Transcendent Gene
Chapter 250: Scenario Quest [8]

Chapter 250: Scenario Quest [8]

Gio explored the room with an expression too sour to be described merely as somber. There was nothing undecipherable about what he was seeing.

’It’s a hidden lab that was used for experimentation.’

It existed below the City Hall. Of that, Gio no longer had a doubt. The staircase was not an inconsistency.

’The scene alone is enough to tell me what happened here. Those things on the tables can only exist because they’re related to the quest.’

If it weren’t for them, it would have been more difficult to make an assertion about what this lab was used for.

’Humans weren’t at this level right after the Forthcoming. This kind of research wasn’t shown to the public until the 2700s, and even illegal versions of it couldn’t happen until a little later than that.’

He walked through the lab and approached the tables in question, carefully touching the objects present on the tables.

Well, rather than objects, they were corpses. None of them were whole, but they were not uniformly broken. Each of the corpses was missing different aspects of itself, those aspects replaced by gruesome, inhuman lumps of flesh.

They were chimeras from an era before humanity even understood how to study the monsters’ bodies properly.

’It’s clear how the city hall went down. All it took was a single success for them to understand why this was a terrible idea.’

One chimera of a human and monster that was overrun by the bloodlust of the latter race was enough to eradicate a city of ordinary humans.

’This kind of experimentation didn’t start anywhere near here in the history we know. What I’ve seen in the books for my entire life is that this kind of research, both legal and illegal, started in the 2700s.’

There were many normal reasons for the information to have been hidden. Even if it was a matter of mere jealousy between competitors, it wouldn’t be something this Scenario Quest brought attention to.

There was something more important behind the burying of this particular research.

’It’ll be somewhere here. This is the main lab, so I should be able to find–’

"Gio, you’re not dead, are you?"

Serene’s voice came from the top of the stairs.

"I’m not!" He yelled back.

Not too long later, she arrived at the vault door.

"There isn’t much up there other than some beakers and lab equipment. They’re set up like they were full at some point, but I don’t think their contents were recreated in the terraforming," she said as she walked towards him.

"But there was something interesting in the notes I found. There was documentation about a whole lot of stuff and all of it looked important, but..."

She held out a small booklet with a brown leather cover that was worn and stained in blood.

He took it and flipped through its pages. He approached it with only mild curiosity until the moment his mind comprehended what his eyes were seeing.

His hands stopped, freezing on a random page of the booklet.

"Recognize it?" Serene asked.

She didn’t know what it was. It was an odd runic language that looked nothing like the languages from Earth’s past or present. The dialects spoken on Mars and Venus also weren’t anything like this.

If she knew the language on the pages, Gio would have been much more concerned.

After all, even he had only seen it a few times.

’It’s not the same language from the tower.’

The runes used there were more archaic and felt divine.

’It’s also not really the same as the lettering in VNIR’s legacy.’

It was closer to that kind of text, but it was more complicated.

The last time Gio saw this language was an accidental encounter in his past life near the end of his time on Frontier.

Everything he thought he was worried about became much worse in an instant. Every other option was ruled out, leaving only the one he wanted to avoid.

’This...’

He closed the book and handed it back to Serene.

"It’s weird. Let’s keep that with us in case Neriah and Shiro find something that helps us explain it."

"Good idea. Did you find anything down here?"

"There’s some stuff, but I haven’t figured out why it’s important yet. Want to help?"

"Sure. I don’t think there’s anything left to look for up there anyway."

Serene walked ahead of him and entered the vault. Gio followed soon after, pretending like nothing was wrong.

’...it can’t be anything else. That is a language that belongs to the Monster Race.’

His mind was in turmoil.

’It’s not just about humans experimenting on monster corpses. That booklet is too much to be the result of studying. That was provided to them by a monster. They were working with them. There’s no other reason for the Scenario Quest to frame this as a truth of the world that was hidden.’

The relationship between monsters and humans was much deeper than Gio or anyone realized. This realm was forcing them to face that truth.

