anarchist from the pub. Although Jerry had kept the place as is but the blood of the target had soldified and the cells had gone through necrosis. In short they were useless for research.
“We will go to wilderness. Karen show us what you can…” Aaron's eyes fell on a short-thin man.
Karen was the tracking expert under Aaron's command. He was a second order ability user and a perfect hunter. He was particularly good at tracing and tracking.
The battle between Zero and Hans had happened a week ago so the traces of the battle had almost disappeared. However Karen was able to find the locations of battle by sense of smell, debris and other clues. They moved to several locations. The residual blood left from Hans's body was useless in those locations too.
They came to the location where Zero had used concentrated alcohol to burn Hans. The old tree by the location was charred.
Aaron picked up the glass that was left beside the tree. He lips curled up into a smile.
“Interesting fella.” Aaron gently said as he referred to Zero.
Karen had found lots of traps as they moved from one battle location to another. Karen concluded that the soldier named Zero didn't have the strength to confront the 'anarchist' on a face to face battle. However Zero had used traps to kill the monster. Moreover Karen classified the traps into different categories. He decided that Zero had used this traps not to kill the 'anarchist' but trying to find out its weaknesses.
“High temperature flames.” Karen sniffed the ground and then gently licked the sand: “Concentrated alcohol."
He took out a bullet from his pocket and pointed to the glass on the ground: “The soldier must have used some way to make the anarchist to pick the bottle of alcohol. Afterwards he had shot the bottle from a distance. He is a good sniper. The purpose of this was to check if it was possible to burn the target with flames. The plan should have failed as it the target had moved towards east. The target hadn't suffered a fatal blow.. Its speed of movement hadn't changed…”
“Keep tracking.” Aaron frowned.
IT seems that the task wouldn't be as easy as he had imagined. However Aaron remembered Zero's name in his mind. Aaron thought that Zero fought more like a hunter than a soldier. In all locations Karen had found a bullet or two. But it seems all those bullets had given the target varying degrees of injuries.
It was proof that Zero was an amazing sniper. Objectively speaking, if the anarchist didn't have some kind of strange ability it should have died by these traps. Almost any third-order monster would die.
"When did this small base recruit such a powerful sniper?" Aaron whispered. There was no one to answer his question.
He had asked Jerry and the latter had said that Zero had left the base not long after Hans. Aaron would like to recruit such a sniper to serve under him. He was lacking a good sniper. Zero was very suitable for this role without a doubt.