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The original plan was to act immediately.
So once Rosen had taken control of the squad in front of them, Frieren wasted no time in casting an attack spell to wipe out the guards hiding in the shadows.
In the blink of an eye, every Umbrella security officer on deck was down.
Since their supervisor was under Rosen's control, the rest of the company personnel aboard the cruise ship had no idea what had just happened outside.
"What kind of trick is that?" Fubuki's curiosity got the better of her.
He only said a few words and that old woman was suddenly under his control?
"Think of it as a kind of word-spell," Rosen replied. "It's a forced form of domination, but it doesn't reach as far as the mind."
He called it "divine speech." Using it drained a little of his divine power, but with it, almost anything was possible.
Not just people—even the rising and setting of the sun could, in theory, be bent to it.
Of course, Rosen wasn't anywhere near that level yet. But against an ordinary company executive? That was child's play.
Umbrella had probably prepared countermeasures for a lot of threats. But supernatural powers beyond science? That was the last thing they would have imagined.
"I thought you were more of a warrior type. Didn't expect you to be fluent in this kind of language magic too."Frieren's gaze lingered on Rosen, more intrigued than ever.
This world really was interesting.
"I've seen others use speech-magic like that," Gabriel chimed in, remembering her academy lessons back in Heaven. "But it's rare. Very rare."
She herself had never mastered it. Not that she was unskilled—hardly anyone in all of Heaven could use it.
Sayaka Takagi, Rika Minami, and Shizuka Marikawa exchanged baffled glances. What had just happened in those few seconds?
They couldn't make sense of it, but clearly, Saeko's friends had turned the tables.
The executive, Anna, obediently answered Rosen's first question.
To everyone's surprise, this cruise ship wasn't Umbrella's headquarters at all.
The real HQ was buried beneath a manor in Austria, where most of the company's personnel and resources were concentrated. This ship was just one of many outposts.
Still, Anna really was a member of the board.
The official who had overseen the bioweapons in Tokonosu had been her subordinate.
Chasing maximum profit, Anna had hidden the group's activities from the rest of the board, hoping to claim all the credit herself.
Instead, her greed had backfired. Rosen had crushed her without effort.
And under his questioning, the group learned something even worse.
At the bottom of the ship was a nuclear warhead.
If anything went wrong, the bomb would automatically detonate, taking everyone down with it.
The revelation chilled everyone but Frieren and Rosen.
They knew what a nuke was. If it went off here, they'd be vaporized in an instant, nothing left but ash.
Even Fubuki, ranked among the strongest A-Class heroes, broke into a nervous sweat. Surviving the epicenter of a nuclear blast? Impossible.
The others didn't even need to think about it.
Rosen wasn't sure if he himself could withstand a nuclear strike, but something in his gut told him he might.
But even if he lived, he couldn't protect the others. That would make the mission a total failure.
"What's a nuclear bomb?" Frieren asked, watching their frightened faces with innocent confusion.
"I don't know all the details," Gabriel said, shrugging. "Just know that if it goes off, the entire city we came from will be blown straight into the sky."
She shot Anna a scornful look. "This woman's insane."
"Calling her insane is almost flattering," Rosen muttered, shaking his head.
"If you girls have more questions, ask away."
And they did. Most wanted to know what had triggered this biohazard outbreak in the first place.
Anna's answer stunned them.
Umbrella hadn't originally planned to destroy the world.
But after the Raccoon City incident, their stock plummeted. Governments around the world united to pressure the company, pushing it to the brink of collapse.
The board, enraged at being cornered, decided if the world wouldn't let them live, they'd drag the whole world down instead. They released the virus globally, planning to thrive amid the apocalypse, gather data, and perfect their research until they achieved their original goals.
Decades later, once the zombies had starved and died out, Umbrella would step forward as the new Adam and Eve, ruling the Earth.
"..."
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