Falling on his bum, Adam let his limbs sag and body stretch.
A long day, a very long day, an excruciatingly very long day. If he could just get a vacation, a day to rest, a moment where his damn opinion isn't needed for every little thing, it would be a blessing.
Sigh! A month, it has been. Fucking Sacred Code!
He remembered that day when the Command Center Terminal was throwing all sorts of messages at him, the day his workload tripled with a mere promotion.
> REPORT — FOR SUCCESS IN THE IRON MAIDEN TRIAL, COMMANDER "CLAY, ADAM" LOST HIS CIVILIAN STATUS, NOW RECOGNIZED AS MILITARY COMMANDER
But if only it ended there.
> UNIT PROMOTION — MILITARY PERSONNEL "CLAY, ADAM" RANK: PRIVATE
And not just that, but…
> ERROR — COMMANDER STATUS CAN ONLY BE GRANTED TO COMMISSIONED OFFICERS IN MILITARY PERSONNEL
> DIRECTIVE — PROMOTING MILITARY PERSONNEL "CLAY, ADAM" TO THE LOWEST RANK COMMISSIONED OFFICER
> ERROR — REGISTERED UNIT "CLAY, ADAM" LISTED UNDER JUSTICIAR CLASSIFICATION
> ERROR — TRIBUNARIUM RECORDS NOT FOUND. CHECKING IRON MAIDEN RECORDS
> DIRECTIVE — ERROR SOLVED! COMBINING RECORDS! ESTABLISHING A NEW RECORD FOR TRIBUNARIUM PERSONNEL
> UNIT PROMOTION — MILITARY PERSONNEL "CLAY, ADAM" RANK: BELLARIUM LIEUTENANT, TRIBUNARIUM JUSTICIAR
> PRAISED BE SOL IMPERIUS
> GLORY TO THE SOLARIUM
Long story short, he became a hybrid classification between a Bellarium Lieutenant and a Tribunarium Justiciar, just because he played the two roles actively.
Like regular military, all Bellarium personnel—or at least the Legio Bellarium of the Men-at-Arms—had three types of units: Enlisted, Non-Commissioned, and Commissioned Officers.
Enlisted Officers hold the ranks of Private and Corporal, as well as the Specialist types, and they are the main bulk of any army: the fighters, the toilers, etc.
Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) hold the Sergeant rank, while sometimes Corporals and the upper echelons of the Sergeant rank, such as Staff Sergeants, Sergeant First Class, etc. These officers are the direct supervisors of the Enlisted Officers, the ones who oversee training and directly supervise and lead combat teams on the ground.
Then come the Commissioned Officers, the upper caste of the military that strategically leads everything, starting from a mere Lieutenant trying not to get their Platoons killed, up to Captains that lead a Company of multiple Platoons, then Majors leading Battalions, Colonels leading Regiments, Brigadiers leading Brigades, Lieutenant Generals leading Divisions, Generals leading full Army Corps, and finally Marshals leading a full Planetary Legion. Above that is the Lord Commander of the Bellarium, the highest military authority in the Solarium under the Lord Regent of Sol.
What the Sacred Code did was situate Adam right at the bottom of the Legio Bellarium's Commissioned Officer ladder, as he gained its approval by succeeding in the Iron Maiden trial.
But these epic boons didn't just end with him getting a higher rank and being worthy in the eyes of the Sacred Code, thus worthy in the eyes of Sol Imperius as Sister Solana epicly chanted; it ended with him getting some sort of a Quest System, from the Sacred Code no less, more boons from Sol Imperius according to the resident Nun that went on to breach the word to her Brother Paladin down in his man cave.
> MISSION — BASE MISSIONS WILL BE GIVEN TO INDIVIDUALS AND COMMANDING OFFICERS AS PER SOLARIUM PROTOCOL
> MISSION ISSUED — REACH A TOTAL TROOP CAPACITY OF 100! BLAZER-POWERED BIONIC PROSTHEIC SCHEMATICS WILL BE REWARDED UPON COMPLETION
The moment that was issued, it wasn't just Adam and his crew who were shocked; Captain Creed was gluing his face to the Command Center Terminal, mumbling to himself as he immediately went for his suit and connected it to a custom terminal Adam had assembled to fit his size. Once he made sure of something, he suited up and went for a seven-day journey before an influx of refugees started crowding the once peaceful area.
Adam wanted to talk with Captain Creed about what seemed to be a personal mission that he received from the Sacred Code, but he was far too busy to even remember the subject the few times he met with Creed afterwards.
Adam had completed his first Base Mission after a while, earning him schematics for those Blazer-powered bionic prosthetic limbs, similar to the one Elena used, something that Kave and Elena became very excited about to rally to their polyamorous friend, Candice, one of Professor Hendrick's students who lost her arm during the factory battle against the Gobzkin horde.
