Although the official website of the local Wildlife Management Bureau showed that the dangerous large predators and poisonous creatures in this region were maintained within a "controllable" range, Augustus and his men still made ample protective preparations.
On the uninhabited Tyrador III, relic hunters and poachers were far more dangerous than beasts and venomous insects.
They spent over ten minutes walking across a relatively level mesa, passing through a deciduous broadleaf forest where a scrapped United logging machine was parked, and arrived at a small town composed of brick-and-stone buildings.
The layout of this nameless town possessed a kind of pastoral natural aesthetic. Among the colonists' cottages arranged in a staggered fashion, paths interlaced, and the main walls of all the houses were stacked from irregularly shaped colored stones and industrial adhesives, dotted with beautiful pebbles taken from a nearby river.
The locals used limestone to build their roofs, so these houses with colored walls and gray roofs became the iconic scenery of this small town that might have long been forgotten by the Confederacy government.
Affected by the local humid and hot weather and the occasionally sudden cold currents, the locals had also built chimneys and fireplaces. Large exhaust fans and solar panels were installed on the roofs, and the sound of the spinning fans was as commonplace as the sound of wind.
The town's streets were paved with bricks, and on both sides were nurseries fenced off by residents with wooden railings. In front of every house, flowers bloomed in profusion, filled with the region's strange angiosperms.
About five hundred to one thousand residents lived in the town, each managing at least several dozens of acres of farmland or woodlots. At the same time, quarrying was also one of the important local economic pillars, and almost all young people had to learn how to hunt, deal with the region's unusually dangerous creatures, and defend against the unpredictable poisonous plants.
Life here was like Korhal IV over a hundred years ago. The earliest colonists mainly made their living through planting, and advanced large machinery along with the vast land cleared by pioneers brought ample food to the settlers. Generally speaking, the population of a colony would increase rapidly within thirty years, but as far as Augustus knew, the population of this town had always remained around one thousand since records began.
The complex, ever-changing, and exceptionally perilous natural environment might be the main cause of this problem. Some people were even reported to have never come out again after entering certain ancient ruins. But on the other hand, the nearby research laboratories still recruited large numbers of locals to work in the science cities they built among the mountains, lakes, and oceans. Thus, the already small number of local residents gradually began to migrate toward the several medium and small cities established around the research stations.
In these cities, cutting-edge technology from the core worlds of the Terran Confederacy greatly improved the quality of human life. All the cities on Tyrador III were closer to university towns, and most of the residents regarded scientific research as their only work.
In contrast, the residents of Tyrador III still lived relatively primitive lives. This place was far from the noise, yet it had already deviated from the developmental trajectory of this world. Typically, it was a paradise for those who were persecuted or simply wished to live quietly, but for the local residents, this tranquil yet mediocre life was not necessarily free from being a form of torment.
Often, the young people of Tyrador III would choose to enter the cities to seek a way out. If these people possessed academic talent, then they might receive an olive branch extended to them by the research stations.
The arrival of Augustus broke the long-standing peace of this remote town. The local residents always maintained vigilance toward such outsiders, and at first there were even people who walked up and demanded that Augustus present his Terran Confederacy citizen ID card, and used an ID card reader to verify Augustus's identity.
The Tyrador star system was both a cradle that nurtured abundant life and a paradise for various pirates, smugglers, and wanted criminals. Thus, the people here were extremely repulsed toward outsiders with unclear identities.
To this day, human scientists were still unable to explain the bizarre strong magnetic fields in certain regions of the planets in the Tyrador star system, while others who attributed them to the ruins of a lost civilization were accused of being ignorant.
The complex natural environment and the mysterious force fields that could greatly disrupt radio signals made this place a hiding spot for those harboring ulterior motives, and the Terran Confederacy Central Security Bureau also believed that more than one rebel organization was hiding on the uninhabited Tyrador III and Tyrador VIII.
Such a judgment might in the past have merely been chasing shadows or obtaining some funding by fraud, but now, the greatest enemy of the Terran Confederacy, the Korhal Revolutionary Army, indeed had already established large or small operational bases on these three planets in the Tyrador star system.
"'This is a good place, the folk customs are simple, and there are cute little animals everywhere.'" After sending away the town police officer who had come over to question them, Raynor put away his ID card.
