None of the cadets had been prepared for that fight except for Jake, and even he had failed miserably at neutralizing the creature, who’d revealed much stronger than he could have ever imagined. The insectoid was stronger, faster, and a hell of a lot more vicious than he had anticipated, on top of being very hard to cut down thanks to its thick exoskeleton.
“Hawkins.” Officer Neilr called out, and Jake immediately got up and saluted the officer.
“Do you know why you’re on this team?”
“No, sir!” Jake answered, not knowing where the commanding officer was going with his line of questioning.
“Your cognition and perception are by far the highest of this promotion. Which means that if anyone should have been able to alert the others of an upcoming attack, it was you, and if anyone around here shouldn’t be acting stupid, also you.”
Jake looked at the officer, barely holding on to the anger fuming inside him. He’d put his own life on the line to save Kirk from an assault, and he hadn’t made it out without a scratch. His entire left side was profusely bleeding where the creature had dug its claws into Jake’s flesh, and he had a hard time moving his left arm and shoulder due to the agonizing pain.
Yet, he didn’t say none of that to his commanding officer. He nodded and then answered.
“Yes, sir.” He let out, unable to mask all of his anger.
“This was the last time I ever intervened for something so trivial. The next time, I’ll watch the Vertaerax feed on your insides without raising an eyebrow. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” The cadets answered.
The most frustrating thing to Jake was that he knew that the officer could have prevented the attack if he’d truly wanted to. After all, he’d utterly pulverized the creature in less time than it took to say it, yet he’d still let the thing take a swipe at him before Officer Neilr had decided to act. It was clear that the First Lieutenant was intentionally putting their lives on the line as part of their training regimen, and Jake had a hard time swallowing that fact lying down.
An instant later, Officer Neilr announced they would be making a halt for an hour, and he immediately started assigning tasks to every cadet for the set up of their temporary camp.
Both Jake and Ryan had been put in charge of cutting up the meat from the Vertaerax Crawler. Thanks to their respective weapons, they were the best suited for such a task, and it only took them half an hour to dissect the entire creature into nice slabs of meat under the direction of their implants. The Vertaerax Crawlers were mostly safe to consume, but certain areas like the stomach, the brain and a small area close to the throat that held a strong corrosive acid would be hazardous to eat, so they made sure to put these parts away and hand the rest over to the cadets in charge of cooking for the night.
During that time, both Owens and Zac Jenkins had been assigned to cook the meat on a small expandable stove that ran on biotic energy. It was something that the First Lieutenant had once more produced out of thin air, and this time Jake couldn’t hold back his curiosity as he asked Ryan about it.
“How does he do that?” Jake asked the giant.
“You’ve never seen a spatial artifact before?” He answered back.
Jake shook his head at the giant, who was currently looking at him with a confused expression, almost wondering if the cadet was joking.
“Spatial artifacts are generally jewelry, or objects at least, that allow the awakened to store material things inside a different spatial plane and take them out as they wish, in exchange for a moderate drain on their biotic energy.”
Jake simply nodded his understanding as they made their way back toward the campfire, both of them completely covered in insectoid blood from head to toe. They both sat on the ground, a few feet away from the stove as it was radiating intense heat, which was far from pleasant for the cadets as the hot weather was already insufferable.
They only waited a few minutes before the two cadets that Officer Neilr had put in charge of cooking the Vertaerax tossed a giant slice of meat to everyone else. Of course, they could always rely on King to complain about the food, or about anything else for that matter.
“Ew, I’m not eating that, there’s no way.” She said, giving the food a disgusted look worthy of a 5-year-old throwing a tantrum.
“Okay, then I’ll eat it.” Ryan let out as he stole the piece of insectoid meat straight out of her hands and started gulping the whole thing down like it was the best thing he’d ever eaten before.
Jake followed suit as he took a bite out of the piece he’d received — most probably a piece from one of the legs from the look of it — and saw all the other cadets do the same.
Strangely, the meat tasted far from bad, and although it lacked proper seasoning, Jake still ate the whole thing without complaining.
Once everyone — except King of course— had finished their piece they’d quickly got back on the road, at an even faster pace this time. There were only a few hours left before sundown, and the First Lieutenant had been extremely clear that they wouldn’t be travelling at night since none of the cadets could see in the dark, which would make the whole venture many times more dangerous, so they had to cover a lot of distance as long as the sun was still up.
They’d only travelled for a couple of minutes before Jake got the same mysterious feeling of danger as he had before the attack, and this time, he didn’t even take time to think before he shouted.
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“Something’s coming!”
Everyone stopped in their tracks and got into position. They didn’t have to wait long before another Vertaerax jumped out of behind a large rock, immediately charging at Ryan. The creature hadn’t picked the right target, however, as Ryan’s axe came crashing in the middle of its torso with impressive speed, and the beast was stopped in its track right away with a resounding crunch. Barely a moment later, Micheal Kirk appeared next to the Vertaerax and sliced through one of the creature’s legs with its shortsword and etched the blade right where Ryan’s axe had fallen earlier. This time the blade went in unimpeded thanks to Ryan destroying the creature’s exoskeleton earlier, causing the creature to fall flat on its side, unmoving.
“That’s better, but still not good enough.” Officer Neilr coldly declared before they started running again.
