Chapter 1195: Puppet and Kroke

"You must be Mr. Bell."

After flipping through the documents and personal items on the table and confirming the identity of the owner, Li Ang turned to look at the unkempt man held down by Alger and said peacefully:

"Please rest assured, we don't want to hurt you, we just want to use your identity as a 1st Zone scholar to help us do some things."

"Hmph!"

Before Li Ang could ask for anything, the man with messy beard snorted angrily and said unkindly:

"You must be those wandering criminals! Why? After attacking the 3rd Administrative Zone, you set your sights on the 1st Research Zone again?"

"Yes."

"I won't take you there, don't even think about it!"

The unkempt man was very tough, stiffened his neck and glared at Li Ang:

"The 1st Research Zone is the core of the entire Kroke Kingdom, and everything I have is given by the kingdom. I will never betray the kingdom!"

"Mmhmm."

After responding casually, Li Ang, who hadn't slept all night, didn't continue to say anything to the unkempt man, but said to Alger who was holding him down:

"Senior Alger, it's up to you next."

"Okay."

Hearing Li Ang's words, Alger nodded slightly. His right hand, which was holding the unkempt man's shoulder, scattered instantly, turning into countless threads finer than hair, and hung softly on his shoulder.

"What is this? You... what are you doing?"

In the unkempt man's terrified eyes, the strange threads hanging on his shoulder actually broke through the skin on his shoulder like earthworms drilling into the ground, and drilled into his body one by one.

Immediately after, before he could react, those thin, almost transparent threads moved along the gaps between his muscles and bones, "swimming" towards his limbs and bones.

In just a few breaths, these weird threads walked through his whole body, took over his body completely instead of his own will, and even places like eyelids and tongues were implanted with at least dozens of fine threads, unable to move at all.

"Almost there."

After flipping through the unkempt man's earlobe and feeling a slight bulge of threads on the thinnest part of the skin on the back, Alger, whose right arm had disappeared from the shoulder, nodded and said to Li Ang:

"This Mr. Bell has been controlled by me. If he has any abnormal behavior, I will find and stop it at the first time, ensuring that he has no chance to ask for help."

"Hard work."

After nodding to Alger, Li Ang took out his small notebook in the unkempt man's terrified eyes, looked at the itinerary written on it, and said:

"Let's go, it's time for Mr. Bell to go to work, we should set off."

Set off? You... ah?!

Hearing Li Ang's words, the unkempt man discovered in horror that as if another set of bones and muscles were exerting force in his body, he actually opened the door and walked out.

And the young man with black hair and black eyes and the tall man missing an arm followed him directly, without avoiding anyone, and got into the air car that came to pick them up....

"Mr. Li Ang."

Seeming a bit unsure, after the air car started, Alger couldn't help but ask:

"Are we just going over like this? If we go over relying on Mona's 【Road Ahead】, would it be safer?"

"It's okay, let's go like this."

Li Ang, who was sitting beside the unkempt man, answered without raising his head while flipping through the materials snatched yesterday:

"I have checked carefully. There is no such thing as video surveillance in the Kroke Kingdom's technology. Relying on the effect of 【Secret Tail】 is enough to mix us through ordinary checkpoints.

And counting the several large experimental areas specially opened around, the total area of the 1st Research Zone is about 60 square kilometers, which is not small. As long as we pay attention not to get too close to the core area and not appear in places that are too open, the possibility of being discovered is not high."

"That's good..."

After hearing Li Ang's guarantee, Alger felt a little relieved, then looked at the unkempt man who was bowing his head to read the materials, and asked curiously:

"Mr. Li Ang, these snatched materials are just ordinary data, right? You have been reading them all night yesterday, haven't you finished reading them yet?"

"No, I have only read about one-tenth of them now."

"Then... do you have any discoveries?"

"There are some."

Flipping through the thick "Kroke Mineral Resources Policy" in his hand, as well as the "Annual Table of Major Energy and Core Material Revenue and Expenditure" as a comparison, Li Ang said coldly:

"The Kroke Kingdom's area is not large, but its resource consumption is surprisingly large. Just for floating crystals, it consumes more than 100,000 tons every year. The consumption of other whale oil, coal, special ores, various rare metals is even more calculated in millions of tons."

"Isn't this very normal?"

Alger thought for a while and said puzzledly:

"I don't understand this very well, but I have heard people say that although the Kroke Kingdom is small, it is actually a trading country like Sa'ao of the Thousand Sails Sea Kingdom. It sells a huge amount of products every year, so this consumption doesn't seem to be anything."

"This consumption is nothing, and judging from the transaction volume of the Kroke Kingdom, it can even be considered small. But the real problem lies in how it gets these resources."

Holding his charcoal pen, he circled a few circles on the attached map of "Mineral Resources Policy," and Li Ang frowned:

"The 'territory' area of the Kroke Kingdom is not large, but there are very, very many 'mining areas' that are actually controlled by it and exist only to supply the Kroke Kingdom.

These 'mining areas,' even if taken out individually, are not large, and their locations are extremely scattered. But these areas, which provide resources to the Kroke Kingdom in the name of short-term development, semi-permanent leasing, or even direct purchase, add up to nearly 400,000 square kilometers."

"What?!!!"

After hearing Li Ang's words, Alger was shocked.

"So many? Our Kingdom of Alesund has such a large territory, and it's only over a million square kilometers! I thought the Kroke Kingdom was a small country with only over 20,000 square kilometers!"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 1196 =====

Upon hearing Li Ang's words, Alger couldn't help but be greatly shocked.

"So many? Our Kingdom of Alesund is so vast, yet it's only a little over a million square kilometers! I thought the Kingdom of Kroke was just a small country of only twenty thousand square kilometers!"

(End of chapter)