Chapter 419 - Going Viral in The Galaxy!
Meanwhile, Robert and the rest of the elders almost had a heart attack after reading the news while sitting together to drink a cup of tea.
Robert even spewed a mouthful of tea at Albert after seeing Felix's full name mentioned in the article.
"This can't be right! I refuse to believe it!" Robert yelled in agitation and clear signs of worry on his face.
Unlike Olivia who was a bit slow, Robert understood instantly the dreadful repercussion of this situation and how dangerous it was going to be for Felix.
He didn't even bother thinking deeply about Felix's sand element, multiple abilities, and his hidden Landlord persona.
The only thing in his mind now was to check up on Felix and see if he was alright.
Alas, he had to stop after a couple of his calls went to the voice mail.
"Nothing?" Albert asked.
"No, he has turned everything off." Robert replied with a suppressed tone.
Just as he was to call George, his bracelet vibrated. Upon seeing that it was a message from Felix, he sighed in relief and clicked it.
//Dear Gramps!
Don't worry about me as I am traveling far away. I can't tell you where I am going or how things came to be like this for your own safety.
Don't tell this to anyone but I am going to send two high-tiered bloodliners to protect you. Make them your bodyguards or something.
Also, make sure to remain in the Sky Pearl Island since it is protected by the army.
Take care of your health gramps and let's meet later in the UVR.//
'Sigh, as long as you are fine son.' Robert let out a long exhale in relief.
"Was that Felix?" Charlotte asked after noticing Robert's weird behavior.
"Yes, he said that he is fine and we shouldn't worry about him." Robert said.
Robert had no intentions of revealing any more than that to the elders. At this point, he only trusts Felix with his information.
The elders were smart enough to not question him more about the matter. So, they switched the subject to Felix's abnormality.
"How could he have a sand element?" Albert asked in confusion.
The 1st question was enough to baffle them thoroughly as they remember that Charlotte was the one who scanned Felix's affinities during the elemental assessment.
In it, only 59% poison and 12% illusion were shown after the scan.
"Wait a second." Abraham knitted his eyebrows and said, "Didn't we give him an AP bracelet before the assessment?"
"Yes."
Quick-witted, Charlotte raised her eyebrows and said, "Do you think that he always had sand element affinity but he didn't give permission to the Queen to let her share information about it?"
"That's highly likely. After all, if it's not this, then Felix had awakened a new element and pushed it to a good affinity rating." Albert laughed, "It sounds foolish just saying it."
"True, the resources needed to pull it off are too much for Felix even if we considered the profits from his hidden individual games." Abraham reasoned.
"I don't know why he wanted to hide the element from us though?" Albert stopped speaking at once and smiled bitterly, "Forget it, hiding it was nothing compared to the rest of his exposed secrets."
The elders glanced at each other and sighed in unison, feeling like Felix that they know was only a facade.
Their feelings were shared by the earthling team members who were discussing the news together in the cafeteria with George.
"Felix is Landlord...Huh, it truly sounds unbelievable just saying it out loud." Johnson murmured.
"I also can't believe that he is that Landlord." Ronaldinho hesitated, "He seemed too playful while I imagined Landlord to be a cold-blooded player."
Everyone but Olivia nodded their heads in agreement. The personalities were truly quite distinct and Felix did his best to keep it that way.
"How do you think he managed to use Toxic Claws and Miasma Swamp?" Hina tilted her head in confusion as she asked, "He is at 1st stage of replacement which meant he is able to only use 7 abilities...Yet, if we counted only his sand abilities, he had shown at least 8 in his game and the video. If we added that to the five poison abilities and superstrength passive...Isn't that even more than what peak 6th stage bloodliner could have?"
Hina's question had hit the crux of the main confusion that everyone was having. Yet, no one seemed to have an answer for it now.
They had already tried contacting Felix but he never responded.
"How about we check some forums' discussions?" Kenny suggested.
Seeing that no one disapproved, Kenny typed in -Landlord's Identity discussion- and billions of results had filled his hologram.
He picked the most recent one that was about the article and enlarged the hologram for all to see.
They were shocked to see that the discussion already had hundreds of millions of comments from people all around the empire!
They didn't doubt for a second that other empire's forums were all packed like this as the news should have been gone viral there by now.
"How could we find anything useful here?" Ronaldinho commentated speechlessly, "People are posting by the millisecond. I barely can see a comment before it gets buried."
"Simple."
Kenny went to the discussion search tab and wrote the keywords that he wanted to know about.
After pressing enter, the discussion had been filtered from anything that didn't have a relation to those keywords.
[The reason why Landlord has more than 15 abilities! 100% guaranteed that it's the real deal!]
[A possible theory that could explain Landlord's abnormality]
[It's simple! The Universe has finally taken pity on us and gifted us with the first human to manipulate elements!]
[Trust me when I say that he must be an experiment escapee from a lab that was built on that primitive planet. The Gama Organization must be part of the lab and they were tasked to retrieve him at all cost.]
The more Kenny scrolled down, the weirder the answer got without any intellectual basis to them.
