Asura in Arknights

This Grand Duke Vanya is said to be the behind-the-scenes controller of the Ursus Fourth Army, which is stationed in the most desolate region of the Ursus Empire—the far north ice plains.

The invasion of Sami was launched by the Fourth Army, and this military fortress was located within the control of the Fourth Army. Magellan was somewhat skeptical that Grand Duke Vanya was unaware that someone had built a fortress here and stored a large amount of munitions.

If this place has some connection with Grand Duke Vanya, or even if it was built at the Grand Duke's behest, then everything makes sense.

With the death of Grand Duke Vanya, the fortress lost its last person who could verify their identities. Finally, due to an accident inside the fortress, all those who knew the truth were buried in the snow and ice.

"I feel like I know something... but then again, I feel like I haven't discovered anything at all..."

Magellan's mood was somewhat complicated. However, if her deduction was correct, even if she left this place in the future, she would have to keep the matter of this fortress a secret and not try to use the information here to get promoted or make a fortune.

If things go wrong, it might attract the attention of the Ursus leadership.

She was just a lowly employee of Rhine Life; where would she get the audacity to confront a nation head-on? Therefore, Magellan made up his mind that he absolutely must not tell anyone about this.

She also needs to find a suitable opportunity to tell Leon and Adele about this speculation.

“However, since this might be a base secretly built by the Grand Duke of Vanya, surely I can find one or two things that I can use?” Magellan muttered to himself.

If all else fails, taking one or two valuable items from here would be acceptable, as it would be a form of extra income. However, these weapons would not meet Magellan's requirements.

Although weapons are valuable, they are inconvenient to carry, and even if they are taken out, they are difficult to sell. Once they enter the market, they will attract the attention of the police. They are a hot potato, and Magellan is not that stupid.

"In any case, let's search further and hopefully find something."

Magellan took a deep breath, picked up his suitcase which was already stuffed with all sorts of parts, and left the warehouse.

What surprises await her deep within the fortress?

As the greatest explorer of the future, Magellan never considered the possibility of him failing.

But... she had clearly forgotten one thing.

People who can't swim usually stay far away from water, while those who drown are often people who can swim and are very confident in themselves.

Chapter Thirty-Five: The Secret Chamber

"What is she doing now?" Adele asked, somewhat puzzled.

To avoid being discovered by Magellan, Leon and Adele did not follow Magellan too closely, but instead stayed a hundred meters behind her, relying on Leon's senses to monitor her movements.

Now that Magellan has suddenly lingered in one place for a long time, Adele feels somewhat puzzled and also a little nervous.

“Don’t worry, she’s just looking for something she can use to repair her drones,” Li Ang replied.

Although Magellan was courting death, she wouldn't have done it if she wasn't confident. When she was alone, she demonstrated the powerful capabilities of an explorer.

"She's ready, let's hurry and follow her."

In Li Ang's perception, Magellan had already stuffed the scattered parts into the box and continued to advance deeper into the fortress. Li Ang and Adele followed suit.

This time, Magellan abandoned his previous aimless wandering and instead, as if he had found a very clear goal, ignored most of the rooms he passed along the way and headed straight for the lowest level of the fortress.

Finally, Magellan stopped when he reached the lowest level of the fortress.

She took out the drone and controlled it to fly around the room filled with all sorts of clutter, seemingly searching for something in this way.

"She actually found it..."

Upon noticing Magellan's actions, Li Ang said with some surprise.

"What were found?"

Li Ang paused for a moment, then replied, "This is not the lowest level of this fortress; there are several hidden layers below."

According to Li Ang's perception and exploration, there is a sizable space hidden beneath the original structure of the fortress.

However, this is difficult to achieve in mobile cities.

Beneath the soil layer of the mobile city site lies the mechanical structure supporting the entire site, as well as power supply lines, sewage channels, and other such structures. Squeezing out space from these structures to build a basement is an extremely difficult task.

"I wonder how Magellan did it..."

Li Ang couldn't help but marvel. After all, according to normal logic, Magellan had no reason to know about the existence of this hidden space. He didn't know where Magellan had found some clues that led her to the lowest level of the fortress.

"A secret room?"

