The crisp smell of burnt earth flared in Adam's nostrils. The heat haze in the distance was mesmerising to Adam's eyes.

The road seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance, no end in sight.

According to the map provided by the late guard, the perimeter of the fortress was exactly thirty kilometres from the stockade, easily more than a three hour walk through flat terrain.

Right now he was approximately ten kilometres to the base, but he encountered a problem.

Within the shimmering haze in the distance stood the faint outlines of fighters. The fighters were shooting at each other from behind cover.

It looked like a firefight between factions, the uniforms of the people were dirtied by the grime of combat so Adam couldn't make out the allegiances of the combatants.

In response to this, Adam decided to bypass the vicinity of the encounter, opting for a safer detour through the forest.

Sticking to the shade beneath the sparsely populated trees and the occasional mounds of red earth proved to be beyond easy for Adam, allowing him to walk right past the group of combatants with them none the wiser.

Adam believed this to be an isolated incident of discord between factions, however, another kilometre further up the road he saw more signs of combat.

A few corpses by the side of the road, scorch marks on the trees and scattered bullet casings leaving their imprint on the red dust of the road.

Adam decided to take a look at one of the corpses more carefully.

He had a white jumpsuit with metal shin-pads and bracers. On his left arm was a black armband, very similar to the one on the late vigilante from a few months back.

These people were from the [White Vigil].

Seriously, what was up with this faction? Why did anything near him have to involve it?

Checking a corpse from the opposing faction he noted that she was dressed in some sort of strange black armour, judging from the colour of the armour and the fact that they were fighting a good faction he deduced that they must be some sort of evil faction.

He also discovered two other things.

One was that most of the vigilantes were armed with swords and light firearms, while only a minority of the villains were armoured with the strange black armour, suggesting some sort of hierarchy within that faction denoted by their gear.

The majority of the villains were dressed in a variety of black attire, the only distinguishing factor being that they all covered their faces. The evil faction was armed with light firearms and spears.

The seconds thing he noted was that the corpses belonging to the villains faction were vastly lesser in number, suggesting one of two outcomes.

Either the villains faction managed to surprise the White Vigil in an ambush and determined a great battle advantage. That, or they are overwhelmingly superior in combat ability to the vigilante's.

Adam's opinion tended towards the former because he had firsthand experience in the combat prowess of the vigilantes.

Moving on from the small battlefield, Adam set out on his journey once more.

Deciding that the road was no longer a safe route, Adam took another detour through the wilderness. This took him across many rock outcroppings and grass clearings on the route to the fort.

At one point of his journey Adam arrived at the summit of a mountain. All around him were small brushes native to the Australian outback.

By this point he was within three kilometres of the fort and he could see it in the distance from the peak of the unnamed mountain.

It was a towering monstrosity of concrete and scaffolding, reaching up into the sky and grasping the very clouds.

Modern cannons lined the sides of the towering fortress, clearly designed for taking down otherworldly enemies, or at least formerly otherworldly.

These cannons were now aimed at a host of figures clad in black. This host easily numbered in the thousands, suggesting that it wasn't a force fully composed of awakened but normal people as well. The reason for this was that awakened were extremely rare. In the entirety of Australia you'd be hard pressed to find more than four thousand.

Accompanying the faction clad in black were huge monsters, the very same ones which had attacked Adam and his convoy earlier. These ones numbered in the scores and they were currently charging towards the walls of the fortress.

The cannons fired and turned hundreds of the men into dust with every shell fired. However, the sheer amount of soldiers attacking the fortress made it seem like extinguishing a blazing fire with a cup of water.

The beasts fighting alongside the evil faction smashed multiple holes into the wall and climbed into the fortress through the scaffolding. The attacking army followed after the monsters and brandished their weapons against the defenders on the wall.

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As for the defence, the vigilantes lead the front with their melee weaponry whereas the soldiers used a combination of heavy and light arms to repel the besiegers from a distance.

This led to a bloody deadlock between the two factions on multiple areas in the scaffolding. Soldiers, Vigilantes and Villains died by the score every few seconds within this bloody battlefield, only to be pushed off the platforms by their comrades to make space for more combatants who were entering the fray.

Adam gazed at the battlefield with complicated emotions. He looked upon the defending soldiers with some measure of sympathy whereas he delighted in the demise of the vigilantes with schadenfreude. After all, why should he hold sympathy to people that had once tried to kill him?

Watching the battle suddenly seemed to be a very tiring thing to Adam. The cause may have been the intense fighting in the distance or the long trek to this mountain, but none of it mattered as Adam took out the iced coffee in his jacket and popped the cap off. He craned his head backwards and put the mouth of the bottle between his lips, taking a long draught of iced coffee in the process.

While he was drinking he heard a sound. A sound apart from all the fighting in the distance. A sound which was relatively close to him. Anybody else wouldn't have heard it, however, this was Adam and you couldn't surprise Adam.

Adam jumped in the opposite direction of the sound, landing in a low fighting stance. At the same moment in which he jumped a flash of steel appeared nearby him, originating from a girl clad in the white uniform of the White Vigil.

This girl was the very same Sera which Adam had met back in his old school!

She seemed not to recognise him, and apparently took him to be an enemy from how she took a combat stance immediately after her surprise attack missed.

Adam smiled confidently. A year from now she could have beaten him, but not now.

He prepared to take a stance when the can of iced coffee in his hand suddenly split in two, dropping the rest of the liquid on the rocky ground.

