Chapter 211: Money Is Hardly An Obstacle

Oliver tilted his head, adjusting his glasses by the bridge. "I have no personal or professional loyalty to the Le Moreno family. I was merely contracted to assess and potentially reverse the severe cognitive decline of their young master—a condition, I might add, that is clinically irreversible. His brain function is entirely degraded. It is a lost cause, and I have officially closed his file. It is out of my hands."

​He paused, a faint, eerie spark of curiosity flashing behind his lenses. "As for your intended revenge... I find the behavioral dynamics and impending societal collapse far more intriguing. I have no incentive to disclose your plans to them."

​"And why should we trust a word coming out of your mouth?" Nat scoffed, resting his broad arms over the table as a wave of collective skepticism settled over the room. "You’re an outsider lurking in the dark and always taking notes."

​April didn’t answer immediately. Her dark eyes locked onto the doctor, evaluating the cold, detached aura surrounding him.

She didn’t trust him. And it was not simply because he acted like a socially defective scientist who was detached from the world. It was just that he had given her no reason to.

If he turned out to be a quiet liability, their entire strike on the Morgans and Le Morenos could blow up in their faces. She needed absolute assurance.

​"Dr. Oliver Baxter," April spoke up, breaking the heavy silence. "Would you like a reading?"

​The entire room went dead quiet. Xavier, Nat, Alexander, and Samuel all turned their eyes onto Oliver, waiting to see how the eccentric surgeon would react.

​Oliver blinked, his analytical gaze sharpening behind his frames. "A reading? As in... a fortune-telling divination?"

​"Yes," April replied cleanly. "Though I will charge you. Are you willing to pay?"

​Oliver let out a soft, dry hum. "If it provides a concise, empirically verifiable projection of my future rather than vague, ominous premonitions... then I will consider paying."

​"Not ’consider,’" April corrected flatly, resting her chin on her hand. "You will pay. I don’t give divine predictions out of charity."

​She was going to look directly into his future—not just to prove her point, but to trace the paths ahead and see if his actions would ever cross into betrayal by leaking their plans to the Le Morenos.

​Oliver pulled out his smartphone, tapping the screen. "All right. How much is a single reading? Money is hardly an obstacle."

​"Two hundred," April stated.

​Oliver didn’t even pause. "Two hundred thousand? That is acceptable."

​"Two hundred million," April cut in coldly. "Have you not done your research on me? I don’t charge cheap, and this is the absolute minimum I am offering right now. Divine prophecies have inflated."

​Nat narrowed his eyes, a playful smirk touching his lips as he looked at her. "Sweetheart, I believe the readings you do at your black-market stall are significantly cheaper than that."

​"That is for the normal masses," April replied cleanly, without batting an eye. "He, on the other hand, is exceptionally well-off within his circle. And in such a high-tier circle, two hundred million is the least I will charge going forward."

​Oliver Baxter stared at her for a long second before a faint, highly satisfied expression touched his face. He quickly scribbled something onto his tablet.

​"A sound economic judgment," Oliver noted calmly. "Charging the less privileged a nominal fee while applying a steep, progressive scale to the wealthy maintains resource balance. It is entirely logical."

​He looked toward the end of the table. "Please provide your account details."

​Before April could speak, Samuel smoothly slid his own tablet across the table, displaying the encrypted transfer portal. Managing April’s high-tier financial pipelines had practically become a core part of his daily duty.

​Oliver typed in the numbers, executing the two-hundred-million-dollar transaction without a single second of hesitation.

​Since April’s titanium pro was safely stored inside her spatial dimension, she casually reached her hand out into the empty air in front of her and the space distorted for a microsecond—a subtle, invisible ripple tearing through the air—and her phone materialized right into her palm.

​The moment space warped, Dr. Oliver Baxter froze.

​His eyes widened, his breath catching in his throat. He immediately pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, leaning his entire body over the table as his pen flew across his notepad in a frantic, unhinged blur.

​"Local spatial displacement!" Oliver muttered under his breath, his eyes wide behind his lenses as if he had suddenly gone mad. "Mass contraction, localized gravitational distortion, instantaneous matter retrieval... fascinating! Absolute spatial manipulation without external apparatus!"

​April let out a tired, silent sigh, ignoring the mad scientist scribbling furiously across from her. She tapped her screen, verifying that the two hundred million dollars had cleared into her account.

And then she snapped her fingers loudly, the crisp sound cutting through the dining hall and forcing Oliver back to reality from his scientific daze.

​"Now that I’ve confirmed the transaction. Let us begin, Dr. Oliver," April said, her dark eyes dropping into an unshakeable, mystical depth. "I’ll read your fortune."

​She reached out her hand into the air once more, causing another spatial ripple as her clear, pristine crystalline orb materialized smoothly onto the mahogany table.

​"Yes! Exactly!" Oliver gasped softly, his pen blurring as he muttered scientific jargon under his breath. "Mass-energy equivalence during spatial extraction! The visual refraction index shifts at the exact moment of physical entry!"

​April rubbed her temples, letting out a long, exhausted breath. There was definitely something deeply, terribly wrong with this man.

[Would You Like To Read Oliver Baxter’s Fortune?]

[Number Of Insights Left Today: 10/10]

Yes,

[System Notice: Eye of Destiny (Rank 3) Activated.]

[Target: Dr. Oliver Baxter — Future Actions & Betrayal Analysis]

​The crystal orb flared with a soft, iridescent light, swirling with translucent silver threads that coalesced directly into April’s vision. It was honestly just for show, since the tests were being displayed by the system interface right above the crystal.

​[Betrayal Risk Evaluation: 0%]

Loyalty/Motivation: Target possesses zero alignment with external factions. He views political rivalries, revenge, and corporate conflicts as trivial social noise. He will remain attached to the Host up to and throughout the apocalypse purely as an observer.

​Interactions with Le Morenos: When confronted by the Le Moreno family regarding his association with the person who rendered their son vegetative, Oliver Baxter will simulate complete ignorance and indifference, dismissing their inquiries as irrelevant to his research.

​Future Survival Strategy: Target holds a secret blueprint conceived less than twelve hours ago to convert the subterranean storage vault beneath his private lab into a sterile, high-containment bio-bunker. His primary goal during the outbreak is not surface combat, or survival, but isolated study of zombie viral mutations. He plans to survive long enough to uncover the mysteries of spatial manipulation and how to understand how the dead come back to life. In other words, he does not value his life much.

Note: Target—Oliver Baxter—Is an Ally.