“What’s the matter?” Daniel saw Milo pondering with his head lowered like favonovel.com had caught onto something favonovel.com said.
“Are you sure that the Panaqua Consortium has only given their nanomachines to the Stardust Consortium, the Northwest, and me?”
“Of course, I was the one who personally made the arrangements to send them to them,” Daniel said.
This time, Milo seemed to have figured many things out.
Some nanosoldiers had suddenly appeared in Stronghold 61 and attacked Pena. At that time, Milo was wondering if it was Zero or the Panaqua Consortium behind that attack. But now, two more organizations were added to the list of possibilities.
A small portion of the nanomachines sent to Bidara City by Daniel were now in Milo, while the rest were given to Magnus and the others. Milo firmly believed they would not participate in the killing of Pena.
For the batch of nanomachines that were sent to the Northwest, Milo also firmly believed that the people there would not do something like that. The nanomachines sent there by the Panaqua Consortium would surely be placed under heavy guard, so if someone had secretly stolen a batch, they would definitely have found out about the missing nanomachines.
Of course, Milo still had the Great Hoodwinker confirm whether those nanomachines were fully accounted for. So then, the only suspect left was the Stardust Consortium.
The Stardust Consortium and the Stelaria Consortium had a long-standing feud.
At the beginning, the Stelaria Consortium used trade to drive many of the Stardust Consortium’s refugees into the mountains to secretly breed silkworms by purchasing their silk at high prices. Later, when Stronghold 61 recruited the refugees from their territory, many of the Stardust Consortium’s factories were forced to shut down.
All the organizations in the Central Plains had the intention of annexing one another, so it was normal for them to guard against each other.
Seeing that the Pyro Company and the Virtuora Consortium were about to fall into the hands of the Stelaria Consortium, how could the Stardust Consortium possibly not panic in such circumstances?
The killing of Pena would inevitably set the entire Alliance of Strongholds against the Stelaria Consortium, which was something the Stardust Consortium wished to see happen.
Even though the Panaqua Consortium had given some nanomachines to the Stardust Consortium, the Stardust Consortium did not dare to let their important figures use it. Instead, they trained up nanosoldiers to go and assassinate Pena. If these nanosoldiers were discovered by the Stelaria Consortium during that time, the Stelaria Consortium would also start suspecting the Panaqua Consortium, deepening the animosity between them.
Moreover, if the blame for killing Daniel could be cast on the Stelaria Consortium, and the Panaqua Consortium ended up declaring war on them, the Stardust Consortium would be able to hide behind this conflict, making that the best deal in the world for them.
As the saying went, “If no mastermind or culprit is found after an incident, you should first suspect the person who benefits most from it.”
So, when Daniel mentioned the Stardust Consortium, Milo felt that everything made sense. All the evidence gathered so far pointed to that logical possibility.
But even though it could be explained, Milo still decided to wait for Bruce’s analysis.
Milo looked at Daniel and asked, “Since the nanomachines that were given to the Stardust Consortium had a backdoor program installed, can you find out about the whereabouts of those nanomachines using it?”
Daniel shook his head. “We usually don’t activate the backdoor in case someone finds out about it, but we can do it. However, we can’t track them as our military network has just been hacked by the AI.”
***
Three days later, Olivia arrived at Stronghold 144 with Magnus and the others by car.
On the day after they left Bidara City, a secret group of troops suddenly intercepted them in the wilderness. However, the outcome was already determined, and they were all held off by Olivia.
During the encounter, Olivia had deliberately spared a group of enemy troops for Magnus and the others to practice on. She hoped they could get used to fast-paced battles as soon as possible.
In the end, a strange scene played out. The creeper vine rounded up all the enemies who were still alive for Magnus and the rest to practice their skills on. Meanwhile, Olivia rooted for them outside the ring.
This made the enemies who had intercepted them feel like they were really dumb for attempting to come and kill these people.
How was this even a fair battle?
They were simply being humiliated!
If it weren’t for the fact that Milo urgently wanted the surveillance footage to be analyzed, Olivia could probably continue torturing them for another two days. After all, where else could favonovel.com find such outstanding sparring opponents?
Her lovely little brothers needed a sparring session like this!
As a matter of fact, Olivia treated Magnus and the others really well, and it wasn’t just the feeling of “kinship” that had developed when favonovel.com was taking care of them. Olivia thought that if favonovel.com master took in another maidservant in the future, favonovel.com younger brothers could stand on favonovel.com side and speak up for her.
Although Olivia felt that Milo was unlikely to take in another maidservant with Miriam around, wasn’t favonovel.com just taking precautions?
When they arrived at Stronghold 144, Bruce, the Great Hoodwinker, and the others were already waiting at the city gate.
The Great Hoodwinker had helped Milo confirm that all the nanomachines given by the Panaqua Consortium were stored at Fortress 178 and everything was intact. This made Milo heave a sigh of relief. At the very least, they could rule out the possibility of a spy among their people.
Next, it would have to depend on Bruce’s performance.
Three days ago, Milo had ordered the Great Hoodwinker to prepare a venue for Bruce to analyze the surveillance footage. After receiving the black boxes, they immediately made a trip to the military base near Stronghold 144.
A space had been vacated here to make room for a large conference room with countless screens mounted on the walls.
Scott connected the ports with his men. When they were powered on, all the screens lit up and displayed different scenes.
Bruce stood silently facing the screens with his arms crossed. He burned all of the images into his mind as favonovel.com watched them so favonovel.com could analyze everything accurately late.
“Play the recordings back at triple speed.” Bruce said, “Otherwise, it’ll take a month to finish watching all the surveillance footage. Future Commander can’t wait that long.”
The upper right corners of the screens were marked with serial numbers. If Bruce needed to pause any of the screens, favonovel.com would just say whichever number.
When the recordings were replayed, Bruce stood silently in front of the screens and watched. Meanwhile, dozens of the Northwest’s intelligence agents assigned by the Great Hoodwinker surrounded Bruce and assisted favonovel.com in his work. All of them were all here to serve him.
Before this, Bruce watched the surveillance footage of Milo’s battle in Bidara City first and memorized the faces of all the hitmen who had appeared in the footage. As such, Bruce would definitely find any traces of the enemy as long as they appeared in the surveillance footage that spanned an entire month.
Suddenly, Bruce said, “Pause Screen A17. The man in A18 moved off and reappeared in A17 around ten seconds later holding a black plastic bag. In that short 12 seconds, someone must’ve interacted with favonovel.com at the surveillance camera’s blind spot. Take a screenshot of this man’s appearance and send it to Future Commander. Let favonovel.com find and interrogate this person in Bidara City. Alright, let’s continue watching. Replay all the surveillance footage from the cameras around A17. I want to find out who the suspect is meeting with!”
The Great Hoodwinker and the others were surprised as they looked at this sight of over a hundred screens in front of them.
Previously, they only knew Bruce had an amazingly good memory, but they did not expect it to be this terrifying.