"How should I put it? Where exactly is that kid called Egon? We spent quite a bit of effort to get all the way here," Raynor said.
"It's too hot here, both muggy and damp. I want to go home." Harnack, dejected, smoothed down his red rooster-comb hair that had been soaked, constantly trying to make the hair lying flat on his head stand upright again.
From the very beginning, after arriving in the Tyrador star system, Augustus had only said that his intelligence department had discovered several talented individuals, and then they had come all this way here.
Everyone knew that the Marshal of the Revolutionary Army was eager for talent and appointed people solely based on ability. He did not hesitate to pay personal visits and treat the talented with courtesy for those he valued. But it was that mysterious intelligence department that was what the others cared about most, while the largest intelligence departments on their side, the Augustgrad National Security Committee and the Umojan Protectorate Intelligence Bureau, were also completely confused.
Augustus also would not tell them that he was simply doing something akin to collecting characters. He had always been discovering ahead of time those talented individuals who would shine brilliantly in the future, making these people serve him.
"Let's keep walking. There are no house numbers here, but if you ask about Stetmann, all the residents know where he is." Augustus urged Raynor and Harnack to calm down a bit.
Augustus led their followers all the way through the entire town and arrived beside a small brick house at the end. Compared to the other houses in the town, this house was much more simple.
"Today is the weekend, he doesn't need to go to school, so he should be at home." Augustus walked to the doorway of the house, which had two steps, carefully examining the strange numbers, formulas, and a few simple drawings carved on the door panel, including some components and two matchstick figures, one big and one small.
[Knock, knock—]
The door was wooden, equipped with a password lock but without a doorbell.
At first, Augustus did not get any response. He patiently continued knocking for over ten seconds, until everyone outside could hear the sound of something being broken inside the house.
"Who is knocking?" After a while, the door finally opened from the inside, and a boy with messy, greasy black hair poked his head out through the crack of the opened door. He seemed to have just woken up, looking drowsy.
"Ah, it's you." Egon Stetmann stared at Augustus's feet clad in field infantry boots, and only then did he raise his head to look upward—he was even too short, his height perhaps not even exceeding 1.5 m, such that in front of the tall Augustus he looked like a little dwarf.
Among Terrans of this age group, he either had developmental delay caused by malnutrition or had some kind of illness.
"No, it's you all." He saw the people standing behind Augustus and finally reacted.
"Who are you?"
Stetmann's voice was sharp and thin, but considering that he was still a child who had not yet reached the voice-change period, this was nothing surprising.
"I am Augustus Mengsk, Marshal of the Korhal Revolutionary Army," Augustus said with a smile.
"Hello—this is a self-introduction?" Stetmann was not very good at talking with people. "I am Egon, Egon Stetmann. My dream is to become the most famous scientist in the research field on Tyrador III. Although you may not believe it, I am indeed a genius… I am still quite confident in myself."
"Oh." Augustus smiled. "I know. I also know that you are a genius."
"Oh, thank you. That's right, Augustus Mengsk." Stetmann was smug because of Augustus's acknowledgment.
"I've heard that name. Two merchants who claimed to be Sons of Korhal told me that before long someone called Augustus Mengsk would come to find me. I spent a long time pondering what exactly the revolution they spoke of was—perhaps I never truly figured it out, but that doesn't really matter."
"What did they tell you? The part about me." Augustus's voice was rather gentle.
"They said you were the greatest freedom fighter and hero, also a savior and the deliverer of humanity. If you ask me, such a person cannot exist—that would be a saint, not an individual." Only now did Stetmann notice that many people were staring at him. He realized he had never spoken in front of so many people before, and the sudden nervousness made him feel a burst of rapid breathing.
"Uh—why—I didn't mean—that—of course—" Stetmann sorrowfully discovered that he suddenly began to stutter, and then began uncontrollably rambling nonsense.
'This is terrible.' He sorrowfully talked to himself, trying to think of every possible explanation to prove that he was not the kind of loser who babbled nonsense as soon as he got nervous, nor a mildly autistic patient who always immersed himself in his own world when speaking. It was just that he had eaten expired pickled fish canned food yesterday, causing him to be out of condition today.
"Yes, that's right."
Stetmann did not realize that he had spoken aloud what he was thinking.
---
I will post some extra Chapters in Patreon, you can check it out. >> patreon.com/TitoVillar
---