If monsters were involved in the stories of humanity’s very first achievements...just how deeply had they ingrained themselves in society?

How dangerous were the asura clans that humans never took as seriously as they needed to?

’Everything else aside, this is a good lead.’

Gio finally knew what they needed to primarily investigate.

Now, he could only hope that Neriah and Shiro didn’t find anything that complicated matters even further.

***

Neriah and Shiro didn’t have quite as structured of a plan as Gio. They also went searching for places of significance, but without discovering anything obvious like the City Hall, they were forced to choose a different route.

They had to fight twice on the way there, but they eventually reached the tallest building in the city and entered through its front doors.

They figured they were going to find a regular office building that they’d have to ignore.

Luckily, that was not the case.

The main reception area was massive enough to be bigger than the entire office space for a small company. On the far wall, there was a logo that looked like a DNA helix made of stars.

[VITA]

Those four letters were written under the helix in large, stylized text.

It was not an unfamiliar name.

"Vita...?" Shiro muttered, his eyes widening in realization.

"This office belongs to that company? That really famous one from the old days?"

Neriah nodded slowly.

"Yes...that should be the case. I think we stumbled upon a goldmine."

Verita’s Nest, or Vita for short.

It was a company, yet not a company. It was an irreplaceable piece of history that shaped the future that humanity currently enjoyed.

Verita’s Nest had a legacy as long as the rule of some nations. The company was created fifty years before the Forthcoming and was considered budding at that time, but it became humanity’s savior in the following years.

In the years of and immediately following the Forthcoming, Verita’s Nest created the very first machines that could survive in the new world and helped humanity back onto its feet. They innovated and continued innovating for decades which turned into centuries.

A five-hundred-year legacy. Verita’s Nest was the reason the Strata were connected properly. They were the reason behind hypertraining technology, several of the most important energy systems used across the world, and even the original development of Gene Sequences and Bloodline Sequences.

If one had to choose a single person to label as humanity’s best, it would be difficult to choose between the various heroes that rose and fell throughout the ages.

However, if it was a matter of choosing the best "influence," then it would not be any kingdom or nation. It would not be any guild or group of powerful Sequencers. Verita’s Nest, Vita, was the only real option.

"We learned about them more than a few times, but never in detail. Vita fell...when? I remember it was in the 2960s at some point," Neriah muttered to herself.

It was a shame that they didn’t live in the same era as that great company. Neriah couldn’t imagine what it was like to see new innovations on a global scale every month like it was nothing.

They started by moving up the building to look for clues. On most of its floors, there wasn’t anything for them to see. Most of the lab spaces were empty of anything useful and the office spaces were even more pointless. Digital records could no longer be accessed, so physical file rooms were their first goal.

They found several, through which they learned more about the state of the world at the time. The various projects being worked on were all present in the history books, considering how Vita never tried to hide its activities from the public.

As it existed in the eyes of the public, there was nothing wrong with the Verita’s Nest they saw.

Until, like Gio and Serene, they found a path to the world below.

There were no staircases leading to that area. It could only be accessed by a single elevator. Neriah sensed the emptiness in the earth below them when they neared it. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to find.

The elevator was at the bottom when Shiro blasted open the way to the shaft. They jumped down, landing on its cabin before falling down into a hidden laboratory.

Gio and Serene found evidence of humans researching monsters to a far greater degree than they should have been in this time period. More than that, they realized that humans had been trying to create chimeras through vile methods by combining human bodies with monster bodies.

That was the same kind of research that eventually created Gene and Bloodline Sequences.

However, the latter was done for the improvement of humanity.

What Gio saw was more similar to what happened to asuras when they swore their souls over to monsters.

When Neriah and Shiro entered the laboratory, they found the opposite side of the same coin.

Vita’s research into Genes and Bloodlines that was being carried out for the betterment of humanity; at least a portion of it was taking place in this lab.

The research that could still be recovered from within...

It showcased a line of thinking and experimentation that the current humanity had forgotten long ago...

...and a language that Serene discovered around the same time.

It was the tongue of a species that did not and could not exist on Earth.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.