Leaving The Base

Step step step.

"What are you waiting for? Two hundred thousand people are more or less waiting for you to come out and leave the base and you're here drawing in babbles?" Fatima's footsteps were heard first, followed by her beautiful voice before she finally made her appearance from outside into Ciemnosc's entrance to his private room. Her head peeked in and saw Ciemnosc, fully dressed, which was a shame and drawing.

“I was just finishing.” Ciemnosc the Innocent said, lifting his head calmly to look at her before standing up. Reclining the chair a little as it was drawn back by his strong calves, Fatima closed in and took a look at the weird tentacles drawing on the piece of paper and read the words written on it which were the first things Ciemnosc put on that piece of paper.

“Ooo! Can I see? Hum, let’s see… Vocón… Link?” Fatima picked up his piece of paper and lifted her eyes at him after reading it, ‘???’ appearing all within her eyes and soul. Ciemnosc looked at her and rolled his eyes, a bit, and shook his head slightly at the same time.

“It’s from the things you’ve told me, though I still don’t understand how an ‘art’ works with my cultivation, I can make a guess about it.” Ciemnosc didn’t take the piece of paper back, letting her look all she wanted. Fatima ended up putting the piece of paper back on the desk, frowning, she began saying in an uncertain tone. “Well, the deans are the ones who have the best knowledge about them, but they are too precious and you already have made a deal for other things with them.”

“I guess you can only ask them next time when they ask favors from you, once again.” She stepped over and began arranging his already simple and flat collar, looking up at him while her fingers worked, her voice calm, to say the least.

“And it also looks pretty… ‘unorthodox’. The academy doesn’t like cultivation that involves ‘bad stuff’. So maybe make a few changes to it? Otherwise, that is a ‘strong’ weak point for some to hold on against you. Be careful, but don’t worry about us.” Fatima’s fingers stopped moving, her eyes looked up stagnantly at him as she muttered really softly afterward, “Whoever dares to look the other way while you are gone is going to be eaten alive by everyone else.”

“And if you are to be asked for another favor for the academy, we will all be there with you. Okay?”

“Okay.” Ciemnosc complied and said, his tall figure somewhat much taller than the actually taller Fatima. In silence, looking into each other’s eyes, they talked a little bit before letting go of this moment. Ciemnosc held her left hand with his right one and came out of his private bedroom within the large tent, it would maybe be the last time he would be able to.

Walking outside their little VIP zone at the central south of the base, then walking off into the distant entrance/exit facing the north, Ciemnosc and Fatima arrived at an open, snowy field where more than a couple hundred thousand students awaited their presence.

“Wow, so many,” Ciemnosc commented, stopping in place and looking all around at the students who were both on foot and around their armored cars. Those huge metallic behemoths that were the top-notch ‘futuristic’ marvel of the world were their largest source of pride, but their recent disciplinary activities had toned their shit down by quite a lot.

It wasn’t anything too dramatic, merely the few annoying showing off their power and achievements, before being battered by some leading students with higher cultivation. Over and over again, until they finally knew how to keep their balls warm within their bodies once again.

“Mhm, so about that art you were making. What are your plans for it?” Fatima said, slowly getting to hook his right arm onto her breasts and the left side of her body, against her ribs. Ciemnosc grinned, hearing the worry in her tone and understanding her silly little thoughts well enough. With but a second worth of time before answering, he said while looking up into the clear blue sky. “I won’t change it, don’t think I can anyway.”

“...” Fatima turned her head at him as soon as he began speaking, her frown relaxing at last though, and Ciemnosc continued. “I can’t know much about those ‘arts’ right now, but I can only follow what I know. And that tells me that is more than any of the old greedy ones at the academy know, somewhat.”

‘And even when you praise their arts, like the one I and many more witnessed that night… weren’t those things just showy flashes going by and flying around? They even used strings and tendons of Creatures who used to have high cultivation to trap those with a much lower cultivation base than them. And they were all Obsidiafying realm cultivators at the peak, I just won’t believe something like that.’

Ciemnosc’s thoughts were only for himself; not like it meant that he was going to see Fatima or treat her differently. He still held his hand with ease and gave it a tight hug every now and then as they walked the long parallel lines of students watching them, but mostly Ciemnosc, walk out of their base’s territory.

Step, step, step, step.

“Ciemnosc; Genius and Chief in Command.” Missa, Leen and Gallah were watching as the pair of dumbos finally arrived in front of themselves, with those 3 being at the very front of the large parallel lines of students. Missa greeted the high almighty brains and brawns of the base, before teasing him shamelessly a little bit.

All along, murmurs were going around while Ciemnosc and Fatima walked together. While some thought that Ciemnosc was a womanizer, others were simply talking about the way their young leader seemed to become a bit taller and more handsome, older perhaps too.

