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I was the youngest person in the Base. They woke us up every day at dawn, made us run for hours while chanting some song before we even ate. we trained with spears and wore Armor made of dever chitin. all day every day , I started doubting if this was a mage camp. shouldn't we shoot fireballs in a line at a row of targets ? why are we running around for ? I kept remembering PE. He hated those lessons , I do to now.

The training fields were actually burrowed in to the mountain. the were behind our dorms. and I wondered why not just make everything in the mountains. if you call square shaped mountains, mountains.

They drove us mad, almost 12 hours of training every bloody day. If it wasn't for mana supporting our body's making us run faster, longer and carry heaver weight, we would have died from exhaustion. and that was the whole point. once every one of us could use mana to supplement there body the training abruptly stopped. There were 11 in this camp, some people were already there when I got here , others joined midway. All in all it took a Whole month.

Next it was more spear practise, lectures on where to stab a dever. what to expect on the wall during a watch, ive never seen so many sketches of dever in my life. The ones in books looked scary. these were technical and to the point. it was hammered in us to always aim for the spine , and not the head. because the thing that looks like there head is not actually the head.

I thought it was simple you know, I would stand on a wall , wait till one showed up and then shoot. Nothing was simple. people don't stand on the wall at all , mostly. there where these fox holes were mages sat to throw there magic at incoming dever, before they climbed or if they were already climbing . Otherwise you mostly stabbed if you don't have range.

There were traps and pit holes between walls built and it was one of our jobs to be escorts for those who clean and reset them during waves.

The first wall was the last defence, The other walls were built more as a trap to herd dever to a kill zone were there body could be later picked up and harvested. everything was efficient and done a million times over , the instructor looked bored.

He didn't mention for what, leaving us to guess for Armor, we are all wearing it, but im guessing food too. Fertilizer ? a body is good for many things.

The camp lasted three months at the end of it our numbers swelled to twenty. From there they were all sent to there assignments in groups. and I was left alone. my roommate thank the Gai left with them. she was a chatter. forcing socialization down the throats of unsuspecting introverts.

I thought I might do the camp again , at least until I could be sent, but that wasn't it. a mage came with the rank knight Captain , his name was Nils. And he was assigned by command, whatever that meant. I mean who has ever met Command ?!

we stared training together. he wanted me to show him my magic and I did. I floated things , shot them at the other side of the courtyard, burned some oxygen , floated some water. He asked question after question and then

" shoot me "

"... you want me to shoot you ? "

" I need to test your penetration, against a kinetic mage I wouldn't worry , Do you know how to use mana to defend yourself .. right no that comes later , just shoot me , I doubt you can hurt me I just want to check. "

oh ok piece shit take that , I shot him ,I aimed for the thighs just in case. and waited for the pebble to bonce off , like with Eric you know.

surprise , it didn't , it went straight through after stopping for a second on his Armor, maybe before that.

he dropped and cursed and I just stared at him. he started tying his leg. I was still staring..

"..... would you go get a healer instead of staring ,knight Anna"

Right , I should do that I went inside , got lost , came back to ask where the healer was, got shouted at and then finally found the healer.

The next day we went at again, no live shooting this time but direct confrontation .

The result was that I am a glass canon. I can kill anything I shoot , if the bullets mana is not contested directly and at those speeds its hard for anyone to do that. but otherwise I had the perfect attack. The issue was that all took is one hit and im out. I cant dodge for shit, even with mana enhancing me. I tried using my own magic on my body. I threw up a couple of times. I had no defence, and no manoeuvrability.

So that's what I did for the last two months, I practised my 'flying' , I hated every minute of it it was like being a rag flopped around, until I realized that acceleration was the issue , I shouldn't go from 0 to a hundred and I shouldn't accelerate forever. I kept experimenting until I manged something that gave me good manoeuvrability, but more importantly control.

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My defence issue wasn't as easy to solve, I had no stepping stone . Nils ...aah.. the knight captain was a kinetic mage. His active defence was redirection, passively he made his aura harder to penetrate with hostile magic. The Armor took care of anything mundane.

I had no aura and could not make one. my mana cant be anything else. you cant turn mana Thick , or change to be water or fire. it didn't make sense ,even if that's what other people did. I couldn't do it. I learned how to spread my mana and let it tell me if anything got close to me. but it wasn't defence but more like surveillance. My armorer could stop a normal hit from killing me if I was lucky , but I would be rung inside.

so I practised evasion. all day every day with my flight. I learned to ignore air resistance and protect my self like im a bullet, redirecting any resistance, that made me faster and was a valid step for me to form a defence . by the end of training I could ignore small hits, but anything big was harder, that's how I broke my arm... I thought I was invincible. but I ran out of mana and couldn't take a hit. everything takes mana , my gate spews it out, but I have no where to store it. I wither need to expand my gate more , or make something like a battery I could use. for now I went with the first option.

on the last week, Nils took me to the smith. to see if we could make my bullets out of metal. I didn't think the material mattered anymore until the mana was used completely, but he insisted.

