The Ardi File.
The holographic screen lit up, then instantly went dark. But it wasn't due to a malfunction; Asahi could still hear sounds emanating from it. The sound was a mix of breathing and a somewhat irritating rustling, and from the amplitude of the breath, Asahi could tell it did not come from a normal person, nor did it resemble heavy panting.
Gradually, the dark screen began to change, and the distortion from a broken, old digital film started to appear. In the dark room, these flickering points were extremely conspicuous.
"It's a handheld camera."
Asahi focused his attention, paying no mind to Seitenshi, who was averting her eyes from the screen.
The sounds from the footage also changed; it was no longer merely chaotic. Although the audio quality was not much better than the visual, he could barely recognize sounds of inquiry and conversation.
"A research lab? A hospital?"
Suddenly, the image became clear, sufficient to see what it contained.
Seitenshi had completely turned away, seemingly unable to face what was coming next.
On a cold dissection table, blood and pus leaked out, dripping onto the dark floor beneath the intense overhead lamp.
Resting on the table was a grotesque, deformed "organism." Asahi didn't even know if he should call it an "organism," but it was certainly alive.
Wrapped tightly in bandages, its shoulders were deformed, its hands atrophied, its chest swollen, and even its face was completely covered, leaving only a mouth with incredibly abnormal incisors and two eyes exposed. Tubes were inserted into various points on its body, seemingly either draining blood or extracting something else.
Its condition could only be described with two words: Disgusting.
It was difficult to ascertain what this thing was, but looking into its eyes, he understood.
Red, like the eyes of a Cursed Child. No, it should be said that the Cursed Child resembled this "person."
After about a minute, the tape cut out without reason. It seemed the cameraman had stopped recording.
Although there was no continuation, thanks to his super-enhanced observation skills, Asahi noticed that the restraints on the operating table were slowly coming loose. The subsequent outcome was obviously a bloody disaster when the monster escaped, which then began to spread across the world.
A classic scenario.
"Ardi..."
The fossil thought to be the oldest hominid species, Ardipithecus ramidus, or simply Ardi, is 4.1 million years old. It is also considered the clearest ancestral source of humanity.
Now, the genesis of the first Gastrea also bore this name.
Furthermore, based on certain recognizable features, the thing placed on the dissection table must have been a human woman. Simultaneously, all Cursed Children—the only living organisms to date infected with the Gastrea Virus who still retained their original human form—were exclusively young girls. No case of a male had ever been recorded.
This was different from Rentaro using the Gastrea Virus for regeneration. Because if the virus were still alive and not destroyed by his immune system, Rentaro would no longer exist.
This shared trait caught Asahi's attention, and it possessed a certain logical consistency, yet there were also several illogical points. Namely, the appearance of the Cursed Children occurred globally, regardless of race or distance. Therefore, transmission based on heredity from a single woman was impossible; that was nonsense.
However, it did not rule out the possibility that the Gastrea Virus had always existed in the air. All people and objects possess immunity to the external virus, except for a portion of life created by a mother. Because of this, the Cursed Children existed before birth, having already merged with the Gastrea Virus during the stage of embryonic formation.
Asahi merely pondered up to this point and then paid it no more mind; too many things remained inexplicable. He turned to Seitenshi, asking in a low voice:
"Let me guess. The location where this experiment took place, the place where the Gastrea Virus first erupted, came from 'Seven Stars.' I am not wrong, am I?"
"You are correct."
Seven Stars Village, or Nanahoshi Village, was the place where that footage was recorded. It could be deduced that this was the first point of the Gastrea outbreak.
Seitenshi added that the location was completely destroyed during the early stages of the Gastrea War. The remaining governments of various Areas simultaneously moved to erase Seven Stars Village from every map that currently existed or ever had, intentionally concealing everything.
However, this concealment was only effective against those with lower authorization. Seitenshi still provided him with a detailed map of the location of Seven Stars Village.
But Asahi wasn't finished. He requested Seitenshi to bring up other documents.
Information in the network was limited to thirteen levels. Level 0 was ubiquitous information, meaning it could be easily searched and accessed by ordinary people, but if one looked closely, one could readily notice the existence of numerous holes in this information. For example, regarding the Gastrea War, although the government claimed all related documents were destroyed, they actually only existed and could be accessed at higher information tiers.
From Level 1 to Level 12, the higher the level, the more authority was needed. This authority could be tied to IP Ranking, or political rank. As the leader of Tokyo, Seitenshi possessed Authorization Level 11, and according to her, the four leaders of the other Areas in Japan were also at this level. Incidentally, after Rentaro's IP Ranking increased to 134, his access authority also rose to Level 6.
Thanks to Seitenshi's Level 11 authority, Asahi was able to bypass nearly all information restrictions, allowing him to access any information he desired.
Seeing that Asahi had no intention of stopping, Seitenshi appeared slightly worried, but not because she feared Asahi would uncover some state secret; letting him into this room meant there was nothing left to call a secret. She was worried about something else.
Asahi continued searching. Lines of text and images slowly scrolled past him. The room was deathly quiet; only the sound of Seitenshi's increasingly labored breathing could be heard.
He was initially slightly moved, perhaps even a bit sarcastic. But the more information he scrolled through, the darker his expression became, silent as a statue.
These files contained not only information about the Gastrea, but also military, political, and various large and small events. All of it had been concealed from the outside world and was now laid bare before him.
There, he saw the project to develop a military base on the moon, the project to create the Rank Five Gastrea superweapon "Ascension Ladder," and even the plan to create a new humanity—the genesis of mechanized soldiers like Rentaro and Kagetane... Cases of murder were abundant, and all of them were... extremely barbaric.
Now, Asahi finally knew what the old Tokyo Area was truly like.
He saw a Cursed Child from a certain family hung from the ceiling and tortured until she died, to the point that the restorative power from the Gastrea Virus could not save her. Autopsy reports revealed that the total number of old and new cuts combined was over ten thousand cuts. There were even photographs of the poor girl's corpse, swarming with flies, when it was found. Her body was still hanging, her wrists necrotic.
Ten thousand cuts, even if one cut were made every second, it would take three full hours. That accumulated pain would be enough to drive an adult insane and kill them, let alone a child.
He saw a Cursed Child who was raped until all her internal organs were ruptured. At the time, the girl was only six years old.
He saw a church burned down, killing all the Cursed Children, priests, and even normal children inside. All because the place decided to shelter children carrying the seeds of the devil.
He saw a group of people, intoxicated by despair, who, in a delusional frenzy, killed everyone in sight because they mistook them for Gastrea. Because of this incident, drugs and hallucinogens were wiped out in almost every corner, even on the black market.
The more he saw, the more fluidly the phrase 'human malice' was expressed. Seitenshi's face grew increasingly strained. Just as she was about to reach her limit, the screen suddenly went dark, plunging the entire room into silence.
"That's enough."
The only thing that echoed was the Silver King's voice, calm to the extreme.