Speaking of Kave, he too got his own attention from the Sacred Code.
> UNIT PROMOTION — MILITARY PERSONNEL "TANAKA, KAITO" RANK: BELLARIUM PRIVATE
And it wasn't some short attention either.
> UNIT PROMOTION — MILITARY PERSONNEL "TANAKA, KAITO", RECOMMENDED PROGRAM: TERMINATOR
For all its worth, Kave didn't simply become an official recruit; he did so with a recommendation to enlist as a Terminator specialist.
Most of the Solarium Men-at-Arms would fill the normal ranks with different types of specializations or simply stick to being Auxiliaries; however, a few specialists would operate in squads of their own type only. These were mostly the Grenadiers and the Terminators.
Whereas the Grenadiers—like Fanatics of Great Urd who some of the most toxic and zealous individuals in the entire galaxy—were specialists in all sorts of crazy weapons and suicidal attacks, the Terminators were the cream of the crop, Sol Imperius' finest in the Legio Bellarium, a tactical special force that are enhanced with special drugs, genetic alterations, and mechanical enhancement for the most extreme types of missions behind enemy lines.
Getting that recommendation, even with Kave's superb performance, was a surprise nonetheless. Adam expected him to gain a Grenadier recommendation for his crazy fighting tactics and inclination towards melee engagements, but the Terminator option was simply considered the highest outside the regular ranks.
But the most worrying thing Adam had to go through that day was the conversation he had with Solana after she crashed into his sleeping area, almost catching him and Megan in the act.
"Brother-Commander. I carry tidings of concern."
"Jesus, Woman! Knock on the damn door first!"
Megan immediately lashed out at her, but after some back and forth, they listened attentively to what she had to say:
"All Sacred Code Iterations invoked upon the Iron Maiden yield Null-Flags for AI Infection; the Receptors remain immaculate for deviations. Yet the Simulation Logs… they manifest as unorthodox script, neither executable nor sanctified, defying even the logic of Malcode or HereTechia."
"Okay, that sounds like a good thing…" Megan responded, covering her top with the quilt while blowing loose strands of hair from her face, before asking, "Right?"
"It is a good thing… but there should have been a bad thing." Adam responded, finding the oddity in the situation, before trying to reach out of his bed for his pants: "Where did it go? Is it on your side?"
"Nope." Megan looked around before shaking her head.
He immediately snatched her jacket, which was nearby, to reach the corner of the room where he spotted his pants. She tried to snatch her coat back and succeeded, resulting in him getting completely naked in front of Solana.
"Dammit, Meg!" He covered himself with his hand and skipped to the corner of the room, hiding behind a conveniently placed dresser, while snatching his pants with his toes.
"You need not allocate concern to your state of nudeness before me, Brother-Commander. Your flesh remains unblessed by the Chrome Touch. Merely a frail, decaying shell, unworthy of note, save perhaps for pity."
Solana's words echoed in the room, causing both Adam and Megan to freeze, and not by the chilling cold.
"Fucking hell, that's not a sick burn, that's just twisted." Megan covered herself even further with the quilt.
"I've never been body-shamed like this… ever." Adam shuddered at the words. "Makes your father feel like a saint."
"Ugh!" Megan rolled her eyes and her accent shifted dramatically, "Leave ma daddy out of it."
"Proceeding," Solana exhaled as Adam finished dressing himself quickly. "I suspect it is the work of Daemonic entities."
"That makes no sense." Megan frowned, "Machina is possible, since it can manifest from corrupt code, but a Daemon? That requires a direct connection to the Infernium."
"What she said." Adam agreed with Megan, looking at Solana, "As far as we know, I'm the only gate between this universe and yours. Daemons hail from their own world, and for them to manifest in any way, I must at least summon them."
"Unless the Ways of Summoning were being actively wielded by an external operator." Solana concluded.
"But the Alfari didn't even recognize the rune for its function and assumed that I was wasting energy using my Bending Rune, so I assumed it was a unique rune or on the rare side of things. Plus, if someone else had it, they'd have to go look around for Infernium minis and actually deal with summoning literal fucking demons." Adam couldn't help but dismiss the possibility despite the worrying assumption, "If the Dragon was some sort of daemon and not caused by Kave's psyche, what about the unicorn that appeared once Kave interacted with my Puppeteer Rune? That was literally him summoning his imaginary friend using my rune."
Solana went silent for a while before shaking her head:
"I am unable to reconcile that within any known logic," She said after reviewing the data in her cybernetics. "Assuming that Brother-Recruit—correction, Brother-Trooper Kave—has indeed summoned a Dragon through sheer psyche-force… then only two conclusions remain: Either he is an Esper capable of interfacing with Machine-Logic by thought alone, or a Kernel Node has been implanted within his Cerebral Cortex."