The smiths didn't like the work. it was easy and simple work but took time and effort when they were already busy. even if an apprentice could do it. they were a measurable bunch. and I couldn't blame them. working fire inside a mountain was like being in a closed oven. they had windows to air out and vents but it didn't help much. beside , administration were next door. Poor smiths ...

So I made a press. I asked them to melt a lot of metal and I used my magic to left it , compress it to a squared meter that had at least a hundred holes shaped in different shapes for bullets. I made another that would press it down. I explained the rest of equipment . The giant screw so no one has to jump up on down on the metal and together we made a metal press.

they even modified the design to let extra molten metal out so they wouldn't have to be too precise. it was done, and they could make me a thousand bullets a day ... and they loved my invention . I wasn't ready for it to be this popular , it was so loved they gave me 10 thousand bullets at the end of the week . before I left my design was passed around and modified , for swords , arrow heads, spear heads , chitin Armor you name it. Everything is pressed now , it made everything faster. I got a larger storage ring out of it I think. they said it was for the bullet's , but I already hand one.. and now I had one in each hand. The smiths loved me. Army command was praising me. and it was a huger deal than I thought. I just wanted bullets. But johns memory came in handy for once .

Good for them ... i guess ...

Finally my prep was over. my training done. and I was going to the fifth wall. or technically in the mountain to the side of it. That's my assignment . i got everything in storage. said fuck you to my roommate I mean goodbye, I meant to say goodbye but it slipped out.. But social people are good , she didn't hear me apparently.

I was ready to go.

and that's when I got introduced to the tunnels. I took them all the way to fifth wall Or fifth army base camp. got settled.. got a room just for me this time thank Gai .. next day it was my shift

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Death

So much death , and blood. weird green blood... screams .. Gai the screams. why do monsters scream.... The are monsters , couldn't they die quietly .. suffer in silence or something ..

Its inhuman. no one who hears it will think anything but that. but it also sounds like there in pain. .... I felt sorry for the bastards.

There not easy to feel sorry for trust me , one look at them and you know there just wrong. they are basically four legged giant cockroaches, each one taller than me if the fuckers could stand yet there legs were more like hands than legs, couldn't even get that right ... they screamed though . there were so many of them.... my bullets almost ran out before ten minutes was up ... I had to start recalling them... I didn't even know I could do that. My beautiful shaped bullets are deformed now, basically just junk metal .

I thought I would be fighting a dever, you now. long battles them trying to hit me. me dodging away and throwing shit at them until finally they die.

Its not going like that.

they just die ...

one shot rips through, like they are made of newspapers, at least five of them .. maybe more and it only comes back when the mana is almost out.

I am in the mountain on the side , I had a hidey-hole and everything , rarely does a dever sneak to within meters of me. my job was to shoot and shoot. but the wave just never ends.

There are people standing on the fourth and fifth wall, they killed as many and let the rest pass through. we killed all we could in the deserted patch in between. but it just never ended. its night , dever body acts as fire fuel , and that's how we see them .. the die easily , burn easily .. there easy to slaughter. they just never fucking end ...

I had to have killed thousands of the fuckers , yet they never stopped coming. freakily moving on there hand-legs. speeding through ignoring all the shit being thrown at them, ice ,lightening , fire ... so much fire. and the fuckers walked through it all. on top the bodies that piled up not giving a shit .... my shift was an hour ago ? they were coming then too. my shift started two hours ago. I need a break but the wave never stops. its so fucking loud , all the damn time..

why do they come here ? what are they looking for ? where do they come from. I never asked this before, everyone took at as a given. Devers come and we kill them .... but just ten minutes of screaming and you would wonder too. How come we never tried to find out ? are we sure there monsters ..

I can handle it all. I can. but the screams.... I finally figured what they are, dying screams. once or twice is fine , ive hunted I can handle that ... but that many... fuck... its just slaughter

buy the end of my four hour shift , I was exhausted , nauseated and hated everything and everyone. all io could think was this was wrong !! which is stupid, the fuckers would eat me alive if they could .... im a mess, this just a mess.

I scrubbed and scrubbed , cleaned my green covered bullets . and went to my room. my dark window free , suffocating room...

This is my life now and I hate it.

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