After reading more than enough yet without a real answer with logical thinking behind it, Kenny closed the discussion and jumped to another.
Vrrr Vrrr
'Uhm?' George raised his eyebrows in surprise after seeing that he was requested to attend the Council's Assembly as fast as possible.
'I guess they want to interrogate me about Felix.' George sighed while standing up.
"I will be leaving, something has just come up." George said as he walked away.
He didn't tell his team to keep information about Felix's poison abilities to themselves since they couldn't do so even if they wanted.
The team contract stressed that talking about the team members' abilities to anyone outside of the team was punishable since it was a breach of information.
...
In the Council's Assembly that was hosted in the UVR as usual, the atmosphere was beyond heated as the presidents who were supposed to be composed and cool-headed were about to start shouting at each other.
George's body had been reconstructed right in the center of their booming argument as 200 or so presidents talking at once was no different than a marketplace.
Bam Bam!
Jacob could be seen hitting the gavel as hard as he could, wanting to bring some order into the assembly. Alas, the gavel's noise did nothing but make more ruckus.
'Are those our leaders? The hell is going on?' Dumbfounded, George kept watching the ongoing hysteria.
But after hearing bits and pieces of their discussion, he was left stunned in the middle not knowing how to react.
Who could blame him though?
The discussion was about whether to kick Felix from the planet or keep him!!!
"You ungrateful bastards! He got exposed because he took it upon himself to save the planet from the Gama Organization!" The US president shouted.
"First, no one asked him." The Japanese president said calmly, "Second, we need to be rational now more than ever. His actions have exposed not just him but the entire planet. We are currently under the tongues of most people in the galaxy. Our planet is nowhere near being ready for that kind of exposure."
Most presidents nodded their heads in agreement.
"What's worse, as long as he remains as an earthling, we would be getting visits from every terrifying background in the galaxy looking for him. Heck, they must be preparing to send their people here as we speak."
"That's true, we need to make it clear that we have separated our relations with him and publish it. Only then would they not consider us as their enemies."
"So what if they consider us as their enemies? With Felix's exposed strength, our planet would be dominating the games!" Mr. Rodrigas rebutted, "We can use the wishes to build defenses and obtain technologies that would make it almost impossible to sneak to the planet ever again. At that time, our planet would soar without needing the outsiders' support!"
The leaders also couldn't help but nod their heads at the sound of that.
This was the reason a division of opinions had emerged after Felix got exposed.
Both opinions were logical and reasonable.
They understood that if they decided to kick Felix away, they would most likely be safe from the outsiders' aggression who were approaching them rapidly to be the first to catch Felix.
However, doing so would make them lose Felix once and for all.
Well, they couldn't really revoke his earthling identity or even kick him from the team since he didn't break any of the contract terms, but they could make an announcement about it to show their stance in the matter.
If it came to be, they would even help outsiders to search for Felix as long as they keep on nice terms with those horrifying backgrounds.
On the other hand, if they stood behind Felix's back and supported him all the way, they understood that as long as Felix wasn't caught, the earthling team would keep climbing higher and higher in the ladder due to his overpowering strength.
After all, they saw some highlights of his Landlord career and they knew that he was miles and miles away in strength and experience than Olivia and the rest.
Not to mention the fact that he had more abilities than even a peak 6th stage bloodliner. While they were confused about it just like everyone else, they didn't bother discussing it right now when the planet's safety was at stake.
Since climbing the SGAlliance Ladder meant more resources, they could potentially break away from their 'primitive status' way earlier than anticipated, helping them catch up to the technologies and strength of other planets.
Naturally, by doing so, they would be placed against all of those backgrounds aiming for Felix as they would be required to ban entry for all of them.
That meant the only way to enter the planet would be the illegal way like the Gama Organization. However, with the Moon Surveillance system, spacesh.i.p.s and such would be exposed immediately.
If they won their next game, they would wish for a planetary defensive grid that would help them build a defensive matrix around the globe, making it possible to strike any spaceship they wanted from outer space just like Felix's did...Naturally, not as powerful but it was good enough to fend off most spacesh.i.p.s.
Since those spacesh.i.p.s didn't request permission, even if they got destroyed, the backgrounds behind them didn't have the right to retaliate.
If they did, they would be getting punished based on the SGAlliance contract.
Regardless, if the Council took this route it was highly possible that the Alexander Kingdom and other backgrounds would not accept deals from them, making it difficult to hire their resources and also enter trade deals with them.
That would lead their planet to be protected but isolated from the rest. If they ever got kicked from the SGAlliance, they would be facing the wrath of those backgrounds all combined.
Hence, kicking Felix or not was all about presidents that were willing to risk it for a quick advancement against presidents who wanted to play it safe.
"It's sure lively here."
"You got that right." George murmured as he gave a quick glance at Felix who was standing next to him.
"FELIX??!!"
It took George a second glance to make sure that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. Alas, his shout was loud enough, those presidents had their focus diverge to him.
The moment they saw Felix standing in the center with his hands in his pockets, deathly silence had fallen into the assembly room.
Felix scratched his cheek and said, "Why quiet all of sudden? I want to hear more about your discussion."