Chapter 461: Overlord Orion

"I think telling you all of them would take a long time." Lian gave a faint smile, he could feel the surprise and amazement in the Commander’s voice.

And he could understand it, besides the rumors about the Special Area, there was also his achievement in defending Base #3, along with what had happened in the Vorhelm family during his sister’s birthday ceremony.

These were things that reached the Commander’s ears, and when the center of all these events was an eighteen-year-old, it was hard to ignore him.

He could only hope that this man would not try even harder than before to recruit him into the army.

"That is why I said one day, for now, we have something more important."

Lian also became more serious, it was clear that they had finally reached the real reason for his presence here.

Gareth took a few more steps.

"The white-eyed man has been in our hands for a while, long enough that we have tried almost every normal interrogation method on him."

"Professional interrogators, behavior experts, Awakened with lie-detection skills, psychological pressure, isolation... even a few other methods that I would rather not go into."

"And none of them worked?" The young Vorhelm looked at him.

"Almost none."

"You couldn’t force him to talk?"

The Commander’s steps slowed for a moment and he stayed silent for a few seconds... then he let out a quiet breath.

"He is a madman, Lian." His tone sounded more tired than angry.

"You can force a normal person with something. Fear, pain, money, freedom, family, benefits, threats... in the end, you can find something that matters to them."

He looked at him for a moment.

"But how do you force a madman when the things that matter to him don’t make any sense at all?"

Lian became silent, he had met that man once and knew that he was truly a madman.

Gareth continued.

"We tried many methods. Every time, he either stays silent or starts saying the same nonsense. Sometimes he talks for hours about things that have nothing to do with the question."

The face of the white-eyed man appeared in Lian’s mind.

The border city, that strange smile, those completely white eyes, and the sentences that were sometimes so crazy and unrelated that it was impossible to know whether he was really insane or only pretending.

And of course, that strange monster, a creature that looked nothing like normal monsters, he had created a monster and called it a masterpiece.

He said that masterpiece was going to save humanity, a creature that was clearly made to kill people.

How could it save people?

"You are right. It was the same when I first saw him, so how did you capture him in the end?" He finally said.

"We didn’t capture him." Gareth did not answer immediately.

"No?" Lian turned his eyes toward him.

"No, one of the Overlords captured him."

The young Vorhelm’s steps slowed for a moment.

An Overlord.

This title was not easily given to every powerful Awakened, Overlords were at least Level 80 and had completed all four Evolutions.

At that stage, the gap between them and normal Awakened was no longer a matter of a few Levels, each one of them was considered a strategic force on their own.

People whose presence alone could change the fate of a continent, extremely powerful beings who had almost reached the top of the world’s power.

Even seeing them was not something common, they could not be easily seen whenever you wanted.

"Oh? Even an Overlord got involved in this?" Lian asked with curiosity.

"This matter is much more important to the Federation than you think." Gareth looked at him.

"Which Overlord?"

"Overlord Orion."

"The same Mountain Breaker?"

"Himself."

For the second time in a few minutes, the Commander had managed to surprise him.

Orion was not just a normal Overlord, almost every Awakened knew his name.

Fifteen years ago, during one of the country’s worst Rift incidents, an entire region went out of control in less than an hour.

This region included eleven countries and the Rift that opened there contained tens of thousands of monsters.

Hundreds of waves of monsters passed through the Rift one after another and the defensive lines fell one after another.

Eleven countries were close to falling, if it had really happened, it would have become one of the darkest disasters in human history.

But Overlord Orion had almost alone held the main path where the monsters were entering for several hours and had managed to suppress almost all the waves by himself.

And the reason for his title, Mountain Breaker, came from a skill called Mountain Breaker, and with the help of that skill, he had eventually managed to suppress tens of thousands of monsters alone.

They said that with that skill, he could split hundreds of mountains with one punch, and with the wave created from it, he had slaughtered the monsters.

People like him did not move to capture a normal criminal, in fact, someone like him did not move to capture any criminal.

"The Federation sent the Mountain Breaker to capture one person?"

