Chapter 463
"What?"
Malik stared at Evenson.
"The throne of the world doesn’t interest you?"
The answer had genuinely caught him off guard.
He had expected Evenson to argue. To negotiate. To bargain over territory and influence. At the very least, he had expected him to shelve the question and revisit it later.
He hadn’t expected a flat refusal.
"Not interested?"
Malik shook his head with a quiet scoff.
He didn’t believe it for a second.
The throne of the world meant absolute authority, ultimate power. Who wouldn’t want that?
Hydra had spent thousands of years sacrificing lives, scheming in the shadows, and pursuing impossible ambitions for one reason.
To rule the world.
Of course, if you walked down the street asking random people whether they wanted to rule the world, plenty would say no. They would probably have convincing reasons, too.
But most people understood one simple fact.
They couldn’t do it.
It was an impossible dream, so there was no point admitting they wanted it.
Umbrella was different.
With the power it had demonstrated, ruling the world wasn’t remotely impossible for them.
If they actually had a chance to achieve it, why wouldn’t they want it?
Especially considering Umbrella already had a history that made Malik suspicious.
"I’d like to believe you, Mr. Richter," Malik said, "but your words don’t exactly match your actions."
Evenson spread his hands and frowned as though genuinely confused.
That old man was practically accusing Umbrella of crimes that didn’t exist.
What exactly had Umbrella done?
At the moment, its most pressing project was getting the interior of its first corporate headquarters renovated.
The building had already been furnished when Umbrella purchased it from the military, but a new company deserved a fresh start. More importantly, they needed to make absolutely certain the military hadn’t accidentally left behind surveillance equipment, listening devices, or anything else inconvenient.
The biggest complication had been the Eredar Twins.
They hadn’t liked the original interior at all.
So they’d taken it upon themselves to remodel large portions of the building according to Eredar aesthetics.
For once, Evenson hadn’t stopped them.
First, because trying to stop them probably wouldn’t have worked.
Second, because the rooms weren’t being decorated purely for appearance. The twins had embedded a large number of magical formations throughout the renovated areas. Once the work was complete, the entire building would be enclosed within a massive protective ward.
And third...
Well, Evenson himself had contributed more than a few unnecessarily flashy ideas to the renovation plans.
So perhaps Malik wasn’t entirely wrong about Umbrella’s history.
Just wrong about what they were doing now.
"Sixty years ago..."
Malik’s voice drew Evenson’s attention back to him.
"That organization you were associated with started the largest war in human history alongside its allies. Its goal was to conquer the world."
His eyes narrowed.
"And now you’re telling me you have no interest in ruling it? That’s difficult to believe."
"There’s nothing contradictory about it."
Evenson’s voice remained calm.
"The difference is simple. For Hydra, worshipping Hive is the means and ruling the world is the goal."
He paused.
"For us, ruling the world is only a means. Achieving our ideals is the real objective."
Even Stephanie, still shaken by everything she’d learned about her own family’s faith, looked up in shock.
For most people, ruling the world would have been the ultimate ambition.
To Umbrella, it was merely another milestone.
A stepping stone.
The revelation reminded her of those absurdly ambitious people who announced they would start with some supposedly modest goal, like making a hundred million dollars, before moving on to bigger things.
Malik, meanwhile, looked almost offended by the idea.
"Ideals?"
His mind seemed to be struggling to catch up.
Hydra had spent thousands of years pursuing world domination, and this man was telling him that world domination was merely a tool for accomplishing something else.
"What exactly is this ideal of yours?"
"That?"
Evenson answered without hesitation.
"We want humanity to become better."
Malik gave a dry laugh.
"That’s it?"
He shook his head.
"I thought you were going to tell me something extraordinary. You’ve spent sixty years pursuing that ideal before. The results weren’t exactly impressive."
The organization Malik was referring to had been an extremist racial supremacist movement. Its persecution and mass murder of Jews had been justified as the removal of supposedly inferior races. Its ideology placed white people above everyone else, then elevated so-called pure-blooded Germans above other white people.
It had even looked down on its own allies in the Far East.
The attitude it held toward people its allies had brutally conquered needed little imagination.
"We were wrong."
Evenson admitted it without the slightest hesitation.
He wasn’t that organization.
He had merely borrowed its name and history when convenient. At his core, he had nothing but contempt for extremists of every variety.
Admitting that those people had been wrong cost him absolutely nothing.
Malik and Stephanie, however, reacted very differently.
They understood just how difficult it was for someone sitting at the top of a hierarchy to admit fault.
People with enormous authority could know they were wrong and still refuse to say it. They would rather swallow their pride and continue down the same road than publicly acknowledge a mistake.
For a moment, Malik and his daughter could almost picture history rewritten: Hitler himself standing before a court, admitting his crimes and weeping over what he had done instead of choosing suicide.
The image was so absurd that neither of them knew how to react.
"You don’t need to look so surprised."
Evenson smiled at their expressions.
"Failure on that scale leaves a mark. Sixty years is also a long time. Eventually, we had enough distance to stop and ask ourselves whether what we’d done was actually right."
He rose from his seat and turned his back to them.
"In the beginning, we tried to achieve our ideal through elimination."
His voice remained steady.
"We believed that if humanity was going to become better, inferior races had to be removed."
He paused.
"But oppression creates resistance. If we refused to let them live, naturally, they would refuse to let us live."
Evenson turned around.
His gaze settled sharply on Malik and Stephanie.
"And more importantly..."
He let the silence hang for a moment.
"We finally understood something."
"There are no inferior races."
"Everyone belongs to the same species."
"Humanity."
Malik considered that for a long moment.
"Hmm."
He rubbed his chin.
"Actually, I think your old ideology from sixty years ago might have been easier for some people to accept than what you’re saying now."
He carefully chose his next words.
"No offense intended, but there are still plenty of idiots who wholeheartedly agree with what you believed back then."
"None taken."
Evenson waved the comment away.
"That ideology was our mistake. And you’re right about one thing."
His expression was completely matter-of-fact.
"Anyone who insists on clinging to a proven mistake is an idiot."