Washington, United States. City lights shimmered through the night, while the silhouettes of distant skyscrapers carved across the deep violet sky.
Amon sat on a flimsy plastic chair at a roadside open-air barbecue stall, utterly out of place amid the noisy bustle of everyday life.
Dressed in a well-tailored black suit, he leisurely ate the sizzling skewers on his plate. Every now and then, he looked up at the starry sky obscured by neon lights, a faint smile resting at the corners of his mouth.
The series of "major incidents" that had left Kassel College in a panic and on high alert had naturally been his handiwork.
The Snake-form Dead Servants that had crawled out of the sewers and attacked the vice president had also been temporarily created with his own blood—he only needed to "Parasitize" two Hybrids.
Under America's political system, if something happened to the President, the vice president succeeded him, followed by the Speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, the Secretary of State, and so on.
But he had also "Parasitized" the Speaker of the House. Only superficially—he had not excessively twisted the man's mind, merely planted a few subtle suggestions that made him believe:
Taking over this hot potato now would not consolidate his power. On the contrary, it would plunge his party into a public-opinion storm of "doing anything to seize power," severely damaging its long-term political capital. It would be better to relinquish his personal right of succession with lofty rhetoric in the name of "national stability," push for the formation of an emergency transitional government, and launch a new election—avoiding risk while paving the way for his party's candidate.
Likewise, he used "hypnosis" to plant psychological suggestions in the party's core lawmakers, making them feel that the Speaker's