Hearing what Li Ang said, Adele also seemed somewhat interested. "Is there a lot of treasure hidden in there?"

“No, it would be better if it were treasure hidden there.” Li Ang shook his head. “Remember the stench we smelled when we first entered the fortress? There were piles of corpses in that space below, and that’s where the stench came from.”

"Are there still some soldiers trapped inside?"

"...Adele, you're wrong. Those corpses aren't Ursus people."

Li Ang's voice suddenly turned low and somber, "Those... are all the corpses of Elafia."

“Elafia?” Adele paused, then asked, “But isn’t this Ursus’ fortress?”

Why was Erafia's body found?

Adele had intended to ask that question, but Leon had already guessed what she wanted to say and waved his hand, saying, "Thirty years ago, Ursus launched a full-scale invasion of the Sami, and the main race of the Sami is the Erafia."

That's all for this.

Even if Li Ang doesn't explicitly say it, Adele should be able to guess what he means.

Why are there Erafiyan corpses here? The answer is simple: these people were all prisoners of war captured by the Ursus army from Sami, or more likely, civilians captured from Sami.

If Magellan was looking for treasure here, she was mistaken. The secret chambers of this fortress held no treasures, only thousands of meters of Erafiyan remains.

This is why, although Li Ang discovered the existence of this secret room, he did not go to investigate it.

Li Ang did not yet have a penchant for digging up graves.

Moreover... if there's any problem with this fortress, it's probably hidden in that 'mass grave'.

In this world, the soul is a real thing. With so many people dying in the same place, no one can guarantee what might happen.

"Let her suffer a little."

-------------------------------------

Actually, the truth about why Magellan discovered the secret chamber hidden in the fortress is far less complicated than Li Ang thought.

Magellan was simply going to check out the place most likely to be hiding treasure, based on her past experience. She didn't expect that as soon as she stepped into the stairwell, she would discover a very important clue.

It smells bad.

When Magellan first opened the fortress gates, she was choked by the stench emanating from inside, but the stench miraculously disappeared once she entered the fortress.

The corpses in front of the control room were all frozen to death, showing no signs of decay, and the food in the warehouse was all sealed in tin cans and remained intact.

So the question is, where does that stench come from?

When Magellan caught that scent again in the stairwell, the adventurer's intuition told him that this was definitely not a simple matter.

Magellan followed the scent all the way to the lowest level of the fortress and finally discovered the hidden underground space.

But looking at the perfectly smooth ground in front of him, Magellan was at a loss.

Although Magellan had located the entrance to the secret chamber by smell, she didn't know how to open it.

Magellan surveyed the room where the entrance was located. On the surface, it was just an ordinary storage room, filled with all sorts of random things. Finding the mechanism to open the secret room from among these things would not be an easy task.

Magellan's time was limited; she had to return to camp before dawn, or her secret escape would be exposed. She didn't want to be exposed yet, otherwise it wouldn't be so easy to escape next time.

The entrance to the secret room must be opened as soon as possible.

But what if you can't find the switch?

Magellan's mind raced, and she soon came up with a plan that was worth a try.

Magellan chuckled and took out one of her few remaining Originium Ice Crystals.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Snow Sacrifice

All instruments and equipment can only operate in a suitable temperature environment, and the temperature range can vary considerably depending on the equipment.

However, these instruments can usually work normally at temperatures above 100 degrees Celsius, but cannot withstand temperatures below minus 50 degrees Celsius, due to the limitations imposed by the properties of the materials themselves.

Magellan placed the Originium Ice Crystal into the Dragon Drone, using the drone to catalyze the crystal and release a large amount of cold air.

Frost formed on the ground at a visible speed, and cold air seeped into the interior of the passage through gaps that Magellan could not observe.

Magellan herself had already moved far away, as her protective suit couldn't withstand the extreme cold.

If the mechanism at the entrance is a purely mechanical structure, then Magellan's method would be completely useless.

While low temperatures can cause most materials to deform or even become brittle, with Magellan's current equipment, it would be difficult for him to forcibly break through this barrier.

However... if electronic components are used in the mechanisms here, the situation will be different.

Low temperatures force these components to stop working, and the entire system will restart automatically once the temperature returns to normal. During this process, there is a high probability that the system will malfunction, and Magellan was waiting for this opportunity.

