Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

“Once I finish this cigarette, Project Dragon Abyss will begin as scheduled.” Schneider’s gaze refocused on the countdown on the screen, his tone resolute and brooking no argument. “Unless the principal himself orders it to stop, even if Frost Gattuso were standing right in front of me, it wouldn’t matter.”

“You can’t do it.” Professor Manstein slammed a black card with dark gold trim onto the control panel in front of Professor Schneider. The card was made of a special material that gleamed with a dark sheen under the light, and the intricate Gattuso family crest was displayed in the center of the card.

"With this black card that grants the Gattuso family the highest level of authority, I now possess the same system privileges as the principal. I can directly order Norma to forcibly terminate Project Dragon Abyss. Without Norma's support and coordination, you will be powerless to carry out operations in Japan."

Professor Schneider's gaze fell on the black card, and his lips twitched slightly, as if he were sneering or suppressing the urge to cough.

He raised his eyes, which were always hidden in the shadows and behind his oxygen mask, and looked at Manstein: "I never expected you to choose to pledge allegiance to the Gattuso family. As far as I know, your father, well, the maverick, is one of the people who most likes to go against the Gattuso family."

“Loyalty? How could that be?” Manstein pushed up his glasses. “I am the head of the Disciplinary Committee, and my duty is to oversee all personnel within the academy, including professors. In some people’s eyes, this position may be worth fighting for, at least unlike you, who is a well-known die-hard follower of the principal. I am standing here today, holding this card, not because of the Gattuso family’s orders, but because of the Dragon Abyss Project itself.”

He leaned forward slightly, his tone becoming more serious: "This SS-level mission, from its initiation to the decision-making, seems to have only involved you and the Principal. You were so eager to cram the academy's three most outstanding and important students—Caesar Gattuso, Chu Zihang, and Lu Mingfei—into the deep sea, into an abyss that even we barely understand. This is inconsistent with your and the Principal's usual cautious approach. I need an explanation, Schneider. Before Norma re-enters the game, before I decide to use this card."

“Wrong.” Schneider’s voice was hoarse but steady. He took a deep breath of oxygen and slowly exhaled smoke. “This decision has nothing to do with me. It was the principal, Principal Angers, who made it all by himself. My duty is simply to carry out his orders without question.”

He looked into Manstein's eyes. "It is indeed a risk. But some risks have to be taken."

Manstein paused for two seconds, then reached out and inserted the black card into an inconspicuous card slot on the control panel. With a soft "beep," the main screen in the control room instantly switched, displaying the magnificent and ancient coat of arms of the Gattuso family filling the entire screen.

“Welcome, Professor Manstein,” Norma’s voice echoed in the empty control room. “Your Gattuso family’s highest-level black card has been verified. You will now temporarily have access to the highest administrative authority of the Norma System in your dual capacity as head of the Disciplinary Committee and envoy of the Gattuso family’s privileges. What assistance do you require?”

Chapter 406 The Mission from 11 Years Ago (Part 1)

Manstein did not give the order immediately. He looked at Schneider and said in a deep voice, "I can immediately halt Project Dragon Abyss and allow those three children and all support forces to return. I can also choose to stand on your side, but only if you tell me your reasons. Why? Why are you in such a hurry to start Project Dragon Abyss? At the cost of immense pressure from the Board of Trustees, and possibly even sacrificing our best students?"

Schneider didn't answer directly. Slowly and with unusual care, using his scarred and old wounded hands, he removed the oxygen mask that he always wore on his face. He did this extremely slowly, as if peeling off a layer of skin connected to flesh. Then, he turned slightly to face a brighter spot on the control panel.

Manstein's breathing suddenly stopped.

Even though he was mentally prepared and knew that Professor Schneider was disfigured due to an old injury, this was the first time he had seen the other's true face so clearly under the mask.

This was no ordinary scar or disfigurement. The lower half of his face, below his eyes, presented an extremely unnatural, almost mummy-like withered state. The skin clung tightly to the bone, as thin as a layer of dry, yellow parchment, with almost no outline of subcutaneous fat and muscle.

His lips had shrunk to almost nothing, revealing a row of stark white front teeth that looked particularly abrupt due to the loss of soft tissue support. His nose bridge also seemed to have collapsed, leaving only two small, oddly shaped holes.

