บท 74: Archman Family Secrets 2
The journal professor Johnson presented was a worn out journal with cracked leather with faded cover design, the pages were yellowed and brittled with age,
Also the pages were made of animal hide but the words within it were as clear as day, the Crown Prince couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.
"The words within this journal are always traced by the current generation to keep the words in tact and that's how we got all the words clear as they are now.
This journal you are holding can be said to be a family heirloom of the Brown family. The professor reminded.
The Crown Prince couldn't help but turn to read the contents of the journal.
'On my journey to discover relics of forgotten civilization that have long disappeared from history , I met a companion who was also traveling the same path as me'
' I never intended to embark on my journey along with anyone but as faith would have it, my path crossed with this companion too many times, one thing led to another which forced us to journey across the continent temporarily as companions.
'On our journey this companion would tell me tales of belonging to a powerful empire who had once ruled the world at a point in history, but records of the past will show that no such empire ever existed and that his he's claims were false'
'But this mysterious companion of mine claimed his empire was soo powerful to the point of being able to alter history and bend it to their will, he explained to me that the world was living in a false history'
'If you think that alone wad absurd then the craziest was yet to come, he told me his people had the power to assemble metal and make it soar through the skys like a bird, he claimed that such metals were called .... I don't remember well, but it was an absurd name'
'He also claimed that this metals that could soar as high as birds or even beyond the clouds were as big as cities and sometimes as big as an entire country, continent or even the world.
Though all the things he said were absurd and unbelievable, the confidence with which he said those things was difficult to ignore, but days of asking him to prove a single one of his claims yielded to no results, it was then I believed he was nothing but a scam and a liar"
'My time with this mysterious companion finally came to an end and before we parted ways, he told me another shocking 'secret' which of course I wasn't going to believe,
But what he said then is something I wasn't able to comprehend and still can't, this time he claimed that he wasn't from our time, but a distant time and that he was here to retrieve something from our time that will alter the fate of the wider universe or whatever, I still don't understand what he meant by that.
'But before we finally parted ways, he left me was a strange symbol which he engraved on the back of this very journal, the only reason I ever remember this encounter with my mysterious travel companion was solely because of that symbol he left on this very journal!
Twenty years after my encounter with my mysterious companion, I stumbled upon a hidden vault of a forgotten empire, within that vault I discovered the shock of my life which will sooner turn to the obsession of my remaining life!
'Though that vault was empty with no treasures or text, the only thing within that vault was the symbol the mysterious companion of mine engraved on the wall as a mural.
'After seeing that symbol in that vault, I dedicated the rest of my entire life chasing the mysterious symbol and after thirty years I finally found a clue confirming that indeed an empire had once ruled the entire world at a point in time but for some unknown reason completely disappeard from the anals of history'
'My biggest regret it's not being able to live a longer life so that I can continue to confirm how many of my companions words where true!
'To the future generation, this will be the legacy of the Brown family, no matter what you do, you must uncover the real identity of my mysterious companion named Luke Archman!'
.....
The Crown Prince couldn't help but widen his eyes in shock as he turned the last page of the journal, on the last cover of the book was engraved the insignia of Archman Group!
The prince could feel his back begin to fill with cold sweat, the prince may be no antique dealer but he was certain that even if this book wasn't 600 years old, it was at least a 100 years old.
Archman family may have existed for sometime now but they used no banner or symbol, it was merely a decade ago that Luke Archman launcher his Archman Group with this very insignia!
This means that the Archman Group insignia or symbol had only been around for a decade but this book was claiming otherwise.
Also apart from that, the concept of a flying airplane was only conceived 400 years ago, but if this journal is truly legit then won't that mean that this Archman empire had invented aircraft way before it was even invented,
But the most frightening notion in this book was the name of the mysterious companion, Luke Archman!
Was the current chairman of Archman Group and the mysterious companion of the Brown family ancestor the same person or was it just a coincidence.
"Impossible! The two can't be the same people!" The Crown Prince shouted.
"Yes it's impossible for it to be the same person, the only logical explanation is that Luke Archman inherited his name from an ancestor of his family and this is pretty common among royals!" The professor cleared the Prince's doubt.
The Crown Prince immediately agreed with the professor, there was no way the current Luke and the one in the journal are the same.
If Archman Group knew anything about time travel, they wouldn't be in their current situation today.
Thinking up to this point, the prince thought about the secret coded order he found in one of Archman Tech factories.