"Now you understand why I said it was important." Gareth gave a very faint smile.

"Not completely."

"Do you remember that creature he made in the border city?"

"It is hard to forget." Lian gave him a short look.

"We examined its remains, it was a masterpiece."

"A masterpiece? That madman also called that thing a masterpiece, from my point of view, because it was almost immortal and I could not even kill it in the end, maybe it can be called a masterpiece, but what makes you call it a masterpiece, Commander?"

"Its organs had not formed naturally. The tissues of several different creatures had been combined inside one body, but its body did not reject them."

"The energy paths inside its body were man-made, exactly like weaving a handmade carpet, and it had a Core that showed no sign of natural formation, and even though it had only one Core, its quality was equal to the Core of an Unholy."

After a short pause, he added.

"But even that was not the strangest part, the System officially identified that creature as a monster, a monster."

Lian said nothing, this was not a small difference, that man had not simply put several body parts together and forced them to stay alive.

He had created something that even the System had accepted as a real creature, he also remembered that the System had recognized it, but at that time he had been too busy to care about such a thing.

And this immediately created several more questions in his mind.

If the System registered those creations as monsters... how would Gluttony deal with them?

Butcher?

If he killed that creature, could he extract a skill from its artificial body?

Even the Devourer Egg needed monster corpses to grow.

And what about his Talent, how would Colony Sovereign deal with it? Could it add that creature to his own Colony?

If those creatures really belonged to the same category... the matter was much more interesting than he had first thought.

"Did you think of something?" Gareth noticed the small change in his eyes.

Lian shrugged.

"Just that if the System considers them monsters, then his work goes far beyond combining several creatures together."

"Exactly, that is why after receiving the final report, the Federation decided to capture him alive no matter what."

Lian looked at him.

Gareth also looked at him for a few moments, and during that exchange of looks, he found the answer himself.

"You want his knowledge, right? You want to understand how he made something like that."

"Exactly."

This time the young Vorhelm’s expression became clearer, a look that contained surprise and a big "Really?" in it.

The Commander gave a faint smile.

"I understand why you are looking at me like that."

"I just didn’t think the Federation was interested in learning how to make monsters."

"Why wouldn’t we be?"

Lian said nothing.

"Almost half of the things we use today as normal Awakened technology once came from the Ruined Realms." Gareth continued.

As they walked, he counted a few things with his fingers.

"The Blacksmith profession, the Array Master profession, the Rune Master profession, some fighting methods, Golem making, and these are only the famous and popular professions."

His expression became more serious.

"For two hundred and fifty years, humanity has been taking everything it learns from the Ruined Realms, absorbing it, and turning it into our own things. If a new method can increase our power, we have no reason to ignore it just because it came from another civilization."

"That makes sense." The young Vorhelm nodded slightly, he was not against progress either, after all, learning something like this could make them stronger and help them end this apocalypse sooner.

"The first time we met a civilization in the Ninth Ruined Realm, it was a small civilization that called themselves the Volkari." The Commander continued.

"As you know, the civilizations of the Ruined Realms do not always follow our power system."

The young Vorhelm nodded, this was nothing new.

Every Ruined Realm had its own laws, power paths, and civilizations.

Something that was considered normal on Earth could be completely meaningless in another realm.

Even the System, Levels, Skills, Classes, and Talents were specific to them.

"For the Volkari, the power of their own bodies was never the main standard, but what they created was."

"They created monsters. Biological creatures. They combined tissues, changed Cores, designed paths for Mana to move through, and placed the traits of different creatures inside one body."

His voice became slightly lower.

"A Volkari might not be as dangerous as a normal warrior in direct combat, but if he is a good creator, he might have three or four monsters beside him, and each one of them could slaughter an entire group."

"So they measure their power by what they create, that reminds me of Summoners to some degree, except they do not make their own monsters." Lian said.

"Exactly, the white-eyed man is one of them." Gareth paused for a moment.

Now more pieces came together.

His behavior, his knowledge about monsters, that creature he called a masterpiece, and the reason the Federation had been willing to involve an Overlord to capture him.