The lower half of his face resembled the head of a mummified corpse that had been weathered in the desert for hundreds of years, creating a stark contrast with the still intact forehead and eyes of a man in his thirties.

“Ugly, isn’t it?” Schneider’s voice came from his mouth, which could barely open, and was even more hoarse and unrecognizable than when he was wearing a mask. “Actually, I’m only thirty-seven years old this year. A few years younger than you, Manstein. But I have half a face that might belong to a century-old mummy. When the students hear my cough, they all think I’m an old man on the verge of death.”

His tone was heavy with self-mockery, and his eyes, though deep in their sockets, were unusually sharp and bright as he stared intently at Manstein.

Manstein felt a chill creep up his spine. He resisted the urge to back away, but his voice involuntarily lowered: "Why did it turn out like this?"

“This is a souvenir from a mission.” Schneider put his oxygen mask back on, regaining the caution he had displayed in the shadows, as if the previous presentation had exhausted him. “That was eleven years ago. The first time we captured a heartbeat from the deep sea.”

Manstein's pupils contracted: "Isn't this the first time we've discovered dragon embryos in the sea?!"

“No, of course not.” Schneider slowly exhaled a near-perfect smoke ring, the smoke swirling and rising in the dim light. “Eleven years ago, in the Greenland Sea, we discovered something similar. You should have guessed it by now. I’m talking about the Greenland Sea incident. That unsolved case that the Board of Trustees ordered to seal all files and prohibit anyone from further investigation.”

He looked up, his eyes gleaming in the shadows. "Want to hear this story? You might need some patience. It's long, and after you hear it, you'd better order Norma out of this room. You have the black card now, you can do it."

"Why can't Norma be present?" Manstein asked, puzzled. "Norma is the academy's mainframe; theoretically, all mission records should be there..."

“Theoretically?” Schneider interrupted him, letting out a short, cold laugh like a leaky bellows. “So-called top secrets can never be truly and securely stored on a system or hard drive. They can only be stored here.”

He stretched out his withered finger and tapped his temple. "Furthermore, after listening, you cannot leave any written record, not even a memo for yourself. This is an ironclad rule of the academy. You can only rely on your own memory to try your best to remember every detail I said. If you forget, there's nothing that can be done."

"You can still remember every detail of what happened eleven years ago?" Manstein questioned.

“Of course I remember,” Schneider’s voice turned unusually cold, as if it came from the frozen seabed. “That was the only time I ever traveled to hell. How could I forget?”

A bone-chilling coldness filled the control room as Schneider spoke. Manstein keenly sensed the burning rage deep within the ugly yet powerful man before him, a rage that had been suppressed for eleven years, now emanating from the man's heart.

Manstein took a deep breath and turned to the air: "Norma, leave this control room for now. For the next fifteen minutes, keep the central control room out of your surveillance range."

"Understood, Professor Manstein. For the next fifteen minutes, all monitoring equipment, recording devices, and data logging ports in the central control room will be temporarily locked. The lights will be adjusted to the minimum brightness. Have a pleasant conversation."

As soon as the words were spoken, most of the screens in the control room went dark, the hum of the instruments subsided, the red indicator lights on the cameras went out, and even the lighting was switched to a few dim wall lamps to maintain basic visibility. Outside the window, the shadows of the trees swayed and were cast onto the high windows. At this moment, the control room was as silent as the crypt of an ancient church, completely isolated from the outside world.

Professor Schneider slowly leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the endless darkness outside the window.

"That was in the autumn of 2001..."

His voice was low and slow as he began to recount the story that had been sealed away for eleven years. From the bronze fragment photos released by ID Prince to their astonishing match with the bronze pillar table in the icy sea. From a young assistant professor's fervor for dragon runes to anonymous contacts and the unsolicited gift of the fragments. From sonar scanning the seabed to find the bronze pillar to the discovery of that eerie, powerful, and consistently fixed heartbeat signal.

He described months of observation and debate, from speculation about large marine creatures to the audacious yet terrifying conjecture of dragon embryos. He recounted how the board of trustees shifted from conservative to radical, pressuring for a swift dive to confirm the hypothesis. He described how they procured German diving bells, armed the trainees with metal mesh and drugs, crafted underwater rifles with Philosopher's Stone bullets, and the mix of tension and excitement among the young trainees before the dive.

