After knocking out the last follower, Noid let out a sigh of relief. Although he could easily clear these small strongholds now, continuously taking down ten of them still drained a significant amount of his mental and physical energy.
The fighting only took a few short minutes, but the tracking took several times longer, so it was very late now. He had to go back and rest.
After calling the police, he put on his stealth cloak and rode his flying carpet back to the coffee shop.
Lately, the Doom Cult seemed to be getting weaker, and he didn't know if they were pretending to execute some conspiracy or if they were truly weak. Noid thought the former was more likely. Unfortunately, the main forces of the cult were still hiding deep, and until they made their move, he could only take down their outer strongholds one step at a time.
He had also received the intelligence that Sasha had sent him. She had omitted the parts about Toriel's life, leaving only some important information about the bishop's close associates and news about the Doom Cult in Orna city. He didn't need to worry about that city because the police and military had already mobilized to clean it up. What he was concerned about were the three close associates of the bishop.
Garfeild, Toriel, and one other person whose name he didn't know. Toriel was in charge of Orna city, and Garfeild was in charge of Rorgh city. There was no information about the third person. Sasha also said that they were tracking all the cities in the 17th defense line and that the military had also notified the other defense lines to raise their vigilance.
But Noid felt the chances of finding the third person were not very high.
According to Toriel, the Doom Cult had been "operating" in Orna city for two years, bypassing almost all the police and military there. The area managed by the third close associate of the bishop had existed much longer than the cult's presence in Orna, so they would be even more hidden.
If ranked by danger level, Orna city was cleaned up, and in Rorgh city, Garfeild was still in hiding, with the lower and middle ranks of the cult gradually being pushed into a corner. The last mysterious area was classified as a potential danger. That's assuming there were no other areas that Toriel didn't know about.
As for the three complete modified fanatics, Toriel had also confirmed that they belonged to the bishop. The only thing she knew was that they came from the Doom Cult's main base.
The credibility of this statement was very high because he had seen the system mention the main base in the faction reward points. This proved that it didn't just exist as a title but was the most mysterious and secretive place of the Doom Cult.
And Noid didn't think that the research for the complete modified fanatic was done with just two or three experiments. The physical stats of these fanatics were enhanced to 1.5, and their type was extremely suitable for killing. The Doom Cult must have put in a huge amount of effort and time. The consumption of manpower and resources was incalculable. And the manpower here didn't refer to laborers but to people for experiments.
The incomplete modified fanatic was not something to be compared to. To put it nicely, they were incomplete. To put it bluntly, they were just failed products with uneven quality.
Although a year or two wasn't a short time, to research this, it would require a huge number of test subjects. And how would they get them? By kidnapping them, of course. But trying to kidnap that many people from all the defense lines, even from a secondary city, was too unrealistic.
Noid didn't say that the Doom Cult was not capable. It was because they hid too deeply. The people were afraid of the Doom Cult because they hid too deeply. The military still hadn't completely solved the Doom Cult problem, simply because they hid too deeply.
Comparing the Doom Cult to a mouse that only knows how to hide is not just about its ability to hide and escape but also about the reality of the situation. As long as it continues to hide and run, the Doom Cult can play cat and mouse with humanity. But once it's exposed or caught, destroying it would be as simple as stepping on it.
That also pointed Noid to the next clue. The main base of the Doom Cult was not within the jurisdiction of the defense line. Maybe it once was, but now they wouldn't dare.
The world wasn't entirely made up of defense lines. It was estimated that the defense lines only contained 92% to 94% of the world's current population. The rest either lived in small scattered groups or formed camps or nomadic communities... in short, they existed in many different collective forms.
The outside world wasn't a vast, flat expanse. It also contained countless cities, structures, and remnants of civilization. These groups also survived on that.
If this were a zombie survival disaster, living like this would be fine. But this was a world where dooms brought the apocalypse. Not only was their destructive power very strong, but their destructive nature was also very terrifying. Zombies could only infect humans, while dooms corroded the entire earth.
With collapse and demonization, the survivors on the outside were having an increasingly difficult time. But when the new government, the supreme council, sent the military to pick them up, only a small number of them accepted. Those who didn't go had either gotten used to this lifestyle or were too used to living without laws and didn't want the government to impose rules on them like before. In such cases, the military could only accept it and move on. But if the other party took any detrimental actions, the military could step in to eliminate them.
Going a little off-topic, the point is that outside the defense lines, there were still many human groups living, and they didn't have the protection of the government. Weren't those people the most suitable test subjects?
If that wasn't enough, there was one more detail. That was the carapace and bone spikes used by the modified fanatics. These things all came from elite dooms. The military always carefully inspected and controlled the corpses of elite dooms.
It wasn't difficult for cult followers to get the corpses of normal dooms because there were the most of them and they were the most scattered. Elite dooms were different; they were completely under the military's watch. Therefore, these parts were not taken from the battlefields of the defense lines but from the outside.
But a few questions were still unanswered for Noid.
Was the area where the other close associate of the bishop was located the main base?
Where did they get the doom fetuses from?
The first question was Noid's personal guess because the compatibility between the two places was quite high. The second question was the most puzzling. Normal dooms and even elite dooms were not capable of reproduction. This had been confirmed by dissections a long time ago. The only doom species that could reproduce was the doom queen. It was like the queen ant of the ant species. Dooms were born in round, egg-like sacs that weren't hard, and then the doom fetus would break out of the sac.
He also didn't think the Doom Cult could get close enough to a doom queen to steal eggs.
The wall where he hung his clues was already more than half-covered. After finishing the last sticky note, Noid stopped. Now was not the time, but in the near future, he planned to go outside and see for himself. The trip might not be very long; it was just to try his luck.