For a whole week, Cardo's life was just one challenging cycle.
Get some sleep. Eat paste with nutrients. Get trained. Get back home. Eat more nutrient paste. Stand in the backyard with Uncle Jun and put his body through a whole new level of physical and mental pain.
Unlike the students behind the Fortified Walls, Cardo did not get to spend all day in a temperature-controlled classroom. The school system on the Outer Rim and all around the Blue-Earth culture was quite stringent and practical. At fifteen, basic schooling was officially over. The state thought you were an adult once you knew your main subjects, general history, and the basic rules for surviving monster breaches. The sixteenth year was known to everyone as the Awakening Year. It was a stressful, highly anticipated gap year during which teens grew their Aether cores, got their formal rankings from the organization, and sorted out where they fit into the world's harsh hierarchy.
If you were lucky enough to wake up with a powerful combat class (C-rank or higher), your seventeenth year meant you would definitely get into a prominent Awakener Academy, where the best Guilds looked for the next generation of superstars. For people like Cardo, who were low-ranking, the Academy was just a dream. The expectation was to immediately secure a job, performing the arduous and low-paying manual labor necessary to sustain the bustling inner city.
Cardo spent his days in the La Paz distribution facility instead of studying algebra or advanced literature. He worked for eight hours a day loading and unloading packages of Aether items and synthetic rations onto heavily armored hover vehicles that were going to the inner city. The foreman at the distribution center was a tough, cruel man who paid you by the container. This meant that if you wanted to eat, you had to keep moving.
Cardo did not say anything, though. He considered the distribution center to be an extension of Uncle Jun's backyard dojo and every shift as the foundation of his training, not just a job.
He focused on his core every time he lifted a fifty-pound box. He put his feet on the pavement, made sure he was balanced, and kept an eye on his breathing, treating the heavy lifting like a weighted version of the Body Tempering Aether Fist forms. His coworkers, who were rough around the edges, thought he was a bizarre try-hard who always muttered under his breath and moved with strange, mechanical precision instead of just hurrying through his task. Cardo did not care what others thought, though. He put every drop of sweat into something on purpose.
The dual-training system he used with his clones at night was working wonders, and his day job was the perfect way to support it. During the day, his physical body built a strong base. At night, though, all of his mental energy went into directing his shadow clones through the complicated, flowing martial arts forms while Uncle Jun watched. Every night ended the same way: Cardo fell into the overgrown grass in the backyard, got rid of his clones, and let the tsunami of sensory feedback hit him like a freight train full of martial arts expertise.
His muscles hurt all the time, a dull, throbbing reminder that tiny tears were healing and getting stronger than before. He was still smaller than the big, scary Vanguard recruits he saw on TV in the metropolis, but his body was definitely changing. The softness of a malnourished youngster from the slums was going away, and in its place were thick, coiled muscle fibers that felt like woven steel strands just under his skin.
He was setting the stage for the end. He was determined to apply to the Awakener Academy next year, even if he had a lousy E-Rank mark on his wrist. He just needed to increase his physical stats high enough. He merely needed to show the recruiters that his limited Aether capacity did not matter as much as his sheer combat skills and perfect technique.
But while Cardo quietly leveled up in the relative comfort of his backyard and the distribution facility, the community of La Paz was slowly becoming more and more scared.
It was never an abstract idea that life beyond the Fortified Walls was dangerous; it was a daily, real threat. But lately, that reality had become unbearably harsh. It started with uneasy whispering around the market stalls. An industrial worker did not make it home after his late-night duty. A veteran scavenger who was searching in the western scrapyards disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a half-eaten leather boot and a pool of dark, smelly blood.
The paranoid rumors quickly turned into scary truths. There was an unregistered spatial fracture, or mini-gate, that had opened up someplace deep in the maze-like sewage system under the west side of La Paz.
The strong Gold and Silver Guilds in the inner city did not care to become involved because it was only an E-Grade gate. They did not get enough credits to deploy their top-level hunters into a dirty, crowded underground system. Instead, the local Association Enforcers, who were poorly underpaid beat cops in cheap, mass-produced Aether armor, were sent to patrol the surface more. The Rustfang Company, a Bronze-tier mercenary group in the area, finally agreed to look into the sewers for a low-paying reward. However, they were taking their time and acting like it was just a regular job with a steady salary, not a life-or-death emergency.
The message from the higher-ups to the average people in the Outer Rim was painfully clear: You are on your own.
As Cardo started his late-night jog, he could feel the heavy strain in the air. Uncle Jun had just added high-intensity cardiovascular endurance to his training routine, which meant that Cardo had to run five miles around the neighborhood every night without fail. It was definitely unsafe to go out after dark, especially with the tales about the gate going around. But Jun was adamant that a fighter who could not evade a losing battle was just a dead fighter. In a fight for your life, stamina was the most important thing.
Most of the broken streets in the market district were vacant tonight. Neon signs that flickered and buzzed overhead made lengthy, random shadows on the damaged pavement. Normally, this area would be full of late-night food vendors, loud music, and pushy merchants trying to get the last few credits out of exhausted commuters. But tonight, the sellers had closed their stalls hours early and locked themselves in behind large corrugated metal shutters. The hush that followed was strange and rather disturbing.
Cardo kept his breathing calm as his old sneakers slapped against the cool asphalt in time. He pushed a small stream of Aether into his legs, practicing the breathing sync that Uncle Jun had pounded into him over and over again. Take two steps and breathe in. Hold your breath for two seconds. To keep lactic acid from building up, keep the energy flowing through your thighs and calves.
He heard it just as he was walking down a tiny, dark alleyway on the western border of the market.
A loud, muffled scream.
Immediately thereafter, a dreadful noise of heavy fabric tearing and an object being dragged over loose gravel ensued.
Cardo stopped suddenly, and his sneakers squeaked on the pavement. His heart raced and pumped cold adrenaline into his veins. He looked into the dark. The sole light came from a broken streetlamp at the other end, which sent strobe-like flashes of bright light across the graffiti-covered brick walls.
A giant shadow moved in the dark beside a rusty, open manhole cover.
A beast from the void. An E-Rank Dire-Rat, to be exact.
Cardo has only ever seen them on tightly edited TV shows or in grainy, black-and-white pictures in survival manuals. Seeing one in person made me freeze. It was about the same size as a big, strong timber wolf, and its body was coated in matted, wire-like grey fur that dripped with black sewer water. Its spine was bent in a strange way, and jagged bone spurs sprang out of its own sick skin. But the scariest aspect was its face. It had a hairless, deformed snout with rows of razor-sharp teeth that overlapped, and two glaring red eyes that emanated pure, unadulterated hate.
The beast's jaws, which were like a vise, were fastened on the bright yellow bag of a girl who was a teenager. She looked to be about his age and was wearing a dirty, faded uniform from one of the local hydroponic distribution centers. She was feverishly clawing at the gravel to get free, and her naked fingers were bleeding as she scraped against the hard ground. But the thing was just too strong. It pulled her slowly toward the open manhole, making a deep, guttural hiss that shook Cardo's chest.
His instincts told him to go, and his mind raced to Clarissa and Uncle Jun, who were safe at home. Go back to the main street. Call the patrolling Enforcer. You are only a youngster with an E-Rank. You have only been training for a week. You will perish if you venture down that alley.