Shockingly Sera had managed to cut the can of iced coffee in her surprise attack! It was important to note that when Adam was dodging, the can of iced coffee in his hand was in the place where his neck had been.

Adam looked at the cut can in shock, slowly dropping from his hand as it lost strength from the physical shock.

It seems I have to retract what I said, you can surprise Adam. If only in extremely rare cases.

Sera saw that Adam was surprised and didn't let go of that opportunity to attack. Her confidence was further bolstered when she saw that he didn't have a weapon with which to defend himself.

This attack was extremely quick, an overhead slash with a cutlass which would cleanly cut through a small tree. However, if Adam was done in by an attack of this calibre then his master would probably commit suicide from the shame of teaching such a useless disciple.

Adam turned to the left, dodging by the smallest of margins and surprising Sera with the amount of control he could exercise over his body in a combat scenario.

Not leaving a gap for Sera to bisect him with the cutlass, Adam grabbed onto the forearm of the arm which held the cutlass and pulled it towards her. Sera, not familiar with fighting against unarmed combatants, couldn't defend against this and was pulled towards Adam.

Seeing how useless Sera seemed to be when fighting against him, Adam retracted his former surprise and replaced it with scorn. He raised his other hand and chopped at her neck, rendering her unconscious.

Sera dropped to the floor in unconsciousness and failed to get up. Adam utilised one of his Master's techniques for incapacitating a human, if Sera could manage to stay conscious when struck with this technique then Adam couldn't possibly have been a match against her in close combat.

Having dealt with Sera, Adam turned to look at the battlefield in the distance. The fighting had progressed immensely by that point in time. The base of the fortress was now the final resting place for thousands of souls, the ground was painted a crimson red and acted as the base for multiple pyramids of corpses.

The besieging army had progressed upwards the scaffolding, pushing the defenders back and forcing them to surrender ground to the enemy.

Then, near the base of the scaffolding, a group of vigilantes and soldiers went unnoticed by the attacking army which was already halfway up the scaffolding.

They set down what looked like explosives in the base. Adam immediately saw what they were trying to do!

They were attempting to destroy the scaffolding of their own fortress in order to send the entire enemy army plummeting to their deaths!

This tactic was the same as carving out a pound of one's flesh in order to ensure the demise of his adversary. It was a tactic which was not only ruthless to the enemy, but to oneself.

Adam felt like congratulating the commander of the defending forces. He must have no small amount of resolve in order to be willing to sacrifice so much for the sake of victory.

The only problem Adam could identify with this tactic was the method that they would use to light the explosives. If the soldiers at the base of the scaffolding set the fuse then they would essentially be committing a suicide mission. Surely the soldiers of the fortress wouldn't be blindingly loyal to such a degree?

The soldiers were finished setting up the explosives and retreated a fair ways away after erecting a high visibility target with a flammable container attached to it.

Was it? Maybe? The method for activating the explosives...

Adam turned to look behind him, and saw a still unconscious Sera. She notably had a sniper rifle slung across her shoulder.

'Well, there goes the fortress, and your military training.'

It seemed like Adam had inadvertedly doomed an entire fortress by exercising self-defence.

Adam took a moment to analyse whether this event would be harmful or beneficial to him.

On one hand, his arduous military training would be postponed. He would allow a big blow to befall the White Vigil and would wound up back in Sydney.

On the other hand, the one to suffer the most from losing the fortress would be his employer, the Government. That meant that his backing would lose a significant portion of it's power. Furthermore, he would fail the assignment given to him by Leo. Thus losing out on the payment. A very big payment.

Yep, it was probably in his interest that the fort stay in Government hands. Therefore Adam took the sniper rifle and took a shooting position imitated from various action films he had watched in the past.

Surely it wasn't that hard to shoot a target three kilometres away with an impromptu sniper who has never held a gun before.

Yep, his enhanced awareness allowed him to relax his breathing and steady the crosshair until it wasn't moving from the target.

Now he should just shoot. Right?

Adam pulled the trigger and expected a great amount of recoil but in the end nothing happened.

"Is the sniper jammed?" Adam wondered to himself.

All of his experience in watching action films didn't prepare him for this. In the movies they usually just stood twenty feet apart in an abandoned pueblo inhabited by tumbleweeds. They would count to ten, then flick the revolver on their waist with a fluid motion and shoot the other guy.

Clearly, that was quite different from shooting a sniper rifle.

Deciding to look back at the situation on the battlefield, Adam was startled at the great change in the combat situation.

The attacking army had discovered the defender's ploy to blow up the scaffolding. However, instead of retreating they curiously only sent one man to defuse the bombs. Currently he was fighting the entire bombing squad.

Alone.

The bullets directed at him simply ricocheted from his tan skin and swords split apart after striking him.

He single-handedly massacred the entire squad and set about defusing all of the bombs.

Adam dropped the rifle on the ground and lay down on a rock.

He had all but given up by this point.

He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds. Fighting in the distance and beeping of animals nearby.

Beeping?

Adam opened his eyes and looked around but couldn't quite find the source of the intermittent beeping.

Before long, he realised it was coming from Sera. Specifically, her right pocket.

Turning her over, he retrieved the beeping object.

It was of a peculiar design, a spherical ball of plastic with a flashing light on one end and an enticing red button in the other.

Adam pressed it without hesitation.

BOOM!!!