James returned to Bradley after he finished training for the day, when he stumbled on a new area in the workshop. “Welcome back my golden child, Ben updated me on your skills and I immediately set you up a workshop next to mine.” James scratched the back of his head, confused, “Golden child, what’s that all about. I figured you’d be disappointed in my skills.”
Bradley grabbed a hold of James’ shoulders, “Disappointed? When you’re the missing piece of the puzzle for continued production? I’m more disappointed you haven’t thought about what you can do with that power.” Bradley drug James along to the new smithery he had installed. “First off, just to ease your nervousness about combat effectiveness, take this ring. It’s a bit shabby, I’m not too good at metalwork.”
Bradley tossed him a ring with a chunk of mana crystal embedded into it. James scrambled to catch it, almost dropping it several times, “What’s this ring do? Increase my stats or something?” Bradley sighed, “No, that’s what your stuff will do in the future though. That has a single spell in it. Firebolt.” James seemed a bit confused, “What do I do with this?”
Bradley sighed, “Look, you can use mana to modify the properties of fire, but you can’t create it yourself. This has a basic fire spell, learn how to shoot it using the ring, then learn to modify it to deal more damage. Simple.” James seemed shocked, “Thank you so much, I didn’t expect a gift like this after what I thought was failure.”
Bradley shook his head, “Look, what I want out of you is simple, but I know you’re going to be overly stressed about combat, so I simply wanted to ease that worry. I want you to train in the morning and smith in the evening. We’ll supply you with steel and monster bones starting off to see how effective they are after being formed into a blade by you instead of the low effort I put into the mass produced ones.”
James smiled, “I’ll get right on it.” Bradley waved him off as he left, “Yea you get to that. I’m going to check on the recovered citizens.” Bradley walked out of the room to the sound of the fire blazing. He came upon the new housing district within a few minutes. The area had changed vastly over the past few months. With the large influx of people, all with abilities rivaling professional athletes or better, there was a need to have more than just a cafeteria. Specially selected businesses were allowed entry into the newly forming city. Since the population was made to be condensed and kept close, many companies vied for places near the housing districts, especially after hearing of the wages those people could earn.
A few public bus routes were set up, bike paths, etc. The goal was to keep the city as tightly packed together without using skyscrapers. The reason? Warfare. If either military pressure or monsters flooded out, the need to have a small space to defend was imperative to survival. Many bunkers built out of zone material had begun construction for the sake of public safety, all with a build-up of non-perishables.
“People told me I was paranoid, but damn is this walk nice.” Bradley looked around, seeing the hustle and bustle of the population, going to their combative or non-combative jobs. Ben had scanned all the incoming fallen from Detroit, finding most of them fell into classless. Bradley saw a young boy, probably 12, with his older guardian, “How the hell can we trust these people? My brother was killed by this damn company. When will they just send us into that forest to die.”
The guardian began to panic as Bradley was in uniform, “Boy, please be quiet for now. You can complain later alright?” The boy grew frustrated, “Why the hell do I have to be quiet when I’m right?” He then turned to face forward and noticed Bradley. He froze up, put his head down, and tried to walk past. “Please stop for a moment,” Bradley put his hand out to block their way.
The guardian fell to his knees, “Please let him be, I beg you, he’s just a dumb boy. He means no harm.” Bradley laughed, “No, you don’t understand. If USDC was being run like the old days, he’d be right.” Bradley grinned to the boy, “But I’m running the show now. I’m the fallen who led you all out of that forest.” Bradley patted the boy on the head, “If you wanna get strong enough to hold that grudge, or strong enough to protect your lovely grandpa, come see me at the training grounds.” Bradley walked past them, waving as he went, “Have a lovely day you two, it’s such good weather after all.”
The older man got back up on his feet with the boy’s help, “That probably took five years off my life.” The boy smiled, “Grandpa, can I go training from now on?” The old man sighed, “Honestly that man terrifies me a bit, I saw him fight that ogre that broke in, but if he requested you for it, then I can’t exactly deny it. Go ahead and follow him.” The boy ran towards Bradley.
Bradley smiled and tucked the inspection crystal in his pocket, ‘That little boy has a damn good class, let’s hope we can get him working for us. I guess it makes sense with all of his losses, but who would’ve thought he’d be a necromancer.’ Suddenly he felt a tug at his side, “I would like to be put into training sir.” Bradley grabbed the boy by the shoulder and gave him a genuine smile, “You came to me so quickly, I’m honored to have you. What do you know about your class?” The boy called ‘Status!’, “I’m a level 4 Necromancer with three skills, Revival, Minion Heal, and Corpse Explosion.”
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“Well now those are some interesting skills. We’ll find somewhere you can practice those later, but for now, let’s build up your physical abilities with some normal training.”
