After leaving the ward, Aaron glanced at the doctor in the small clinic and sighed slightly.
Upon arriving at this clinic, he had used hypnosis magecraft to hypnotize the doctor.
According to the intelligence he got from the doctor, this doctor was currently single and didn't have many friends.
*Mm, hypnotizing people everywhere I go... I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to the villain role.*
*And now I've also swiped his ID card, other related documents, and passport before temporarily leaving the clinic.*
*Anyway, I have to come back to pick up the others. When that time comes, I'll return these things to this bro.*
After signaling the other party to suspend business and leaving a large amount of instant noodles at the counter, Aaron immediately used [Fog of War] to leave the clinic.
Europe and the Americas were the territories of Schicksal and Anti-Entropy respectively. Running to the Far East wasn't suitable right now either—who knew if the Immortal Blades were still lingering there.
*Thinking carefully, besides finding a city in Shenzhou, do I really have to find some remote corner to squat in?*
Upon leaving, Aaron instantly thought of two places.
One place was Oceania. If he remembered correctly, there was an unlucky soul squatting over there.
Wendy. An active A-rank Valkyrie who had the chance to become the fourth S-rank Valkyrie, but ended up becoming a test subject for the artificial Herrscher experiment due to Theresa's recommendation.
Although she kept her life because her control over Honkai energy was far superior to the other test subject, [Lin], the stability of the Gem of Desire in her legs resulted in this gifted girl becoming a permanently disabled [Storage Container].
The other place was Singapore, the main battlefield of the *Moon Shadow* arc.
In the future, Cocolia would meet with the traitor from Schicksal's Third Research Institute, Dr. Magi, over there.
Of course, that wasn't the main point. The main point was that what Cocolia actually wanted to do wasn't to analyze the Herrscher of Death's core, the [Gem of Serenity], brought by Dr. Magi, but to do something even more radical.
Although Otto's process for conducting artificial Herrscher experiments wasn't very humane, he at least kept the experiments within a certain range by 'hoodwinking ignorant Valkyries' and 'pressuring other branch heads to recommend test subjects'.
Even if the experiments went wrong, the number of victims wouldn't be large.
Not that Aaron wanted to praise Otto's attitude of not treating Valkyries as humans, but compared to Cocolia's operations, Otto's actions were actually much 'gentler'.
Unlike Otto, the helmsman of Schicksal, although Cocolia had seized ME Corp and had much more ample funds than before, she was ultimately just nouveau riche.
She had money, but she lacked Schicksal's five hundred years of foundation.
As a man who truly possessed 'Shocking Wisdom', Otto had become a semi-shut-in who preferred gaming to working over these five hundred years because he really had the capability to slack off.
During these five hundred years, Otto had turned Schicksal into an organization with sufficient foundation and a semi-automated operating system. In terms of intelligence, Schicksal also had an intelligence agency managed by several A-rank Valkyries.
Cocolia had none of these things. So compared to Otto's method of [finding unlucky souls within the organization to send to their deaths], Cocolia chose a simple and crude method.
Finding suitable test subjects required a lot of money and time. Compared to that slow method, Cocolia chose a very violent approach.
Find a place, put the Gem of Serenity into liquid Honkai crystals, and trigger a large-scale artificial Honkai Eruption in Singapore.
This simple and crude method indeed had a significant probability of cultivating a genuine Herrscher; even Otto judged that Cocolia had a chance to complete this plan.
But as the price, the nation of Singapore, which was only one-third the size of Nagazora City, would likely explode instantly, and the more than five million people inside would die on the spot.
A year or two before transmigrating, Aaron had read a novel. According to the discussions of the guys in there, as a leading world economy, if Singapore really blew up on the spot, the impact on the world would be much larger than imagined.
If a financial crisis really broke out then, many countries economically linked to Singapore would experience some turmoil.
In other words, if the Fourth Honkai Eruption broke out in Singapore, the subsequent impact would far exceed the Third Honkai Eruption.
*Sigh, incomprehensible. Why exactly did Cocolia choose this place to start an Impact? Truly incomprehensible.*
*This doesn't benefit the ME Corp in her hands either.*
These two locations weren't actually safe. If anything, one was more dangerous than the other.
The Oceania Branch... going there now felt like delivering himself to the door with no benefits. Aaron rejected this location just three seconds after thinking about it.
But Singapore... he felt he had to go squat nearby.
Although Cocolia had taken the bait, who knew when she would confirm Bronya's whereabouts and come here to slack off?
If her plan in Singapore went more smoothly, Cocolia might very likely execute her [Fourth Honkai Eruption] plan first before coming to trouble Aaron.
Although Aaron didn't know what trump card that old hag had to make her confident enough to take down the Herrscher of Death, from a results-oriented perspective, if Cocolia came to find trouble with him after controlling the Herrscher of Death, her odds of winning would indeed be much higher.
Plus, Otto was actually fueling the flames of Cocolia's plan, so Schicksal's attention would also be drawn away by Cocolia significantly.
If he squatted near there, he might be discovered by Schicksal, but considering even Siegfried managed to infiltrate it, Schicksal's attention was actually focused on the Anti-Entropy radicals.
Finally, to say something politically incorrect.
That place, Singapore, was indeed more worth paying attention to than other places.
If this place blew up, other places would be significantly affected. And according to the plot, the Singapore gov planned to join forces with Cocolia, which led to such an outcome.
There was a high probability of Cocolia appearing in this place. So as long as he squatted nearby, even if Cocolia didn't come to his door, Aaron could find a time to knock on hers.
