A group of men, their uniforms much different to everyone else, are standing around the giant entrance to the central pyre, the main drop-off point for anything that comes from the outside and basically a huge elevator.

There’s several hundred menacing looking people standing around, not just the people selected but other people here to simply enjoy the show. Very little happens in this camp usually.

Sam nods his head at Benny, the red-haired man looks away trying to remain emotionless but Sam can see the blaze of fury in his eyes.

Not too many people that Sam knows have been selected, which makes sense as he attracted more weaklings, which will be unfortunate for them when he leaves here, but it’s probably better than going out onto whatever battlefield is coming up.

The door suddenly rolls up as the elevator reaches the floor. Hundreds of uniformed people are on the platform holding weapons. They’re surrounding a large set of rectangular boxes which looks like coffins, markings on them give them an ancient feeling.

“EVERYONE SELECTED GET ON YOUR HANDS AND KNEES!”

The soldiers run and and force everyone on the ground at weapon point, everyone that doesn’t comply is forced down no matter who.

Sam immediately gets down along with everyone around him, a few people in the distance that were watching make a ruckus and find themselves with broken legs. Their screams cause an eerie but not unusual scene here.

A group of people in white military uniforms walk forward flanked by a bunch of people in medical uniforms. They stop before the crowd of people, the people in the white uniforms smile and laugh at the scene.

“Look at these idiots, their life is in our hands already. Why do we need the collars?”

“It’s insurance. Put it on them, then we can get out of here. This place stinks.”

“It truly does stink,” a blonde-haired man with a smirk steps out and raises his voice, “listen up animals! We are putting collars on you, then you are getting put in these boxes. There will be no problems. You guys are already surplus goods.”

No one responds to this, but many clenched knuckles can be heard cracking.

“Good. This collar is important, if you don’t get it reset every 48 hours. It will explode. This has been tested on Stage 4 fighters so you’re welcome to think you can survive.”

“Now be obedient while we put the collar on you.”

The soldiers make their weapons known as the medical people move out, they first scan foreheads to confirm identities before placing a 3 large metallic strips around the person’s neck. They do this quickly and methodically, but mostly silent.

Sam gets it without incident, it doesn’t feel restrictive at all.

“Will we be released from the power locking?”

“Who said that?”

A small man raises his hand, the blonde-haired white uniform man squints his eyes before touching something on his wrist.

“Let this be a lesson to you.”

*POP*

The man’s head pops clean off, everyone is stunned silent and motionless at this suddenness, even Sam is shocked at how quickly things changed.

“You are to not speak unless spoken to, and you are to respond with Yes, No problem… Sir.”

“In answer to the question, the boxes you are about to be loaded into are able to seal your powers for 6 hours. You will be released from the suppressors and permitted recovery time in there. Any damage will result in punishment. They’re called T-Boxes, they’re truly a relic.”

“Behave and you’ll get through this, be thankful you get to touch a relic” the man finishes up with a sinister smile.

No one makes a move as the medical team goes around putting the collars around everyone's neck. The white uniform people don’t let up with their taunting, but no one else loses their head. Everyone lowers their head without looking up.

A row of the boxes open up behind the white uniform people, there’s just enough room to stand inside it with nothing else inside it. It’s made of an entirely dark material.

“Ok in. I don’t care what order.”

Sam feels a push from behind, he looks and spots one of Benny’s goons, but they forced him to stand up.

Not wanting to cause a scene, he walks towards a box.

“Oh confident are you?” the blonde-haired person goes for his wrist when someone else stops him.

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“We can’t lose anymore, we’ll get into trouble and maybe lose credits.”

The blonde-haired man places his wrist down, Sam lets out a quiet sigh of relief. He isn’t sure if he could have escaped from that situation even with the stop.

“We expect only one thing from you people, kill all beasts you see. For every beast you kill, you’ll get 25 credits or something. Your next of kin will get this amount less fees upon your death.”