The remainder of the day pretty much went on similarly as they kept running toward the Vertaerax nest. They’d met around 15 or so more of the Vertaerax Crawlers, which were all disposed of without much of a problem, although every cadet had accumulated their fair share of injuries by now, with Jake suffering from the most out of all the other cadets. No matter what he did, he had a hard time evading the attacks of the crawlers thanks to his sword slowing him down severely.
Furthermore, they’d had to take frequent halts after every fight so that the cadets could recover some of their stamina. Once again Jake in particular had found the travelling to be somewhat of a nightmare, as the weight from his sword, his crippling injuries and the horrid temperature made for a deeply exhausting combo. He’d even used his Basic Biotic Reinforcement skill multiple times to lower the strain on his body, which had only helped for a few minutes before he’d run out of energy, unfortunately.
On the brighter side, he’d finally managed to get the hang of his perceptive abilities by constantly focusing on his five senses as he ran, keeping a part of his brain focused on his environment. He couldn’t believe how he’d spent the last few weeks not giving a second thought about any of his new abilities except for his newly improved strength and speed while overlooking the rest of his attributes.
Jake looked at the wounds that littered the left side of his body. The bleeding had already stopped, and he knew his body’s enhanced regeneration attribute would patch him up at record speed, even for an injury that serious. How much farther would his attributes continue to climb during the next few weeks? He was already aware that improving as an awakened was something that became exponentially harder as time went on, and that he would probably need decades to reach any sort of decent level, centuries maybe, according to Officer Neilr at least. Still, he wondered how long it would take before his attributes reached a high level enough for him to feel like some sort of superhuman since his physical prowess was barely better than normal humans for now.
He was still lost in thought when the First Lieutenant finally ordered a halt, and every cadet immediately started preparing the camp, which barely took them around a minute or two.
Each cadet took off their backpack and started taking out some equipment from inside the bag. The first thing Jake took out was a large metallic cube that transformed into a portable shelter once placed on the ground and activated. One peek inside the shelter revealed a room the size of a closet, and the insides were fully lighted.
He reached inside his backpack again and took out yet another similar box, although this time a sleeping bag appeared when he activated it, and he quickly stashed the thing inside his shelter, followed by his backpack.
As it turned out, Genova’s temperature varied highly during all hours of the day. While the temperature had reached 51 degrees around 1400, it had now dropped all the way down to 12 degrees, and it would keep going down during the night, which meant that even though he’d almost suffered from heatstroke at one point during the day, he would still need to tuck himself in a sleeping bag with amazing insulation during the night.
Once they were done setting up camp for the night, every member of the squad made their way toward the middle of their camp, where Officer Neilr was already waiting for them. A Vertaerax Crawler was currently grilling on the very same stove they’d used earlier for lunch, this time powered by the energy of none other than the First Lieutenant himself.
“We will camp here for ten hours, and then get back on the road afterward. You’ll use this time to take off your armour and fully focus on improving your specs, as well as getting a few hours of shut-eye. You’ll be assigned sleep shifts through your implants so that we always have two cadets looking out for the others, these two will be wearing their armours at all times and handling all Vertaerax attacks while the others recover.” Officer Neilr declared to the cadets.
“Yes, sir!” They answered.
Incidentally, Jake had been assigned the first shift of guard duty of the night, along with Micheal Kirk, the cadet he’d saved from a surprise Vertaerax attack earlier today. Just like Ryan and Owens, he was also considered amongst the top cadets of the promotion, not only in terms of attributes but also in terms of biotics.
They both sat a few feet away from each other near the campfire and stayed silent for a few minutes until Kirk finally spoke up.
“I’ve never actually had the chance to thank you, for earlier.”
Jake turned around to look at the cadet, quite shocked to hear someone other than Ryan or Owens speaking to him. Things had gotten a lot better for him in the last weeks, except for King, nobody wasted any time on mocking him anymore, but they pretty much all ignored him even then.
“Don’t mention it, I only wish for all of us to make it back to the settlement in one piece,” Jake answered.
It was Kirk’s turn to raise an eyebrow at Jake this time, and he stayed silent for a few seconds before he finally answered.
“That’s pretty optimistic, if not impossible. It’s only our first day and a few of us have already come close to dying a few times already, and every single one of us has sustained some serious injuries. It’s not looking good, man.”
Jake stayed silent for a few seconds, knowing the cadet was right. There was very little chance Jake would make it out of this first assignment alive, and even less of a chance that their entire squad would make it out in one piece.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask for quite some time,” Kirk said, his voice marked with hesitation.
Jake raised an eyebrow at the revelation, but still nodded to indicate he was listening.
“Why did you choose that sword? You can barely lift it, and I can’t imagine how tiring it must be to run with the thing for an entire day, on top of fighting the crawlers every half an hour.” Kirk added
“I’m sure you’re aware already, but my biotic energy reserves are so small I can barely use telekinesis to lift a marble for half a minute before I run out, and that’s already a lot better than what I could do at the time of my awakening. This meant I had to find a weapon that would allow me to survive all of this without relying on biotic energy to do so.” Jake said, flatly.
Kirk simply nodded before he seemed to be lost in thought for a moment.
“Is that why King and her little clique hate you so much?” He asked.
“I don’t know if she really needs a reason to hate me, to be honest. She’s been on my ass pretty much since day one.” Jake answered.
“I wonder how long she’s going to starve herself.” Kirk let out with a chuckle.
“Forever wouldn’t be so bad, it leaves more food for us. Although she does get even more cranky when she’s hungry.” Jake said, and the both of them exploded into laughter a second later.