"He's neither." Megan responded, now fully dressed herself.
"So…" Adam looked between the two and asked the million-dollar question, "Where did that damn Dragon come from?"
Later that night, Adam, Megan, and Solana went to Elena's private chambers and found her and Kave in a pretty kinky position, with him in an intimate headlock between her incredibly muscular thighs, which prompted them to give the two time to finish before meeting them to discuss the issue they were facing.
An unknown entity invaded the simulation and took the form of a Dragon; this was the final conclusion the group could reach, which immediately led Solana and Adam to pull an all-nighter in front of their screens, reviewing code entries, debugging simulations, and hunting for system vulnerabilities until morning.
That memory from a month ago gave Adam an absolute headache every time he thought of the paranoia it caused them: that there were now Daemon-like entities in his world that could manifest into the Sacred Code and perhaps disturb its processes like the Infernium faction from Wartopia.
After establishing a tight security system for such possible intrusions, as well as heavy user security parameters to avoid any possible human sabotage, Adam could finally allow the rest of the recruits to undergo the promotion trial, which went off without a hitch.
Vexed by the fact that he couldn't paint more miniatures during the days he worked so hard on the code, and even now as he defended the base left and right from the pesky Dire Wolf Rift outbreak, Adam took the bold decision of putting his trusty workbench, Benchy, back in operation and watched it paint the miniatures he needed under his supervision, specifications, and occasional help.
Even though the Puppeteer Rune's rule dictated that he had to craft his puppets himself, his workbench doing so seemed to count as him doing it… which was all good for now.
Well, all that was fine until the refugee influx started overcrowding his base, and he had to tear down all the surrounding houses, build some sort of survival camp in the middle of the snow, inspired by a survival frostpunk game that he once played. It worked so far, but he was relying on Senator Ned Carter to process the refugees into the Civilian Base as it expanded, and the annoying old politician was making far too many demands.
"God, damn it all!"
Adam exhaled as he lay on the couch, but a presence alarmed him as someone walked in. Adam wanted to stand up, but the Paladin raised his hand for him to remain as he was.
Things had changed, most of all regarding the Paladin and the Cave. Kave's Cave had turned from a storeroom to a Reliquary and now to a gathering area for the upper brass of the camp: Adam, Megan, Kave, Elena, and Creed, with occasional visits from Yuki Nakamora, Sister Solana, and the other newly summoned sergeants.
Not just that, it was almost restored to the state it was in before D-Day, with some Wartopia posters on the walls, a few salvaged couches, a fridge, and a large table, along with the addition of a hologram projector, a real weapon rack, and some terminals. Most of the relics (Wartopia merch) were now relocated into the new Reliquary in the Script Monastery under construction.
As for Captain Creed, he was now dressed in robes of simple cloth, which he personally fashioned into what looked like a Roman Toga with a sash. His arms and ankles were exposed at all times, showing the many incisions and bodily implants with which he was augmented. And despite the cold, Paladins like him never felt any cold or heat because of their transformations, and the fact that they had a body part that was literally on fire, all the time, always.
"Using your God's name in vain, Commander?" Creed asked, his voice showing more acknowledgement of Adam than ever before.
"I am sure he doesn't mind by now." Adam sighed and rested his head back. "That reminds me, the religious representatives' meeting in the temple is soon. For God's sake, those people don't want to just take the winter off!"
"It is a rare opportunity to cement Solarium governance over this land and its people. Take the initiative now, and you will shape the terms of what follows on your own footing. You will also learn the measure of the people you are sworn to lead."
"I will." Adam nodded with a tired face, "Thank you, sir."
Since he returned from the mysterious quest he was given by the Sacred Code's new system, Captain Creed had been focusing more on instructing Adam on matters of leadership, with Adam believing it was another mission he was given: to act as an advisor.
Despite everything, Adam was experiencing a major phase of growth. His focus was divided among many things, but all those around him were assisting him in administration and training: Creed with Leadership, Kave with Strategy, and Elena with close-quarters combat. Soon, all these skills would be put to the test, as winter brought its horrors over Adam's growing base.
—————[ STATUS ]—————
Name — Adam Clay
Role — Survivor
Class — Sorcerer
EXP — 6
—————[ STATS ]—————
Might — 5 [+] Up +1
Trick — 3 [+]
Spirit — 8 Up +1
—————[ SKILLS ]—————
— Artifice (IX)
— Chef (VI)
— Charisma (VII) Level up! x1
— Gun-Fu (III) Level up! x2
— Psyche (VI) Level up! x1
— Sage (II)
— Sanity (V)
— Senses (V)
— Toughness (III) Level up! x1
— Warfare (III) Level up! x2
—————[ POWERS ]—————
— Font of Magic (Class)
— Puppeteer Rune (???)
— Bending Rune(Item: Alfari Bracer)
——————————————————
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