Chapter 165 - Fakes

The Salamanders trusted Dr. Lectric, they even made a deal that would benefit each other.

Salamanders will get to know human knowledge at the expense of their energy slimes.

Dr. Lectic even tried studying how these Salamanders were capable of cultivating the new element, Phyxies, into powerful substances that can grant us both humans and Salamanders superpowers.

But when the world government heard of this, they became interested in the energy slimes as well.

Without Dr. Lectric's permission, these people squeezed all the energy slimes that all the Salamanders have and eventually made them extinct.

This was the reason why not even half of the population survived the Great Doom because of those authorities' greediness and idiocracy.

Dr. Lectric was given all the credits for his work, also because the authorities were scared of being blamed for what they've done.

Not long after, while searching for more Salamanders in the bottom of the frozen lake of Iyuba, the government found two children being preserved in the ice.

They were named Gyu and Iba, the children of the Edelweiss lovers.

They found out that these two children could harness the power of Phyxies and create the Energy slimes, just like what the extinct Salamanders could do, so they brought them to the lab and experimented on them without Dr. Lectric's knowledge.

When Dr. Lectric found out about this, he quickly hatched a plan on how they could sneak Gyu, Iba, and all the other children that were being used as guinea pigs in the experiment from the government's dirty hands and brought them to a land of their own, somewhere far away from all these people's radars.

"Can you guess where that is?" The old man finally looked at them as if he was done speaking by himself and was now ready for their interaction.

"I have no idea," Fily confessed as if she were blown away from all the information that she didn't have access to before.

Von, Gem, Lei, and even Venedette were all just silent while looking for each other's response that was empty. They were all blown away by the rich information that none of them has heard of before.

The old man smiled with his eyes and swiped his hands across the wooden table that suddenly showed them a map of the world, in which all of the nine remaining countries in this world were marked green and the wastelands grey.

"Oh my gosh," Fily gasped and covered her mouth after seeing a familiar area in the map that was glowing in purple. 

She had a hunch about the meaning of it but still kept silent until the old man finally zoomed in on the area that Fily suddenly pointed at.

"You are correct, young lady. It was Kitheria, the supposed tenth country of this world that didn't survive the last minutes of the Great Doom due to the rest of the countries' betrayal towards them."

"Wait, so are you saying those two kids ran a country on their own? With the other children that were used as guinea pigs in the experiment?!" Gem couldn't handle her emotions anymore and asked her thoughts right away.

"Yes, but they were not children anymore at that point. Gyu and Iba had their own families, created a new race that has the ability to cultivate Phyxies into Energy slimes."

"And I'm guessing the government overstepped their boundaries again and made them extinct, am I right?" Von asked out of spite but the old man shook his head.

"Not quite, in fact, the government didn't even know of their existence just until Gyu and Iba decided on making friends with them by offering them protection from the threats of the outside world in exchange for the Phyxies."

"Why would they do that?" Fily asked after deciding that she should invest more in this newfound knowledge.

"Because they need the Phyxies?" Von asked.

"Yes, and they pitied the other country's lack of defense against the heaven's wrath and threats from the outside world."

"By threats you mean the natural disasters, acid rain, cumulus strips, and the whatnot beyond the borders?" Gem said with a bitter taste in her mouth as she remembered the time that she had spent outside of the borders.

"Yes, but how did you know that? I thought the children of Clandamascarene weren't allowed to know stuff from the outside world?" the old man said while looking at Gem as if he could see some signs of trauma from her eyes.

"I grew up there," Gem only said and looked away.

"So what are these gifts that Gyu and Iba gifted the other countries for protection and in exchange for Phyxies?" Fily asked to divert the topic away from Gem's history and to also fulfill her curiosity about the story.

"That we don't know of, they say only the Kings and Queens of the countries were the only ones who knew of this gift that saved their countries from the threat of the outside world."

"But if their countries became safe because of these gifts, then why did their country fall because of betrayal?" Von asked.

"You have yet to learn about the dangers of human greed, young man."

"So these countries became greedy? Including my ancestors?" Von muttered to himself which the old men could have easily heard only if Lei was not quick enough to make a noise that could cover Von's question.

[Lei: Do they even know you're the prince and Venedette's the princess of this country?]

[Venedette: They know about that, don't worry.]

[Lei: Oh.] Lei typed and then fixed his posture after doing something silly in front of these old but respectable men.

[Fily: Do you think those gifts could have been the gems?] Fily asked in their group chat while looking at Venedette.

[Von: I don't think they even have any idea what the Salamandite gems are.]

[Fily: Should we ask them about it? Didn't we come here so we could figure out how to feed these Gems and hopefully activate yours too?]

[Venedette: I initially asked them about the Salamandite Gems in particular but I guess they thought Salamandite and Salamanders were the same, they're giving us history lessons about the Salamanders and their tribe.]

"Did you also come from Gyu and Iba's family? You said they were your ancestors right? Can you also turn those Phyxies into Energy slimes?" Gem suddenly asked which took the old men aback.

Most of them cleared their throats and looked away from Gem while the others looked at each other in confusion.

"That we're not sure of," one of them answered.

[Gem: So they're fakes.]

"Gem," Venedette called to her as a warning for saying something so cynical.

[Venedette: They're probably just followers of the Edelweiss story.]

[Fily: And considering the amount of research they must have done to complete this story, I agree with Venedette. They're not fakes but rather just followers of the Edelweiss theory. I'll call it theory because this is the first time I'm hearing of this story and there's no concrete evidence yet that everything that they said is true. Although there were some things that checked out with the Salamandite manual book, I still have to double-check the facts just to be sure.]

"Sorry about that, Sir Heidi, Elder Song," Venedette said to the two elders who answered Gem's question in place of Gem who was too upset to even apologize.

She was expecting something more useful from these people, such as telling her the secret of how to feed these Salamandite Gems or even asking them to do a blood test with her to see if they're related.

But as it turned out, these people were just followers of the Edelweiss theory and not even one of them were real descendants of either Gyu or Ida.

"That's okay, we have already expected this kind of question to be asked by those who visit us. A lot of people doubt our credibility because of our lineage but who else would tell this story if not us? Especially when Gyu and Ida's kind did not survive the betrayal at all," Elder Song, the one speaking earlier said in a regretful tone which made Fily and the others sympathize with him.

"Where did these stories even come from?" Gem asked which also made the others curious about it as well.

"It was a story that was passed on by our ancestors from generation to generation. They say it was a story that our ancestors have heard from the fourth King of Clandamascarene who read the story to them from a golden book of the Salamanders. But we have never seen this book before, nor do we have any idea what it looks like aside from the golden description-"

[Fily: They're talking about the Salamandite manual, right?]

[Gem: Yes.]

"-which is one of the reasons why we believe in it so much, considering that our ancestors were real people of the King first before deciding to migrate here and live the life of Edelweissians after hearing the story from the king himself."