Chapter 108: Strauss and Manifesto
The two stared into each other’s eyes, the flash of hatred and anger clearly visible and not concealed in the slightest.
Strauss had always been a man of systems and order since the very first day he began working as a UEC special agent. He was often reassigned between departments under the UEC to help stabilize or even suppress the governors of city-states, who showed signs of seeking independence from the UEC.
In a world without countries, where nationalism was an obsolete concept, almost everything seemed designed to make human life harder, especially the existence of mutants who sought to reduce humans to nothing more than livestock.
Strauss believed in the UEC’s vision: to unite all of humanity under a single front and restore human dominance over the planet.
Manifesto, on the other hand, was a hero who thrived within the current UEC system. He sought maximum gain with minimal effort, exploiting loopholes and taking advantage of the system whenever an opportunity arose.
While Strauss could cooperate with people like Manifesto, that didn’t mean he wanted to.
Their conflict began when Strauss was assigned to investigate a massive breach in the Pacifica City-State.
At the time, Manifesto was still a lower-ranked hero, far down on the global hero leaderboard.
From Strauss’s investigation, the breach was caused by an internal explosion that compromised the city wall, allowing a horde of mutants, who had already gathered outside, to flood into the city.
The losses were catastrophic. Pacifica lost its entire industrial sector, which has still not fully recovered to this day.
The only reason the residential district wasn’t lost as well was because of Manifesto. He used his EF power to create a massive wall of light, halting the mutants’ advance.
That single heroic act shot Manifesto’s ranking through the roof. In one move, he jumped from somewhere below rank 50 all the way to rank 20, a stunning leap of 30 ranks on the global hero chart.