Whether to prevent the Fourth Honkai Eruption from happening prematurely or to defeat Cocolia and seize the power in her hands to plan for his future actions, squatting near Singapore was a good choice.
With these thoughts in mind, Aaron took the bro's ID, went to the airport, and flew directly to Malaysia.
Then in Malaysia, Aaron hypnotized another unlucky soul, figured out his address, and casually took his various documents.
After transferring multiple times, Aaron finally arrived in Singapore by relying on hypnosis all the way.
Of course, he had used Shambhala to record the local coordinates at every place he arrived.
Worst case scenario, if Schicksal's people came killing, and he didn't want to fight, he could directly use the Great Teleportation Spell to fly to the next city.
"Finally arrived..."
Glancing at the Royal Hotel before him, Aaron exhaled deeply.
Physically, he indeed possessed superhuman strength, but mentally...
He had only obtained extraordinary power for a few months; naturally, his mindset couldn't have completed a thorough transformation so quickly.
Flying here and there all the way until now, Aaron felt exhausted in both body and mind.
After activating Shambhala's ability again to record the coordinates, Aaron found a corner to close his eyes and rest.
After resting for a few hours, he still had to return to the places he had arrived at before.
And he couldn't return by the original route; he had to scramble the route.
After all, if he advanced along a route like A→B→C→D, and then returned from Singapore following D→C→B→A, if Schicksal really investigated that far, they could totally calculate Aaron's final destination based on the time difference.
But if he returned the documents following an order like D→A→C→B, it would at least disrupt the train of thought of Schicksal's investigators to a certain extent.
As for why return the documents instead of going directly back to Soukai City—those unlucky souls hadn't offended him.
Stealing their documents was already unkind; not returning them after use would make him a total scumbag.
Besides, if Aaron just walked away, and later a flaw was exposed because the documents weren't returned... who would he cry to?
He didn't have the setting of 'Shocking Wisdom'; he could only act a bit more carefully in the places he noticed.
And ultimately, it was still a lack of power.
If his power was strong enough to make even Otto afraid to touch him, why would he care about all this?
Forget playing such a cowardly game of hide-and-seek; if he ran to Schicksal and gave Otto two big slaps in the face, Otto would probably have to grit his teeth and swallow it.
*Power... sigh, after sorting out my current power, do I still have to wait for the opportunity to arise?*
[Stop rushing. With your current state, this System doesn't even know if you'll capsize massively in the next dungeon.]
[And frankly—it's only been four days since you transmigrated to this world. Of the three days, you shopped on the first day, fought the Herrscher of Thunder and a Pseudo-Herrscher on the second, fought four S-ranks and a Herrscher on the third, and flew around everywhere on the fourth.]
[This System realized that when making the template for you back then, it might have gotten a skill wrong. You, this isn't Battle Continuation; maybe I should have given you Iron Will instead.]
*...It hasn't reached that exaggerated level, right?*
*And Iron Will isn't that kind of setting, is it?*
[Anyway, go find a mirror and look at yourself.]
[Not to the point of having dark circles, but at least there's visible haggardness.]
*Give me a break, I'm a Magnetic Field Master. Would I collapse over such a small thing?*
[Don't you know how haggard Bai Junlang looked when watching The Simpsons? This System won't waste words; take it easy yourself.]
*Tch, it's not that exaggerated.*
Taking out a mirror from the storage space, Aaron looked at his face and shook his head with a bitter smile.
*Ha, I do look a bit tired, but... so what?*
*Compared to the hard days in the past, this kind of life is already very comfortable.*
*But, compared to the past me, the current me is ultimately still struggling for survival.*
*Even though I've obtained powerful strength, in this aspect, the goal and essence of my actions haven't changed at all.*
*I am anxious.*
*Anxious because of the descent of Finality several years later.*
*Before, I didn't have power, so I could squat somewhere and wait to die.*
*But now that I have power, if I don't think of ways to solve these problems and make things go better... then what use is this power to me?*
*Self-preservation... heh, on the day Finality descends, who can escape that calamity?*
*Sure enough...*
*Sometimes knowing too much doesn't necessarily make one happy.*
.............................
Schicksal HQ
Inside Schicksal HQ, Otto Apocalypse recalled the report submitted by his subordinate, Rita Rossweisse, and began organizing his thoughts using this intelligence.
Yesterday, after the Immortal Blades capsized in Nagazora City, Otto chose to have the Immortal Blades return to Schicksal HQ to report immediately.
According to Durandal's direct report at the time, although the opponent chose to attack Schicksal members directly, strictly speaking, that person didn't harbor killing intent toward the two of them.
Compared to killing intent and hostility, that feeling was more like a 'dissuasion', telling the two to 'leave me the hell alone'.
Of course, as a five-hundred-year-old schemer, Otto saw at a glance that Durandal hadn't told him all the intelligence.
After casually using a few conversational tricks to draw out Durandal's inner thoughts, Otto started to feel things were a bit odd.
According to Durandal, when fighting the opponent, she felt a sense of 'bloodline connection' with him.
This feeling was very metaphysical. Scientifically speaking, it shouldn't be likely to appear.
But the problem was, this world has the Honkai. Ordinary science has zero persuasive power in matters related to the Honkai.
Moreover, Durandal... or rather Bianka Ataegina, was the biological daughter Kiana Kaslana whom Siegfried failed to rescue back then.
The people 'connected by blood' to Durandal included the Kaslana and Schariac families. From this angle, this group really wasn't small.