Chapter 423: Identity Card (1200+ words)

"Sir, your hot cocoa."

Aaron put down the newspaper and saw a middle-aged man with a beer belly and a thick golden beard personally bringing the hot cocoa over to him.

"Let me introduce myself, my name is Daniel, the owner of this café."

Daniel said very politely.

"Hello, you can call me Aaron." Aaron responded with a smile.

"The weather is nice today, it's rare to see the sun..." Daniel started with the traditional topic of weather, then went on to talk about servants.

"For beautiful and cute maids, we can be a little tolerant of their offensive actions... but for true Native Slaves, a slight indulgence will make them push their luck. Those natives are lazy, vulgar, and naturally evil!"

If Aaron hadn't been present, he probably would have slaughtered that owner named Daniel first.

'This... isn't this the prototype of computers and information-based office work?'

Sharuke's tone was cold, his eyes blood-red.

"Very good, you have grown a lot, I am very gratified."

The reason he brought Sharuke along was, first, to use him as a hostage to prevent Keni, who acted as a 'Taoism' beacon, from playing any dirty tricks on the way.

Looking at the headline again—【Captain Fafni Wins the Hunting Competition!】

Sharuke: "..."

"As a 'Craftsman', I am confident I can make an Identity Card that looks indistinguishable from the real thing, but it's useless... It might work to deal with ordinary patrolmen on the street, but once the other party gets serious and takes you to the Police Station to read the data from the Card Reader and Analytical Engine, it will definitely be exposed, because our information is not backed up in the Police Headquarters Analysis Mainframe!"

Aaron turned to look at Keni: "I don't plan on going anywhere else in the short term. Do you know how to survive in Green Forest City? Also... how to find out information about some Secret gatherings?"

Aaron had an inexplicable sense of déjà vu.

Keni looked at Sharuke with worry.

"Sharuke... I'm sorry..."

The information storage medium of this era wasn't something like a USB drive, but rather strips of paper with holes punched in them!

To forge a backup, one would have to forge an additional strip of paper, then physically insert it into the Police Headquarters database, and also replace the original backup without anyone noticing any flaws...

'Anti-counterfeiting cardboard that stores information through a Puncher? An ordinary police station has a Difference Engine, Analytical Engine, and Card Reader the size of a room? If all the citizen information of a city is stored on punched paper strips, how many buildings would it take to hold it all?'

"Heh... The Invis Empire rules everything, are we born to be slaves?"

Keni's body trembled slightly.

Without Aaron's help, not only would he be unable to return to the Main World, but he might even be killed as an 'Escaped Slave' while walking down the street!

If he dared to resist, he would immediately be suppressed by the military and police!

"I wouldn't dare... Everything follows your will, my master!"

Although Keni had also gone to the southern colony to resist the Invis Empire, she didn't say anything at this moment.

A more intense confrontational attitude must be adopted!

"Heh..."

Aaron put down the cup of hot cocoa, his tone mocking: "Who do you think I am? Your carriage driver?"

"Whoosh!"

Sharuke was stunned on the spot.

Natives who do not wear a Collar or have obvious slave proof on them can be hunted at will!

"So that's how it is..." Aaron nodded in 'realization' and said to Sharuke: "Your milk... is gone!"

The other party's dismissive attitude was even more infuriating than contempt!

After Keni's explanation, Aaron also roughly figured out what an 'Identity Card' was.

After the game time ended, a captain named Fafni had hunted 307 intact native scalps and thus won the victory.

"Oh?"

"Identity Card?"

Sharuke bowed.

"The Empire's control over household registration has reached the Peak of Perfection. Every Empire citizen has an Identity Card, which has anti-counterfeiting marks and information left by a Puncher, making it very difficult to forge. And every patrolman on the street has the right to make citizens show their Identity Cards... Many Extraordinaries, once exposed and their Identity Cards banned, become unable to move an inch, only to be captured and burned to death!"

After thinking these things through, Aaron felt a faint—pain in the balls!

'If I could really build a computer, I could try being a hacker for once, directly tampering with the backend database through the network to fabricate a fake identity for the three of us.'

Aaron flipped to the first page and saw a black-and-white photo, with a close-up of a young captain, against a background of wooden stakes binding natives and a burning village.

"That is the attitude a master should have." Daniel brought over another newspaper and stood up to leave: "The latest 'South Innis News'... the front page has some very interesting things."

"Is forging an Identity Card really not feasible?" Aaron pondered for a moment and asked softly: "Even if I use Extraordinary Ability?"

Keni shook her head without thinking: "And for a long-term stay... first we need an Identity Card. Without that thing, we can't buy long-distance train tickets, we can't stay in hotels, and we can't rent houses or anything like that!"

Daniel didn't care about Sharuke's extremely ugly expression and persuaded him on his own: "If you are too good to your Native Slave, you will be seen as a freak by high society and lose many opportunities. You don't seem to have put a Collar engraved with the master's name on your slave yet? That's not good... even if someone else kills this slave, they won't be able to find the master for compensation."

Sharuke took a deep breath, having some ideas in his heart.

"Since you have already returned home, I should go back too."

The Invis Empire's attitude toward natives is something that even the most enlightened 'Yenni Sect' absolutely cannot tolerate.

Perhaps the Resistance Army's actions were still too gentle, and once those colonists gained the upper hand in the South Innis of the Main World, everything in this newspaper would repeat itself in his hometown!

The specific content below was roughly about a certain Colonial Legion holding a competition, letting officers wantonly hunt natives in villages within the Resistance Army's sphere of influence, using the scalps of the natives as proof.

"Don't even think about Secret gatherings. The high pressure of the Hidden Realm here is much stricter than on your side. Many Extraordinaries couldn't stand it and fled to South Innis one after another. Even if there are still Secret gatherings in the local area, the scrutiny of those joining will be raised to a terrifying level; newcomers and unfamiliar faces will absolutely not be able to gain trust."

'But... this stage of being neither here nor there is truly disgusting... I want to be a hacker but there are no network cables!'

'With this kind of anti-counterfeiting method, even the top hacker would have to kneel!'

The second reason was to use him as a second backup key; in case something happened and he couldn't return to the Main World on his own, Sharuke would be the second 'Taoism' beacon!

Having just arrived, he had only seen a glimpse of the entire Empire, and Aaron didn't want to return immediately.

Is traveling through histories an easy task?

Aaron complained, "Who invented this harmful contraption?"

"It was a high-ranking ascetic of the Sun Church—Muse von Aier... In order to better identify hidden heretics, he proposed the complete structural diagrams for the disassembly machine, the Analytical Engine, and the Turing Machine, as well as the theory of big data searching; it is said the concept originated from the manuscripts of the Green Forest Earl!" Keni answered with a straight face.

(End of this chapter)