Clearly, Magellan made the right bet this time.

Just as the energy of the second Originium Ice Crystal was about to run out, a new change finally occurred on the ground. With a crisp cracking sound, a mechanical friction sound came from below, and a crack as thick as an arm suddenly appeared on the flat ground.

"Cough cough cough..."

Sure enough, the moment the passage opened, a stench many times stronger than before surged out.

Fortunately, Magellan was prepared for this and only choked a little before getting used to the unpleasant smell.

"Good! It opened!" Magellan clenched his fist, feeling somewhat proud of his cleverness.

The passage had been opened up, making things much simpler from there. She found some usable tools and quickly widened the gap to a size that would allow Magellan to pass through.

In this respect, Magellan's slender physique gave him a considerable advantage.

Looking at the dark opening, Magellan naturally wouldn't risk his life. Instead, he sent down a drone to observe the situation below through its camera.

But when Magellan saw the scene below, she was somewhat stunned by the footage captured by the drone.

"Where exactly is this place..." Magellan murmured.

The space below was much larger than she had expected. Magellan had thought that the Ursus people had simply built a secret chamber here to store some valuable items.

But Magellan was wrong. The Ursus people had more likely built a new layer on the bottom layer of the original fortress.

Of course, what shocked Magellan the most were the things stored on this floor.

Magellan felt as if he had entered a slaughterhouse. The drone footage showed corpses everywhere, like livestock that had just been slaughtered, hanging from the ceiling with iron hooks to drain their blood.

These corpses had been hanging there for an unknown amount of time. Even the harsh cold of the north could not stop microorganisms from growing on them, and the pungent stench emanated from these bodies.

If it were just these corpses, Magellan might have thought she had accidentally stumbled into some perverted 'exhibition hall', but when she saw other things, Magellan quickly changed her mind.

On a nearby cabinet, Magellan saw countless glass bottles of various sizes filled with a pale yellow liquid.

Eyeballs, heart, lungs... each glass bottle contains a complete human organ. Immersed in a pale yellow liquid, some of the organs in the bottles even remain active, pulsating slowly in a certain rhythm.

Even Magellan found the bloody scene unbearable and quickly pointed the drone's view at the ground. It took him a while to suppress the urge to vomit.

After making ample mental preparations, Magellan finally regained his composure and controlled the drone to search the hidden area again.

But when she found an Erafiyan corpse lying on the operating table, its abdomen ripped open and all its internal organs gone, Magellan finally understood what these corpses represented.

"Ursus...is using these Sami people for human experiments?"

This kind of thing is actually quite common in Colombia. There are always some scientists who are not thinking straight and are secretly conducting experiments that violate human ethics. Every year, a considerable number of illegal laboratories are shut down by various human rights organizations.

Those mad scientists were also very resourceful. To avoid being searched, they would even dig a hole in the wild and build their laboratories underground.

Magellan had heard that some people had dug up such laboratories from underground, mistaking them for relics; she never expected to encounter something like this herself.

Magellan is now hesitant about whether he should delve deeper into the laboratory to find out more.

She has explored less than a third of the hidden area below, but apart from the gruesome corpses of Erafians who died in various poses, Magellan has not found anything of value. Instead, she is disgusted by the sights inside.

Even if she searches every place, she might not find anything.

But Magellan felt somewhat unwilling if she didn't go in, since she had gone through a lot of trouble to sneak out and had used two Originium Ice Crystals to open this passage.

Sunk costs prevented Magellan from giving up easily.

After agonizing over it for a long time, Magellan finally gritted his teeth and released all the drones, stepping into the passage with an unyielding spirit.

If Magellan were to control four drones simultaneously, she wouldn't be able to maintain the same control distance as before; she would have to go down to the lower level along with the drones.

Enduring the stench emanating from the surrounding corpses, Magellan's search efficiency increased several times over with the addition of the remaining three drones.

Finally, after about ten minutes, Magellan discovered a room that was slightly different from the other rooms.

It wasn't as chaotic or bloody as other places; there was only an old-fashioned glass morgue covered in dust in the center of the room.

This unusual situation immediately captured Magellan's full attention, and she immediately controlled the drone to fly above the morgue.