The story gradually unfolds towards a day when the weather is unexpectedly good for the dive. Initially, everything goes smoothly. At a depth of 170 meters, the team leader's surprised yet eerie cry over the communication channel that he has spotted a door leads to an excited discussion that defies orders. Schneider's alertness and commands are followed by rapid breathing mixed with strange chanting and sighing sounds, chaotic gunshots, splashing sounds, and shouts, until communication is completely cut off.

Schneider described the details of the safety cable being cut from the inside by a diving knife, his crazy decision to dive down and rescue the person by hand, the icy cold water with extremely low visibility at a depth of 170 meters, the silent, shadowy pursuer behind him like an ancient totem, the strong smell of blood that penetrated his mask, and the cold air mixed with dragon blood that instantly cracked his oxygen mask and was almost liquefied.

“I was frozen inside tons of sea ice, lifted to the surface like a frozen fish in a supermarket,” Schneider said, his voice flat and monotone, as if recounting someone else’s ordeal. “The doctors said I inhaled gas at nearly minus two hundred degrees Celsius. Half of my face instantly died, my brain temperature dropped below zero, and my blood froze. My chances of survival were one in a thousand. They saved my tongue, but my airway is as fragile as a mummy’s skin, it would break at the slightest touch. I have to rely on it.”

He pointed to the oxygen mask on his face and the equipment next to it, "The artificial airway needs to be replaced every two or three years, otherwise you will suffocate and die."

Chapter 407 The Mission from 11 Years Ago (Part 2)

Schneider picked up the tin containing golden tobacco: "I used to love hand-rolled cigarettes. But this tin of tobacco is from eleven years ago, and I haven't finished it yet. I only roll one when I'm reminiscing about these things. The pain from the smoke irritating my damaged respiratory tract makes my memories of the past clearer."

He looked at Manstein. "I assure you, every detail I've described is true. I can't forget it. These memories are etched here with pain." He tapped his temple again.

“We failed. We couldn’t capture it, and we couldn’t kill it. It’s still there, hidden somewhere deep in the ocean. Hours after the incident, we explored it again with robots. The icy sea was deathly silent; even the fish had vanished. There was nothing on the seabed—no embryos, no copper pillars, no corpses, no bloodstains. All gone without a trace. It was like a collective nightmare.” Schneider paused. “Years later, a mining company discovered manganese nodules there, built a mining platform, and thousands of workers were employed there. There were no more supernatural events. Until recently, we detected the exact same heartbeat signal in the Japan Trench.”

The story abruptly ended. A deathly silence fell over the control room, broken only by Professor Schneider's labored but much calmer breathing and the faint crackling of burning tobacco.

“The story ends here,” Schneider suddenly spoke, breaking the silence. He bent down and pulled a thickly dusty manila document bag from a hidden drawer under the console, then pushed it with slightly strained movements in front of Manstein. “There’s another document here that you might be interested in.”

Manstein's gaze fell on the file folder. A striking, blood-red SS-level top-secret stamp was prominently displayed on the seal. His expression instantly changed: "How could you possibly have gotten your hands on this?! Even if you're the head of the executive department, unauthorized access to SS-level files will result in immediate dismissal by the board of directors!"

“SS-level paper files exist only in the top-secret archives of Watt Alheim, guarded by those lunatics in the Equipment Department. The keys are held by the Board of Trustees and the Principal. Even the Board of Trustees might not be able to access them,” Schneider said calmly. “Of course I can’t get my hands on them. The people in the Equipment Department don’t like me.”

"Then what is this?"

“But someone can get it,” Schneider said meaningfully. “Since that person doesn’t care about the board’s impeachment at all, why should I care about whether I’ll be removed from office?”

The implication couldn't be clearer. Principal Angers is the only person who could and has the courage to do so.

On the cover of the file folder, printed in black ink, was the word: Greenland. The epicenter of the storm eleven years ago.

Manstein's heart pounded. The opportunity to uncover the truth behind the events that had shaken the academy's leadership and been shrouded in secrecy was before him. The temptation was immense, but the risks were equally terrifying.