It wasn’t that silent, and more than anything, it was also thankfully not awkward to walk the long line of the pair of hundred thousand students. Once Ciemnosc arrived at the very front and was greeting the rest of his teammates, the students behind made the line they had made for him to walk through disappear. All looked in silence at Ciemnosc who took out his commanding vehicle, giving his back to his troops for several seconds without spilling a single word out of his mouth.

“... The ‘west’ that we want cannot be truly called the west right now,” Ciemnosc spoke before fully turning around, finishing his spin by the time his words also ended, and then continued. “That’s why, when I return, we’ll take care of the rest of those rats lying around. Even the snow from the north will change its ownership, and the mountains of the south will become desolate for us.”

“For the time being, endure the new visitors while I’m gone,” Ciemnosc said, once again turning around but slowly this time and towards his commanding vehicle whose right side was facing them. Thus, its entrance was to be right before Ciemnosc as soon as he completely turned around.

“You can beat them if you want.” Ciemnosc just needed his head to completely turn around and then only his backside would be seen. His darkest eyes looked back at the rest of his troops still while his words continued being heard by their ears. “Just remember it, and do it clearly: wrongly beating a fellow trooper will be heavily punished with isolation and a few beatings.”

“Oooh~...” - “You heard that?” - “Yes…” - “Where the hell can I find one of those? Last night, I heard that one of the disappeared students tried flirting with my sister some secret codes out, the fucker!”

“...” There were 2 different reactions from the students, and it was quite a polarized difference in-between, indeed. One was virtually all students, those who had been with the base by the end of their acclimatization or since the beginning of being at the base. Ciemnosc’s evangelization of his troops doing all the work - well, worked.

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While the other part of the different reactions consisted of sweaty and concerned students, nervously gazing around at some that looked at them knowingly, with eyes narrowed or blatantly warning them off.

It wasn’t that there were more ‘hidden dangers’, rather, it was that some of the students present were either cajoled ‘to the other side’ or actually, willingly, cooperated with the students who everyone by now knew had disappeared. And if there was one thing that was evident in them besides their outer appearance of disorder, in Ciemnosc’s nose and smell senses, it was their evident smell of regret.

But Ciemnosc never let anyone lift a finger on them, not even the students, let alone those who were higher in the ranks. Who knows, a hero in their retribution arc might just come in handy in emergency cases, whether or not it benefitted these wonderful possible ‘heroes’.

“...” Like this, and with silent but comforting gazes from his teammates, Ciemnosc left the students’ sight by entering his commanding vehicle. The students’ murmuring was becoming louder, but nobody was stopping them, it was just a nice day today and it was a temporary goodbye to their Chief who was still somewhat of a stranger to his deeper nature.

He might be the instructor for many, and the one they learn things they didn’t even deem possible before, or even thinkable before. And who knows if the Chief would be returning with more fellow students, ready to be brainwashed so that more mines could be worked on and more benefits would be given to the overall students. Though Ciemnosc wasn’t looking to follow communism, he could only give equal amounts of Powerful Stones to his students, while granting the leading students with many benefits and power to speak of.

On the other hand, the armored cars’ production was already good enough even for the future. That meant that there wouldn’t be a need to increase it, instead, what would be more important is to make sure not to overproduce any of them for the next, coming years. And that only a certain, large but ‘just’ certain, portion of the troops received armored cars.

After all, wars weren’t just about having a lot of ‘things’ to make use of. And in this war, it wasn’t just battles on land that would be occurring nonstop, while the air would be all left alone for the Conflagrate realm or Obsidiafying realm cultivators to fight at. The waters have been lonely for too long, and they seemed to be more than awake now, awaiting and expecting a great show of incredible, flashy things here and there…

On the other hand, it was the stupidest of choices to fight only using one certain tactic, like using only armored cars for fighting. Though they could be used as transport, with the whole shit they had in each of those armored cars, it was just a terrible waste to be used only for that. They had too much armor and though they were the fastest vehicles in existence, it was the massacring options one had with them that made them so powerful in the first place.

The cannons were already a thing that elder Apegos included only to his own, at first, before deciding to ‘weaken’ Ciemnosc’s position by granting those cannons to the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect for as much as they wanted them…

On the other hand, as the students watched their Chief go, the commanding vehicle left behind a trail that this time it took 2 minutes to be filled back in with snow instead of 3, they couldn’t help but smile— a bit bashfully —to the notion of his words being a simple reminder.

Basically telling them: ‘if you beat them, I’ll say that I’m punishing you and tell others that I punished you’. How could they not smile at that? They somehow, just then, just now… felt like they understood their Chief in Command better than ever.

Going back into the base, in this 6th month since the start of the war, the first week and first day, the snow seemed heavier, but their spirits were even sturdier!

As they unhurriedly went back into the base, the entrance was left wide open, and everything when to normal just as it has been since the beginning of the 5th month.

