Chapter 460 - 297: Zog Always Appears at the Most Crucial Moment

Chapter 460: Chapter 297: Zog Always Appears at the Most Crucial Moment

"This right here is proof that the resistance is hiding inside the safe zone!"

Inside a half-collapsed house, a fully armed Villain soldier pointed at a calendar written in an unknown language and said furiously,

"They’re using what appear to be ordinary household items to transmit coded messages, turning the safe zones we established out of kindness and public spirit to military use!"

He then directed the camera toward another area, where several boxes were stacked.

"And here, we have weapons! They’re storing weapons in an area where they are explicitly forbidden! This is a complete humiliation to Villain—storing weapons in the very safe zones we built for their protection!

"It’s Augustine’s own terrorist organizations that have turned against the Augustine People! We are the devout servants of God, here to save the Augustine City State! Justice is on our side, and victory will be ours!"

It was quite the "impassioned speech," but from start to finish, he never opened the boxes that were supposedly filled with weapons.

It felt as if the frame-up itself was done half-heartedly.

"That take should work, right?" The soldier, who had just been acting so furious, was now completely relaxed.

The others immediately began to shower him with praise.

"That was great, really great! It looked totally real. You’re amazing."

"Yeah, I’d say you’re just as good as that big star... what’s his name... Raul."

The on-camera talent, buoyed by the flattery, grew conceited.

"Oh, come on, it was just okay. I still have room to improve. I was actually planning to become an actor after the war. I figure I could land a few major roles, at least."

In stark contrast to their jovial atmosphere, the cameraman, Morris, wore an expression as numb as a factory worker who had spent a month tightening screws on an assembly line without a single day off.

’He’d had enough of all this.’

Brigadier General Douglas had tasked him with coordinating with the Villain forces to produce propaganda and win the support of other regions.

The logic was that if Augustine could rely on aid, then so could they.

And so, they began producing a series of videos just like the one being filmed now.

At first, Morris had only been angry about it. Gradually, he grew accustomed to it.

Just when he thought the Villains’ methods couldn’t get any more absurd, they would always manage to sink to a new moral low, pulling some new stunt that made the world go dark before his eyes.

What was even more incomprehensible was that this propaganda actually worked on some people.

Most were Villains who had emigrated elsewhere; they offered their support quite generously.

He could almost stomach that. Though what they were doing was evil, it could at least be explained as solidarity—a solidarity in perpetrating violence and evil.

But as for the supporters with no Villain blood...

’There was no explanation for them.’

’He couldn’t imagine what could possibly motivate someone to support a group like the Villains.’

’Perhaps, like the Loman Empire, it was purely a matter of self-interest, allowing them to completely disregard basic good and evil. If the world was really full of people like that, it was truly insane.’

And speaking of Loman, Morris felt only a sense of alienation.

His motherland was no longer the great nation that held lofty ideals, that aspired to lead all the world’s intelligent beings into the next era.

The current Emperor Loman and his supporters saw nothing but their own self-interest.

Morris checked the footage. There were no major issues.

’He had absolutely no desire to improve the quality of the content. The higher the quality, the greater his guilt. It just needed to be good enough to pass his superior’s review.’

After finishing the day’s shoot, Morris returned to his dorm.

He now had a full computer setup in his room. He no longer needed to request permission to use one, as he had editing tasks to complete every day.

However, just as before, everything he did on the computer was monitored.

After the battlefield footage leak, the subsequent investigation had fizzled out, ultimately failing to identify the culprit.

The case was closed anyway, with someone in charge of equipment management being made the scapegoat.

Morris felt sorry for him.

Fortunately, the punishment for the poor man forced to take the fall wasn’t too severe. The Brigadier General knew he wasn’t the real culprit, and besides, videos from the Augustine battlefield were already rampant. A few more leaks wouldn’t make a difference.

So the man was merely discharged from the military and sentenced to a few years of hard labor.

’To be honest,’ Morris thought, ’that hardly even counted as a punishment. If it meant getting out of the army, he’d willingly do a few years of hard labor himself.’

Not everyone in the Loman advisory group had completely lost their conscience. Since the war began, several members had developed severe psychological problems, despite never having been to the front lines.

’Morris felt he was probably next.’

After editing the day’s video and submitting it for review, Morris collapsed limply onto his bed.

Sleep had become a form of torture for him.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the faces of civilians who had been tortured and murdered.

The scenes in these nightmares were extraordinarily vivid, and even more terrifying, they were all from a first-person perspective.

Night after night, Morris experienced the feeling of "personally" killing civilians, over and over again.

Even though he had never done anything of the sort.

A few months ago, he was just an ordinary student at Repin Academy and a minor celebrity on the side.

Now, he was part of the Evil Legion.

The thought tormented him endlessly.

In his nightmares, he could almost feel the warmth of blood splashing onto his face...

"Morris! KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!"

A series of urgent knocks suddenly sounded at the door.