He's men were working on how to break it and the results would be in soon, He wondered if he should share it with the professor.
"Professor Johnson, this journal better be as legitimate as you claim, or your entire family will bear the consequences of deceiving an Imperial!" The Crown Prince threatened. He couldn't fully trust this professor.
"Your Highness! You can take the journal to your team to verify the authenticity of the age of this journal, that's if you find it hard to believe!" Professor said confidently as he adjusted his glasses.
The prince nodded, when they landed he'll have the dairy checked by his team to confirm whether it's truly authentic.
"Generations of my family have dedicated our entire life to chasing after this elusive empire and after years, we found their traces and that's all thanks to the files you gave me
From the files you gave me access to, I was able to confirm our family long hard work and all is because of your help, I feel like I owe you a favor and so let me repay it by sharing more information on the Archman family" The professor suddenly begun talking again after a brief moment of silence.
The Prince curiosity was piqued.
Don't you find it strange how rapidly Archman developed and amassed wealth in the trillions after being around for less than a decade? Many other corporations and families have been around longer than Archman Group but why haven't they been able to make similar amount?" The professor asked.
The Crown Prince didn't know how to answer this question, Archman Group wealth came from many sources.
Archman Group first started of as an investment firm, they would invest in smaller businesses, pump in a ton of money and transform it to the best it was in terms of their area of expertise,
But their most profitable business was their tech companies which revolutionized the entire world taking them a step into the future, or at least that's how the world viewed them, Not to also forget the various oil and minerals they discovered" The Crown Prince explained.
"You're partly right your highness, but that's not the source of Archman Group wealth!
Archman Group wealth mainly comes from their subsidiares!" The professor corrected.
"What do you mean by that professor? Most of this subsidiares were almost going bankrupt before Archman Group saved and revived them" The Crown Prince said with a frown.
"Your Highness, that's where the entire world has been deceived, those subsidiares aren't what they've been made out to be!"
The professor once again retrieved a bunch of files from his bag, " This subsidiares have been around for at least more than a 100 years, At their prime this companies stood at the peak of the world.
But the mysterious thing is that after they've been at the top for a while, they sharply decline for strange unknown reasons and lose all their wealth and influence. They eventually change their name and traces of their past are erased, eventually fading from the minds of people of that age.
The Crown Prince was shocked because majority of this companies here were all very popular in the past, the fall of some of this corporation were even studied at schools.
But to think that they still existed under different name.
"So according to the document here, this corporations never really fell off as they claimed but concealed their wealth, changed their names and layed low all this years just to hand it over to Archman Group" The prince questioned, this was becoming hard to believe.
"What I'm saying is that, this corporations from a century ago were specifically built a century ago to be handed down to Archman Group!" Professor Johnson simply explained, the Crown Prince couldn't help but be impressed.
"Who would have thought that the Archman family had been biding their time all this years to create Archman Group, seeing the results all he could say was that it was well worth it!"
But the Crown Prince suddenly lost all the respect and admiration he had for Luke. He had actually admired Luke for building such a business empire from nothing and turning it into a force powerful enough to threaten the Super Countries, but judging from the current situation he was nothing but a fraud.
"You can't underestimate Luke Archman just because of this. Why do you think the Archman family had to wait for a hundred years to pass it to him, they've had so many opportunities to pass it to a different heads, but why did they choose Luke? Even without those subsidiares, he's Archman Group would have still been able to rival at least four super countries!" The professor explained.
The Crown Prince still wasn't impressed. The entire world thought Luke was a genius because they believed he built Archman Group from scratch, but with the foundation he had from those subsidiares with a hundred years worth of resources, everyone could replicate his feat.
The professor couldn't be bothered to keep explaining how dangerous Luke was to the Prince.
Whatever the Archman family had planned for God knows how long only begun when Luke took over, and he would be a fool if he thought that all those years of planning the Archman family had been doing would be wasted on an incompetent person.
The professor on the other hand had more questions in his mind than answers, for more than 500 years his family have been trying to figure out the true purpose of the Archman family,
Today, they had gotten a lot of information but it still didn't give them the answer they were searching for but it rather gave him more questions.
"Your Highness, we are receiving a transmission from a secure channel specially addressed to you!" One of the pilots reported.
"Connect!" The prince simply replied.
"Your highness, we've been able to decipher the coded files we found at one of Archman Tech factories secret vault.
What was it?
''It was an order for 1 trillion building bots and construction machines seven years ago, and the order came directly from the Crystal Citadel!
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