"This may be your only chance to learn the truth about what happened back then. It's not too late to give up now. But after reading it, you may not even have the chance to continue being a 'fence-sitter.' If the Gattuso family knew you had read this document, they would see you as one of the principal's lackeys, just like me."

Manstein stared at the file folder in silence for a full half minute. Then, he took a deep breath, and with a slightly trembling hand, carefully used his thumbnail to pry open the sealing wax.

He flipped through the yellowed pages one by one. The signatures of those involved, the handwritten reports, the meeting minutes, the equipment lists, the casualty statistics—the cold words and numbers gradually pieced together a picture that was far more detailed and chilling than Schneider's oral account.

His face grew paler and paler, his eyes twitched uncontrollably, and the knuckles of his fingers gripping the paper tightened until they turned white.

"Fool! What have they all done?!" He finally couldn't hold back any longer and squeezed out a low roar through clenched teeth, his voice trembling with extreme anger and disbelief.

“Yes. That’s why the Board of Trustees was so eager to cover up the truth and was absolutely unwilling to reinvestigate the Greenland incident,” Schneider said. “As you can see, the Board of Trustees was fully aware of the risks of approaching the ancient dragon embryo. The Secret Society had long documented that powerful dragons possessed aggressiveness and territorial abilities even in their embryonic stage. But they were so eager to obtain that embryo that they risked the lives of their students. As a result, tragedy struck. They then hastily covered it up, purged the management, and compromised with the principal, relinquishing power. Everything was to keep the lid on.”

His gaze, sharp as a knife, pierced Manstein: "Therefore, the Board of Trustees has no right to send an official document demanding the termination of Project Dragon Abyss! Everything I've done today is nothing more than a repeat of their actions eleven years ago! The only difference is that this time, the list of those diving includes the heir of the Gattuso family, so they panicked. They can disregard other people's lives, yet they value their own lives above all else. In comparison, even those lunatics in the Equipment Department are a little more endearing."

Manstein forced himself to calm down, but his voice was still hoarse: "The embryo that suddenly hatched eleven years ago, could this one also..."

“Very likely,” Schneider interrupted him. “How much do we know about the incubation process of dragons? Who knows when it will hatch? Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next second.”

"Did Caesar's group know about these things?"

“I didn’t tell them,” Schneider replied coldly and directly. “Knowing this would only increase unnecessary fear and impair judgment. What we need is their superior bloodline. Only the most elite bloodlines can resist the erosion and interference of the embryonic realm. They are merely necessary tools.”

“Tools?!” Manstein looked up abruptly, his eyes blazing with rage. “Then how are you any different from those bastards on the board of trustees back then?! The Caesar Group was like a line of lambs blindfolded, walking towards the altar! And you, their shepherd! You are a complete devil!”

“The devil? Are you talking about me?” Schneider slowly raised his head.

"Who else can I say?! Now I finally understand that saying. The Equipment Department is full of lunatics, but the Execution Department is full of lunatics! The Equipment Department doesn't understand the value of human life, while you are indifferent!" Manstein roared, his long-suppressed emotions exploding.

"Is that damn mission all you care about?! You don't care how many people die to complete it, do you?! You sit here, smoking, your face full of sorrow as you recall your dead students, speaking so sentimentally. But you bastard, you turn around and send a new batch of students to the same hell! If I were your mother, I would regret giving birth to you!"

Schneider was silent for a moment. "You can't be my mother. You're a man."

“Manstein, sometimes I really envy you. I envy you, and people like Guderian. You live in a relatively clean world. Unlike me, and unlike the principal. We are the eaters of evil.”

“What is that?” Manstein frowned.

Chapter 408 The Mission from 11 Years Ago (Part 2)

“They are the ones who devour evil,” Schneider’s voice deepened. “In this world, not everything that is right is just. And not everything that is just is necessarily right. There is a classic ethical dilemma: at a railway fork, one side is a working track with a warning sign that says ‘No Playing,’ but a hundred naughty children are playing on it, completely ignoring the warning. The other side is an abandoned track with only one child playing alone, following the rules.”