Sam steps into a box and turns around, the door shuts leaving him trapped in this dark, tiny cramped space with nothing to do but wait, and wait he does. It takes some time to load up everyone as the box moves about.

A rumble sound comes out as the boxes emit a slight vibration, suddenly everyone’s suppressors fall onto the ground.

A few people cannot help themselves as they let out their power, rocking several rows of boxes, but it stops shortly after presumably due to handing out ‘punishment’.

Sam too circulates his energy, he feels a strange invigorating feeling as his entire body is filled with energy once more; he spends the time getting readjusted to the power that comes from energy innately.

As your mana accumulates, you get stronger. Not just your powers or skills, but your body too as each part of it is uplifted with energy at a level imperceptible to science, yet you can simply feel it. Sam can feel the energy flowing through his body making him stronger, his stamina has increased and more.

The energy flows through his body but that’s it; he has noticed none of the signs for progressing to stage 1. As far as he can tell from talking with people around the camp, his purity should have reached the threshold and the more pre-lit points you have, the easier it should be.

Sam tries to force his mana-cloud to do something, but nothing happens. This leaves him stumped, but all he can do is wait for the chance, everyone that reaches this point will have some sort of shift or even blessing, eventually.

But at least, he can now use skills and tools that use mana… that’s if they’re permitted to use them.

This cramped condition lasts for some time until everything becomes bumpy, a sudden drop comes over the whole craft making everyone realise they’re flying.

The aircraft rights the balance, bringing relief to everyone before an orange light flashes inside the box unnoticed to Sam.

<“Descent mode has been initiated, inhabitant has 2 minutes and 18 seconds to prepare for drop.”>

“What?”

Sam is drawn out of his calm state and yells at the robotic voice, but of course there’s no response.

He takes a deep breath to calm down, there’s no use panicking about it. He needs to wait and survey the situation calmly when he gets on the ground. Luckily he has that option, the plane dips several more times before loud banging sounds can be heard all over.

<“Dropping mode engaged, 8 seconds.>

Sam stretches his muscles the best he can in this tight space, he has no idea how they’re going to land yet the feelings that come across his body don’t give him much confidence in it being a calm scene.

<“Dropping occupant in 3… 2…”>

The floor releases away, Sam is given a shock as he attempts to fix his fall.

‘Stop’

Sam yells, causing the world to shimmer, yet there’s a problem.

He’s still falling.

He watches the strange sights below him as things continue to crash about; he doesn’t have time to worry about it though as he’s about 40 metres in the air and quickly falling. He doesn’t have any option but to brace himself when he notices a tiny figure coming into view quickly.

Sam’s eyes go wide as he realises that he’ll hit this person yet from his experiments previously, he doesn’t want to hit them while using the stop ability.

‘Stop Stop’

Sam is only a few metres from the ground, the world shimmers into life again as the noise picks up. He doesn’t have time to look around as he places his hands out the front of him and readies himself.

*OOF*

Sam’s body makes contact with the person standing on the ground, their body crumples on the ground underneath him unmoving, Sam rolls off them trying to feel the wounds in his body as he looks into the sky.

The large aircraft is skimming along the ground, countless fires and holes appear on the surface of the almost 500 metre long aircraft. People are just free falling from the aircraft that is skimming up and down along the surface.

There’s no telling how many people will die from this drop-off method yet it still seems better than letting the aircraft blow up with everyone inside. The aircraft seems in real trouble yet it continues flying along.

Sam looks at the person beside him, they’re still not moving. He flips them over revealing their face showing an ugly sight, yet a wave of relief comes over him as he notices that they’re not wearing the insignia of his own country.

Sam looks around and spots a chaotic battlefield. Thousands of people are in the middle of battles of varying sizes, yet one side clearly has the upper-hand. The remains of an encampment and buildings are burnt out not too far away, including several large gun emplacements that are smoking out now.

The battles… not going well for the people.

Sam watches the battle scene for a moment. No one bothers him as he lies on the ground pretending to be motionless, unable to move.

