"What the hell!" Varian cursed as he looked at what was a functioning laboratory a year ago.
The interior was structured like a beehive leaving a large space in the middle—There were basically rooms with six walls interconnected to one another forming a ring.
In the middle was a large common space accessed by all the rooms.
According to Maya's father Haru, Roxana died in this lab. Then there should at least be traces of the fight or…traces of renovation?
None.
"Boo, find all the data in this lab." Varian knit his brows and said.
"Yea~" Boo chirped and hacked into the internal database of the lab.
At the same time, the doors of all the rooms opened.
Ghostship shrunk in size and surveyed each room.
Varian found the corpses of humans, magic beasts, and abyssals in green liquid floating in glass containers.
Bang!
"No!" Varian took repeated breaths to control the despairing thoughts in his mind.
With difficulty, he opened his eyes and looked at the faces of all the human corpses.
They were well preserved and if not for the machines showing their vital signs to be null, he'd have thought they were just sleeping.
The first was a middle-aged male corpse.
"No."
A young female.
"…No. Even though I haven't seen how Sia looks at 18 or 19, I can tell once I see."
After a while…
"Has! Thankfully!" Varian patted his chest with sweaty palms.
Every time he was about to look at the new corpse, his heart thrashed against his ribcage and threatened to break out.
Now that he confirmed there was no Sia here, he was relieved.
The other rooms yielded no fruit.
One had some cutting-edge strange surgery bots. The other was full of aura crystals. Another with beast cores and the final one was filled with formations.
"To preserve everything a year after her death, are the Xanders too doting or too rich?" He wondered.
Boo timely said. "Master, some information was damaged due to….ugh, just see."
The ghost ship moved inward and after passing through a few more rooms, Varian saw a huge open field with large computing devices.
Unlike the other rooms, quite a few of them were damaged—crushed, broken or torn.
"An attack happened here destroying many files. Since the data of this lab stays in this lab, it is lost permanently. This is what I found."
A hologram popped up, showing a middle-aged woman with green hair and dark red eyes. Her unkempt hair and aloof expression showed that she had no interest in the photo.
Even though she looked young, it was because of the technology.
{Roxana Xander.
Age. 66.
Specializations: Aura application, Divine Paths Functioning Theory, Systematic study of an Awakener's talent, the links between Abyssals, magic beasts & humans, ….}
Varian stopped after seeing there were a few more dozen in the row.
"Give me the useful information." Rubbing his temple, Varian said.
"This qualifies?" Boo showed a list of videos.
The first video was from ten years ago. The last was one year ago.
A young Charles Xander would visit the lab and Roxana would welcome him with a smile.
Then he entered the lab and she entertained him before sending him off with a gift.
As Charles grew older, he started bringing her some gifts. Small, but filled with affection.
Roxana would stay in the lab all day and conduct her experiments with an indifferent expression.
She only smiled when she was with Charles.
However, as he grew older, his visits declined.
From thrice a day to once a day, to once a week to finally once three months.
But even the last time they met, Roxana smiled heartily. She ruffled Charles' hair and said. "I've prepared a gift for you. Soon, you'll be the biggest genius of earth, no, the biggest genius of the federation!"
Charles was puzzled but did not question her.
She took him to the open space between the rooms, and the video ended with Charles going out a few hours later.
"She barred any surveillance from this site, master. We can't know what happened inside." Boo said.
Varian looked at the caved in ground and broken computing devices with a frown.
"Also, there seems to be some missing files. They are deleted, not missed due to the destruction of storage devices." Boo added.
"Play the video of her death date—the day these machines were blown off." Varian ordered after a while.
The surveillance of various rooms started playing at once. Since the open field had no cameras, the closest he could get to was to try and put together the pieces.
All the lab rooms were operating normally until they all trembled for a while. A muffed sound followed and then…there was no more.
"That's it?" Varian asked in disbelief.
"Yes. A staff member came to deliver some material and found something wrong. It was only after a week…"
"Son of a bitch!" Varian cursed out loud.
So the entire killing or should he call it assassination happened on the Guardian Islands and it was only found out after a week?
There was one more problem.
"Where is the killer? I can't see him entering in or out." Varian asked.
"According to the surveillance, there was only Roxana inside. Even after murder, no one came out." Boo answered after checking.
"So, it's a space awakener who teleported in and out?" Varian rubbed his chin and wondered.
"Can't be. The Xander palace can detect the spatial fluctuations and lock on the target." Boo rejected the hypothesis.
"So…what the heck happened?" Varian felt a headache trying to crack this puzzle.
Boo thought of a possibility. The killer also had the stealth like it did.
But wasn't that stupid?
How could anyone equal it, the ghost ship? No way!
So it dismissed the idea.
"Master, I found this under her bed." Boo suddenly said and a red book floated towards the ghost ship.
As it inched closer, Varian realized it was a journal of sorts.
[My Experiment Log]