"A train is coming, and you're standing by the switch. If you don't switch it, the train will run over a hundred disobedient children. If you do switch it, the train will go onto the abandoned tracks and only run over the obedient, innocent child."

Schneider's gaze was fixed intently on Manstein, as if it were a physical object: "My dear colleague, please tell me, can you switch that track?"

Manstein froze. This damned dilemma! To intervene or not to intervene? One hundred lives versus one innocent life? Which is more important, the rules or life? The grieving faces of the parents of those one hundred children, and the desperate eyes of the child who followed the rules but suffered such a tragedy, clashed fiercely in his mind. He opened his mouth, but found himself unable to utter a sound. He couldn't make a choice.

“Time’s up,” Schneider’s voice pulled him back to reality, a chilling pity in his tone. “While you hesitated and thought, the train roared past. Those hundred children are dead. You made no choice; you just watched it all happen.”

"So, what would you choose?" Manstein asked hoarsely, as if he had used up all his strength.

“Me? Of course I’ll choose to switch the tracks,” Schneider answered without hesitation, his voice resolute. “Although I killed an innocent child, I saved a hundred. In that case, I am the evil eater. I did the right thing mathematically and in terms of the outcome, but I bear the sin. I swallow this sin, digest it, so that others can continue to remain innocent and kind.”

"This is sophistry! It's fallacy! It's utterly meaningless!" Manstein exclaimed.

“I have no reason to argue,” Schneider shook his head. “If you weren’t one of the few people in the academy I could call a friend, I wouldn’t even be telling you this.”

His tone softened slightly, but his core remained firm. "I did put the Caesar Group in danger. But it was a choice we had to make. We couldn't just watch that embryo continue to hatch in the Abyss. The sooner we acted, before it fully awakened, the greater the chance of success and the smaller the relative risk. Waiting is hesitation, and hesitation only gives the enemy more time to prepare. That's what the principal said. If, if the Caesar Group is destroyed because of this, then I will bear the consequences."

“I thought you would at least care about Chu Zihang,” Manstein said, his voice tinged with helplessness. “All along, you’ve…”

“Chu Zihang, Lu Mingfei, Caesar. In the Executive Department’s files and in my eyes, they are first and foremost weapons with different characteristics and values.” Schneider’s voice turned cold and mechanical again. “Of course we care about the integrity of weapons, but if we never unsheathe them for fear of damage, then the weapons lose their meaning! Remember the miniature launcher I implanted in Chu Zihang’s molar?”

He pushed his phone in front of Manstein. The screen displayed a map of Japan, with a striking red dot flashing regularly, positioned precisely at the floating platform of the Sumeru pedestal.

Manstein nodded; he knew about it.

"I personally recruited him into Kassel College," Schneider said slowly, his tone complex.

"But from the moment he stepped into the school gates, his actions have been under my real-time surveillance. If he gets out of control and shows any dangerous tendencies, I will not hesitate to put him on the highest danger list and personally arrange for specialists to deal with or eliminate him. Only a devil could manage a place like the Executive Department. Those who walk with me are all madmen. What holds us together is not fragile personal feelings, but a common goal: to slay dragons. From ancient times to the present, the Secret Society has been such an organization. Our opponents are dragons that are more powerful than we can imagine. If we ourselves are still filled with pointless, weak emotions, we would have been wiped out long ago!"

“If it’s truly possible to sacrifice anyone for slaying a dragon,” Manstein stared at him, asking each word with a final sharpness, “then why don’t you climb into that deep-sea submersible yourself? Why are you sitting here while they go down?”

Schneider raised his head and gave Manstein a deep look. There was no anger, no explanation, only a bottomless weariness and resolve in his eyes.

Without a word, he reached for a sharp, silver steak knife from the tray of snacks beside him. Then, to Manstein's astonishment, he gripped the handle with a reverse grip and, without hesitation, plunged the blade into his left chest, right up to his heart!

"What are you doing?!" Manstein exclaimed in shock.

With a muffled "thud," the blade sank completely into the hole!

Schneider remained expressionless, as if the knife hadn't pierced his own body. He even slammed the hilt of the knife down to make sure it was completely through! Then, he sat there quietly, a gleaming knife stuck in his chest, continuing to smoke and stare at Manstein without uttering a word.