Bradley and the boy entered the normal training facility, for low level training, “Seems like everyone’s working hard in here. Good work everyone!” Bradley called out to the group training. A large yell came from the crowd. Bradley looked around the area until he found Devin, “Aye Devin, get your ass over here and give those poor people a break alright?”
Another round of hollers went out and Devin approached, “What do you mean, leave them alone. This is your training regiment. What do you want?” Bradley chuckled, “Look, I need you to give this boy here some extra care.” Devin seemed a bit confused, “I thought 16 was the lowest age for workers.” Bradley laughed, “That’s why I’m gonna pay him under the table. Anyways, he’ll be joining Squad 0 here soon, so make sure he exercises till he pukes, and then have Don get ahold of him later for his spell training.”
The boy began to whine, “Wait, I have to train that,” but then stopped at a realization, “Did you say I’ll be joining Squad 0?” Bradley ruffled the boys hair, “You have a really good class so yes, in return we will start paying you quite a bit. But if I hear you’re not training hard, or you’re being mean to your Grandpa then I’ll revoke your status. Got it?”
The boy nodded and Bradley paused for a moment, “What’s your name by the way?” The boy banged his chest, “Name’s George Willbry, at your service.” The boy then laughed at his own introduction. “Nice meeting you bud, remember your promise and you and your Grandpa will live a lot better for it.” The boy ran off towards the training group.
Bradley turned to Devin, “How many newbies came in, and what’s their attitude towards training?” Devin sighed, “They’re exhausted and a bit frustrated, but they’ll keep at it since it’s the difference of barely being able to live and living comfortably. Since the age limit was set to 16, and most of the others had kids to take care of, we didn’t pull many people.”
Bradley thought for a moment, “What if we run a children’s gym side by side with the caregivers training, and then if caregivers want to go on missions we can watch over their children during those times.” Devin thought for a moment, “That might work, want me to see the reaction?” Bradley stopped him, “No, I’ll make the announcement. Even if we don’t get many more, I think keeping these kids busy instead of cooped up at home will prevent problems in the first place. So free childcare as long as the caregiver is working.” Bradley sighed, “Thank god we’re making so much money.”
Bradley waved off Devin before stopping, “What is happening with the orphans on hold?” Devin’s posture fell, “They can’t be released since they don’t have a legal guardian anymore. The government is taking control of them.” Bradley grew angry, “Those fuckers, do I need to meet with Captain Fuckface in the army again?” Devin shook his head, “It’s not the army, it’s the CIA who took custody.”
Bradley collected himself, “Fuck, we can’t argue then. I’ll tell HM to make a ruckus about it, see if we can get at least a few of them. Poor kids are probably going to be experimented on. I mean, no one’s going to miss a fallen orphan,” Bradley began walking out of the training facility, “I’ll go meet up with HM now, see you.” Devin laughed, “You still don’t know his name do you?” Bradley glared at Devin, “After what he and his friends did, he doesn’t deserve for me to know his name. I would’ve killed him if I didn’t need him.” Bradley turned and left.
Devin sighed and turned towards his group, “Alright everyone, back to training. We have a newby so treat him well. If you don’t I’ll double the reps. He was recommended by the bossman so if you bully him it’s like you’re bullying the commander, so be careful.” Devin took a deep breath, “And with that, let’s get back to work!” The group cheered, and got back to doing intense exercise.
Bradley shoved open the door to HM’s office, “We need to talk.” HM flinched at the sudden entrance, “You’re the only one who just flings my door open, scares me every time.” Bradley snickered, “Probably because you’ve done enough wrong to worry you. Anyways, I heard about the orphans. I want you to put as much pressure as you can to at least get half. Make sure you make it out to be because they are your property or something, we need to get as many as we can.” HM nodded, “Anything else? Normally you wouldn’t visit me unless you had something big.” Bradley grinned, “I successfully awakened someone.”
Hm dropped his pen, “Really? Does that mean we can finally expand the business?” Bradley leaned against the desk, “I want you to send out a few notifications. I want us to handle childcare for all who work for the company, and allow those children to physically train so when they become of age they can become assets, I want you to inform the government they owe us at least half of those orphans, and I want you to inform the rich assholes you know that we can awaken people.”
HM kicked back in his chair, “How much are we charging for awakenings?” Bradley smirked, “Being the fact I am currently the only one who can do it, and the amount of mana it costs is large, I’d say 25 million per awakening attempt. We won’t be sure what they get until after, and if it fails we won’t charge, but send the memo’s. I have shit to do.”
Bradley got up, and walked out the door, “Keep up the good work, people really think you’re running this place.” Bradley gave HM a smirk and shut the door. HM sighed, “That little fucker’s really grown up since he groveled for a job. Fuck, time to do my part I guess.”