Chapter 50: Crack

Chapter 50: Crack Lucian stood in front of the last person still alive in the place. Behind him were the bodies of the others who had rushed at him earlier.

"You see what you’ve made do? This place is a mess!" He said referring to the condition of the shop after the fight.

The guy on the floor was silent, unable to talk due to his face that was completely swollen.

Looking at his face, the detective muttered,

"Perhaps I went a little too hard on him."

"Sigh! I still need you to answer my question regardless, so speak!"

He added, grabbing him by the collar.

"..."

The man muttered some barely audible words into the ear of the detective, before getting thrown away like trash.

A few minutes later, Lucian walked out of the shop with a book in his bloodied hands as he lit another cigarette and made his way out of the ghetto.

......

BACK AT THE CAMP

’It’s started huh?’

Kieran thought as he made his way back to his quarters.

They had just received a notice; their break was over and they were now officially into the second phase of training ,"cold hell" and they were going to be spending another 12 months trying to make it out of here as a soldier.

Along with the message was also a notice of the Camps declaration of war against those beasts. As to how long the war would last? Kieran had no idea, but that was the least of his concerns.

The words of the instructor, August, had been weighing on his mind ever since they had that conversation.

He didn’t completely dismiss the instructors claims when he voiced them, but he already knew that the second stage was different, he could feel the shift among the recruits; everyone having fallen to certain groups that had formed during the first stage.

Yet, August, the instructor still decided to warn him of it despite knowing how cautious he was. That was something that bothered Kieran. As if to make it worse, the head chef and Leora had also given him warnings about the second stage.

’Not much!’

Kieran thought as he stared at his belongings in the room he had stayed in for the past four months.

Now that the first phase was over and they were on their way to becoming second-years, that meant that another batch of candidates were coming in to take the test to become first years in the camp.

In fact, might have even arrived and it was even possible that they were currently undergoing the test. Kieran had heard that the tests for each new batch was different from the last.

Since new blood were about to get in, they were required to move away from their current quarters to the quarters reserved for the second years. It was funny how they were called second years when they had only spent a few months there.

Letting a small chuckle slip, Kieran started to back his things, which weren’t quite different from when he first got there. Back then, he was empty handed and even after a few months, compared to the others he could still be called empty handed.

All he had apart from the recruit uniform were a few pair of clothing; the one he had gotten with the detective, the pair from the camp when he first arrived and two more he had got from the store in the camp.

His stuff couldn’t even fill the bag, the Head chef had given him.

Clang!

"Hmm?"

Kieran looked to the source of the sound and found the metal box that he had gotten from the detective.

After trying everything he could and failing to open it, he had thrown it to the side and had completely forgotten about it.

Picking it up, Kieran realized that it was the only thing he had to remind him of his parents.

"I wonder what’s in there"

Kieran said, about to throw it into the bag before pausing to stare at it again, this time, more carefully.

’Is that.... a crack?!’ Kieran thought completely shocked.

He was 100 percent sure that it wasn’t there before now. He had tried everything, yet he couldn’t even leave a scratch on the thing and now, somehow, there was a crack on it, even if the crack was so small it was barely noticeable unless one knew where to look.

Seeing that there was nothing he could do to it, he proceeded to do what he was about to before, throw it into the bag, and with that the room was back to it was before he occupied it.

Stepping outside, he was met face to face with someone he hadn’t spoken to in a while.

"....."

"Hey...!"

Ruby said when Kieran simply stared at her in awkward silence.

Kieran on the other hand was reminded of the first day they met, just before the orientation.

"Hmm"

Kieran gave her a short nod before moving away, to his new quarters at another section of the mountain leaving Ruby behind.

He didn’t bother to ask what she was doing at her old dorm. All the dorms they stayed in were theirs till it wasn’t.

At the back, Ruby stared at Kieran’s vanishing figure with a complicated expression, before also leaving to her new dorm.

Kieran’s new dorm wasn’t much different from the last. It just had more space that Kieran wasn’t sure how to feel about. The space just reminded him that he could never fill it up with made it pretty much useless to him.

Unpacking and arranging his stuffs only took a few minutes and when he was done he headed out with the intention to retrieve his weapon to do some training like he had made not earlier, but before he could get far. He got a message from the camp summoning them all to a particular spot on one of the mountain tops.

There, he and the other recruits were met with a slightly surprising scene. All the instructors who had taught them so far; instructor Selena, Keith, Marcus, and August stood in front of them waiting for them to assemble.

After they had assembled, instructor Selena stepped forward to address the purpose of their summoning.

"As I already briefed you during your first lesson with me, when you enter the second stage, your path to become a soldier really starts. In the first stage, we taught you the basics and now you are about to go further."

She started, gaining the curiosity of the recruits, a curiosity that was not shared by them all, as Kieran noticed from the side if his eyes.

"Now that you have passed the first stage, you will be divided and put into separate units where you will be trained to become specialized soldiers. The criteria for this grouping are based on the data collected by the camp. You can only request for a transfer to another unit once every two months after your first month." She explained.

"Since we are in the second stage of your training as started, as per the agreement, the restrictions will be lifted, but I warn you; use them carelessly and I’d be there to deal with you!" she gave a light warning.

"Since this camp was made basically to create exceptional combat soldiers, all the units you would be sent to would have a role to play when it comes to the battle field, even if you aren’t part of the main combat unit and you fall under the medical unit, you shouldn’t have any problem outclassing other soldiers on the battle field. You are training in this camp after all!" she added.

"You will get a message telling what unit you fall under and the instructor in charge, dismiss!" she said without giving room to any questions.

’Hmm?’

As he turned around, he felt something cold drop onto his shoulder, looking up, the previously clear skies had gone dark and the drops of rain started to fall with increasing frequencies. The weather on the planet was still as chaotic as ever.

Kieran made his way back to his dorm while thinking about what the instructor had said, especially about the units.

There were several units in the military and unlike the other camps, due to the purpose of the origin camp, every unit here was related to combat.

The only non-combat related unit was that of the medics and even then, the camp made it compulsory that they were well versed in combat arts even though they specialized in healing.

Wars now worked differently from how it was back then. After humans started exploring the space around them and waging wars with alien species, they discovered how effective hand to hand combat was when dealing with other species.

Generally, the force of a nuke should be more powerful than what a single person could produce with martial arts, yet they had somehow transitioned to using melee weapons as a main part of the fight.

This was one of the things that just didn’t add up, but after Kieran became aware of the existence of abilities, it made sense that there were some awakened who were able to brush of the power of nukes. With how much must have popped up over time, it made sense that the military would have its own group of awakened.

Since that development, most of the military structure was rearranged and it wasn’t like it was before, although, it still bore some resemblance to the old structure.

Not long after they left the mountain top, Kieran received a message but waited till he got back to his dorm to open it. Opening it, he was met with what the instructor, Selena, talked about. A notice to what unit he had been drafted to.