Chapter 308 ID
Palace of Lanthanor, the King's chambers.
Holding rectangular metallic cards in their hands that were stamped with the Lanthanorian crest, six individuals were sitting in front of the beating dragon's heart and examining them with their full consultation.
After a few seconds, the silence that had reigned in the room for the past few minutes was finally broken by Aran.
"Thousands of these? How is it even possible? Don't they cost too much?"
Hearing these words, the King of Lanthanor smiled and said, "No, because of a design that I have created and the assembly line that we have, each trinket, which is going to be called an ID card, will cost only a single silver Lan."
"But wouldn't it still be an enormous amount because there are millions of people?"
"Yes, but the benefits are numerous. Aren't you sick of letting people from other kingdoms enter ours so easily? With these cards, it will be very, very difficult for someone to infiltrate. And even if they do, we have this little thing here to catch them whenever we want."
Saying so, the King of Lanthanor pointed towards a device that looked like a metallic stick.
"Let's have a small demo. Aran, bind a card and stand there. Cassandra, stand beside him."
Nodding, the two commanders followed the instructions of the King and stood at a spot in the chamber.
Holding up the metal stick, Daneel pointed at them and to their surprise, a red light emanated from the end of the stick and landed on Aran.
"A Mage can hold this and cover a large area in the air, and the trinket will identify each and everyone who are not carrying their ID cards. The trinket works by examining whether a unique feature of the card, which is very difficult to be replicated, is present on a person's body or not. Although this thing is quite costly to make, it is well worth it in times of crisis when we want to identify all negative or doubtful elements in places like the Capital city."
With awe on their faces, the three commanders, Eloise and Robert looked at Daneel and wondered just how he had come up with this.
Seeing the unasked question in their eyes, Daneel answered, "I had this idea for a long time since the Knight from the Church was able to infiltrate and attack us so easily. If we had something like this then, we would have been able to at least spot him and prevent him from reaching the Palace. After the system is deployed, the identification trinkets can be placed at crucial spots all around the kingdom with guards posted around them to apprehend all those who are traveling without the ID cards. Of course, with any idea like this, some testing needs to be done to find out whether it is really viable. Hence, we will be using the system to identify those who are going to buy the tickets for seats in the Olympics."
Finally laying his full plan out, Daneel smiled and sat in his seat while the others pondered on his words.
Actually, this was a system that he had wanted to implement almost since the time that he had become king.
Enemy infiltration was a very serious problem that all kingdoms suffered with. He himself had exploited the loopholes to infiltrate multiple kingdoms on many occasions.
Even the other day, when he had observed the spies watching Helena and Dalia, he had been reminded of this scheme of his which he had had to shelve before because of the limited funds.
Yet, now that he actually had money and would soon have a great deal of income, he decided to go ahead with it.
The Olympics were truly a golden opportunity to test the efficacy of the system.
The working was simple, but it was this simplicity which increased the efficiency by a large amount.
Each card was supposed to be bound by the blood of an individual, and the secret trick by which the identification trinket worked was that it detected the interactions between the elementary particles and the card.
Elementary particles were present everywhere in nature, and they constituted the very essence of reality. Interactions between particles were common, and this was what caused the phenomena in nature that everyone saw every day. This simple concept was used in trinkets already in the cases where expensive barrier trinkets protected their user from harm by detecting the interactions between the elementary particles in the area around them and activating themselves when danger was detected - which was typically signified by an agitated change in the particles due to an incoming attack.
In a similar way, a specific alloy composed of different concentrations of different metals would interact in a unique way that was capable of being detected by anyone who had elementary sight.
The ID cards in everyone's hands were made of unique alloys with minute differences between them. Yet, however minute, the interaction with elementary particles still changed.
Because this was a common interaction, there were also many ways to block someone or some trinket from seeing these interactions.
For example, the scanning trinket used by soldiers at the border used the same concept to detect whether someone had a trinket on them. Yet, both the Knight and the spies who infiltrated Lanthanor had methods to hide their trinkets from them.
Yet, with this system, hiding their trinkets would actually implicate them.
Daneel had actually gotten the idea for this identification method from the systems back on Earth where something similar was used by banks to issue cards that people could use to draw money.
Each such card was unique in the fact that it had a specific aspect such as a chip which was authenticated by a device from the bank. This device would check with the database in the bank to ensure that the chip was valid.
Similarly, the indication trinket would check with a database back in the Palace where all the concentrations and interactions were listed extensively. If a card wasn't present with someone or if the card interacted with the elementary particles in a different way, the trinket would be able to detect it and mark that person a suspicious. The high cost of 1000 Gold Lans for each trinket was, hence, justified.
Of course, in both cases, there were still loopholes, but the goal was to make it as difficult as possible to circumvent the system.
Nobody in the central continent had used such extensive methods yet, both due to not having the means to deploy something so complex and also because it was a risk.
The creativity of Mages wasn't something that could be underestimated. Even in this system, it couldn't be ascertained with a 100% guarantee that someone wouldn't be able to find some exploit which they could use to easily bypass the system.
Although Daneel hoped that this wouldn't happen, he wasn't ready to deploy the system throughout the kingdom unless it was tested. Hence, he had taken the decision to do so in the Olympics.
The system would make or break the future of Lanthanor, as he suspected that more and more spies would start entering both Kingdoms when it went public that they were going to unite.
Information was key, and he had no intention to give it up without a struggle.
With this topic out of the way, Daneel moved on to make an important announcement.
"I also have news. The Kingdom of the Elves has contacted me saying that they wish to participate in the games, but they require us to hold events for Mages. What do you all think?"
The words were met by shock in the room.
The arrogant elves… Were actually requesting that they wanted to participate?"
"Of course, they tried to instigate me by saying that we are not holding mage events because we are afraid that we 'cannot hold a candle to their skill'. Is this true?"
Cassandra immediately stood up with an angry expression on her face as she heard these words.
"My King, I guarantee you that my Mages will leave those long-eared pricks in the dust! Please give me a chance to show just what kind of training I'm putting all the Mages of Lanthanor through. You will definitely not be disappointed."
This made a smile come Daneel's face, as this was the sort of spirit of competition that he had hoped to invoke in everyone with the Olympics.
"I don't doubt it, Cassandra. But you should understand that if we are humiliated in an event that we are conducting, we might never be able to live it down. We must take every precaution to make sure that it doesn't happen, so I have a secret competitor in mind who might turn the tide."
Wondering who such a talented person might be, Cassandra asked, "Who is that, my King?"
The answer made her open her mouth and gawk, while the others started to chuckle.
"Me,", said the King, with a grin on his face.