Firstly, a few armored cars came out of the entrance, and only when the 2nd dozen of armored cars went out to scout did the gates somewhat close down ajar, leaving space for a couple of bikes that were easily drifting on the snow but proved to be fragile despite looking to have a bulky and fearful front with a thin and comfortable seat in comparison.

Only 4 of those came out, and once they did, the gates finally closed fully. There was no wall yet, only a railing at the sides of the gates which were also temporary, made out of a dark blue stone which was just the ‘ordinary’ rock everywhere that was 20 meters below the dirt layer of the earth and where ores could be found, but had to be at least a couple thousand kilometers close to the Little Lake.

These rocks were just good enough for the current climate, and even somewhat managed to keep the snow away from inside of the base, also somewhat absorbing it and not letting too much of it fall outside the base.

Though the snow never went higher than reaching an adult’s high thigh, who said it would never change? These blue rocks have a separate but familiar affinity with the Water element, having these neat properties to deal with heavy snowing was just what the base currently needed. With snow seasons lasting even tens of years up to more in the past of the entire world, the base’s efforts for their walls and gates which were going to be much taller than the current railings and gates.

However, the reason why they hadn’t been built up until now was that, without Ciemnosc telling them how the task he left the Craftspeople to discover a way to smelt the rocks into metal despite not being any kind of ore and just being rocks had taken weeks for the little fools to figure things out.

Now that such thing was over with and they were aware of what to do after the constant waste of trial and error, which was fine since it was just the ordinary rock of the zone, the Craftsmaking division had already started mass-melting the blue rocks into majestic metal. Which was in truth just turned into the metal to what would be considered ordinary melting for ordinary ores, there wasn’t that much difference with the ordinary ways in any case.

But if the blue rocks being melted into metal were to be used in cultivator’s ways ‘for real’, then alchemy was needed, and forging was just one of its tiny little steps and processes. They just weren’t ready for such advanced methods yet, though. While 10-year-old Ciemnosc had already mastered it…

There were little woods left within the 5,000 kilometers around the base, the second storage was already half-filled with the trunks of so many trees, ready to be processed by the brand new machines that Ciemnosc reinvented from already existing ones, only his modified version having the incredible opportunity of mixing them with whatever else material that wasn’t to mess up the raw wooden material.

And what material couldn’t be any better than the ones that they were going to be used for? Those little blue rocks turned into metal to become a kind of wrapped-up wooden processed material, a real and authentic cultivator-futuristic-level of engineered wood that took Ciemnosc 15 minutes to figure out after trying a few things with those blue rocks himself. They also made girls’ nipples become slightly blue but of a cute color while also making them hella erect in a second…

A lot of experiments can be done in the world with just the tiniest, littlest of things.

Though that was just one part of it, the steel and materials for it, and even raw silver, copper ores; sand, roots of many types of plants, herbs; Creatures’ body parts with the hunting that was being done every day around the base. The former were mostly gathered with money and benefits from the faraway cities and towns. Ciemnosc might’ve needed to be the one carrying such materials, in small quantities, every time before when he went looking for ores.

But with the armored car now, or even with one student with a Covert Space bag, they could all just go to different settlements and not just towns and cities to buy those things from them. Some even gave them for free after the base gave them cultivation methods, allowing them to directly train for themselves in the cultivation world, though it would surely be a tragic, harsh lifestyle without an organization.

But that was their issue to deal with, barely any settlement decided to go take a look at the Rocaloi Academy further to the west, and Ciemnosc couldn’t care if the Rocaloi received a couple of recruits now.

Before, there might have been much recruitment to speak of, but now that there was war… it was as if the academy became a whole other organization as soon as the east of the Region touched them with their ‘warring only’ ways.

The base was now also undergoing projects to build the underground parking lot, almost as huge as half the entire base itself, and the central ‘VIP’ zone at the central south of the base. While another huge lot of students were going to get busy starting today with the departure of Ciemnosc, their Chief in Command from the base.

As soon as Ciemnosc left and the students were back to their daily activities, they weren’t allowed any relaxation, not even a vacation day as if the bad teacher had left the school for a few days to rest from his old age. But no, as soon as things seemed to have been prepared, with the students seeing the most important and busy spokespeople leading students rushing about the central south of the base and the storages, they were put into a hell of activities right after.

Carrying over tons and tons of wood all around the base, without any help of any form or from anyone, the students had to carry incredibly heavy metal-like wooden material planks, balls and even tubes.

Some carried sets of each with their bodies, some of only certain shapes and kinds, while others carried only one type of such. However each of those metal-like wooden materials, hard engineered wood, was heavier than even 10 raw trunks of trees that were even taller than 10 meters. Even the small balls and tubes were several times heavier than that!

It was hellish; but by the time that Ciemnosc came back from the academy, his teammates had already decided to surprise him with tons and tons of ‘flying cultivators’.

…