There’s at least two sides, maybe three, judging by the uniforms people are wearing.

There’s the most obvious side, the one wearing a similar blue and white uniform as himself. They’re fighting with all sorts of weapons yet that’s all they’re fighting with, no one is using their monster and no one is using a battle skill.

The other obvious side is the beast side, large creatures, yet there’s only 3 types that stand out. A large cat species, a large wolf species, and a large pig species. They’re all running about with thousands of them glowing in different colours.

They’re able to manoeuvre between the forest, the burnt out landscape and the flat open area much easier than the people. They’re actually deploying tactics and being deadly overall, yet they’re still being cut down in large numbers.

The unfortunate part is that there’s plenty of reinforcements willing to come out of the forest and replace the ones that were defeated, there’s an almost never-ending supply of beasts.

Sam notices that someone is looking at him, he stiffens his body and waits.

A young man comes over to check the person beside him, looking in his pockets and rifling through his uniform before taking the sword that the person was holding.

Sam curses this person in his mind, they run away without incident before being brutally cut down by one of the large wolves.

The wolf sniffs the air after killing that person with a single bite, its face is pointed towards Sam, yet after a few moments it runs away leaving the dead body there.

Sam doesn’t move from his spot, moments later the same wolf circles around, looking in his direction again before running away.

‘What the hell is going on…’

Sam looks at the person’s uniform next to him, it’s similar to his yet has a distinct green and brown colour to it instead of the white, blue and gold uniforms that he is used to. Sam isn’t sure where they’re from, but they are clearly not part of the usual force of his country that this area should be under.

*CRUNCH*

A loud footstep comes from above his head, stepping on everything without a care and clearly crunching something solid. Sam’s heart races as he listens to the noises above his head, trying his best not to move his body.

*SNIFF SNIFF*

Sam can feel sweat come from his forehead given how close this beast is, he can feel its breath tickle his head.

*ROOAR*

Sam doesn’t have time to react, he resorts to his only option.

‘Stop’

*ROOOOOOAR*

Sam suddenly sits up looking at the noise, an illusory form of the cat species roars out into nothing before silence.

“What the hell was that? Ugh, what the hell is going on here. Fuck, is the plane crashing?”

Sam looks far in the distance as he’s able to see above the tree line now, the large aircraft is dipping below the treeline with more of it on fire. He’s quietly glad that he boarded when he did. If he were to exit the plane now when it’s in the trees then it’d be much harder to land.

It still seems entirely stupid.

Why drop people like this? It seems like a waste, explosives or bombs would do much better when there are no friendly forces nearby. This is basically dropping people to be food for these beasts.

Sam stands up patting himself off, he surprisingly doesn’t feel hurt. Maybe the person broke most of his fall, or maybe his body is stronger after they released the lock. He stretches his body as it’s finally free of most restraints before touching his neck.

There’s still the collar around his neck that needs something done every 48 hours.

“Well, I guess I should work out what’s going on here, I only have a few more minutes of this before it has to be recharged.”

Sam looks at the creature that’s roaring at him, it’s completely frozen where it stands.

Spit is flying from its giant mouth that’s about to close on him.

Sam looks around where he spots a few things on the ground. The person who the wolf killed was holding quite a few items. He walks over there and spots several swords and daggers, collecting them himself and walking back over to the cat-beast.

“Here, if you open your mouth, you need to expect people to put things in them.”

Sam smiles as he looks at the creature before him, ‘Stop Stop’.

*ROOOOOOOOAAAAAARR*

The creature continues to roar but suddenly falls over, body twitching as blood flows from the mouth.

Sam shakes his head and looks around, “AHHHH” comes from the distance.

He hurries over in that direction and notices a squad of people under attack by over 50 beasts, they’re all working in tandem to wear down the people. Sam shakes his head and turns around. He doesn’t need to get involved with this.

“You’ll never take me!”

Sam suddenly stops as he recognises a voice. He sighs and turns around.