Bring Your Partner Day

2 hours later, waiting before the hangar's hatch. The Team, which Heian Ciemnosc was recently added to, was waiting beside the other Teams and in front of the spaceships from their incomplete Fleet. Heian Ciemnosc sat beside the tomboy as the Team was grouped in a little circle.

"Woo," Ruo Wei sighed in a complaining fashion. She looked at Heian Ciemnosc as the Team sat on some boxes with remaining parts for fixing and said as she frowned after putting a document away. "Your Fighter was really packed up, huh? This is like 2-3 months' worth of missions. It's so much... Hey, you won't waste all your storage right away, right? Aren't you a great pilot and... surely know how to distribute your stuff during each battle, right?!"

Ruo Wei was practically desperate as she finished her questioning. Heian Ciemnosc looked at her, shook his head, closed his eyes slowly, and opened them while speaking and looking elsewhere. "I won't misuse my Ornament. This is also the second time I have built my unique Fighter, and each is very precious. I can't just waste them in any way I can find. Don't worry, senior apprentice sister. I won't rip you off... just yet."

"Huh, you better." Ruo Wei sat on the box and relaxed a little, extending her arms low as they waited for the incomplete Fleet's commander to arrive. Heian Ciemnosc relaxed, too, and leaned his back on another box as the Team rested in silence. He had already gotten used to the flight his Team goes through, and without further training, the Team and others did a few cooperative exercises before taking a break.

Through spending time with them, even though they were realms above his cultivation base, Heian Ciemnosc learned Beto, the oldest, was more than 300 years old and that the youngest, besides him and Moy, was more than a hundred years old. It was a fantastic age for such a high cultivation base, especially considering they only had a few decades into the Crimsonbreaking Faction and went through the 10 year war. And what's more, they weren't the top-notch cultivators in the Second Step, where they received typical resources and merit just as any other regular cultivator would in the Faction.

This was to show the level of cultivators in the Wrath Nihility Academy and the Crimsonbreaking Faction. While their students could gain a foothold in the Second Step with enough time, the Faction's soldiers could become Third Step cultivators with enough time. The former had great use for the Second Step cultivators in the early realms, while the latter had only for Third Step cultivators. It is at least so in the operations and intense battle situations.

Heian Ciemnosc met all the Second Step cultivators from the other Flotillas. They were probably 20% of the numbers at best, if not less. And the First Step cultivators in their Fighters were 30%, more or less. Unlike Second Step cultivators, the First Step fellows weren't given 1 Fighter for each if they didn't own one, nor could they refuse it as some Second Step folks do. They had to share the same with their Team and were only given a few Frigates and Destroyers. While they joined other Flotillas, they weren't officially from that Flotilla, but the commander had to treat them as their own soldier units and vessels.

There were some First and Second Step cultivators in every spaceship, but those belonging to the incomplete Fleet officially were full of Third Step cultivators, which Heian Ciemnosc didn't see much as they were all inside their spaceships, either latched on the walls or ceiling to make enough space or on the Carrier's surface behind the armored, protective ring circling the Carrier. This wasn't a Mothership, so it could not contain every incomplete Fleet at once, with some flying in space beside the Carrier and only adjoined by array formations.

These array formations had to be deactivated whenever the incomplete Fleets had to go at maximum speed for any occasion.

During the exercises, Heian Ciemnosc understood how hard the First and Second Step cultivators had to work so as to follow the Third Step cultivators and the dangers of being unable to catch up to their spaceships. Of course, if they couldn't be at the Crimsonbreaking Faction's standards, they wouldn't have even become probationary Auxiliary Soldiers and spent 3 months doing physical, repetitive training as if they were ordinary civilians. The Third Step soldiers were like gods to the Second Step, as were the Second Step cultivators to the First Step ones.

Heian Ciemnosc and any other cultivators could understand such logic, as First Step cultivators were like genuine gods to the civilians and citizens, but it was only after experiencing cohabiting the same hangar with them that Heian Ciemnosc comprehended the vast difference between a Second Step peak cultivator like Beto, and an Auxiliary Soldier in the Third Step's first realm. The First Step had these 13 realms, the Second Step 11, and the Third Step only 7.

The Soul cultivation system had 9 realms or levels but no stages. One could only grow depending on their luck, innate capabilities, or events in their cultivation path. And the Spirit Bosom had 3 phases before ascending mortality: the Natal Spirit, Spirit Image, and Spirit Aspect. All of these formed the cultivation system of the cultivation world as it is known and had gone through bitter struggles to reach such a solid foundation. Yet, there existed a monster... black monster in particular, that completely obliterated such a system that has resisted for countless generations.

Slide~! Just as everyone was waiting, and Heian Ciemnosc meditated on the spot, with his new teammates not caring about him, the sounds of the gates opened, and everyone looked ahead with their backs against the hangar's hatch. A Third Step cultivator shouted after this happened. "Attention! Commander Choliac has arrived!!"

"Greetings, commander!!!" The incomplete Fleet's soldier units shouted, and Heian Ciemnosc followed their procedures, but only by placing his right fist against his chest. He was too late to clamor anyway. He didn't have to put it on his left chest. As long as he showed his respect, it was enough. Only half the people Heian Ciemnosc saw here, including Third Step cultivators, hit their hearts as they shouted.

Step, step... Silence prevailed. The commander Heian Ciemnosc saw more than 3 months ago reappeared, walking from the corridors to the hangar, ignoring even the Third Step cultivators who saluted him near the entrance and those following him. When he arrived at a transporting ship's hatch, already down and with his Supreme Battleship's people outside, waiting for him. He stopped and looked around before saying as he faced the 'small' vessel about 300 meters in diameter.

"Prepare your Stones today. Put double or triple the usual amount. We'll have fun being out there this time!" Finished saying that, commander Choliac took his Faction jacket off, put on a commander's jacket with the Crimsonbreaking Faction's emblem on his left shoulder, and stepped into the vessel. The soldier units saluted again, but with varied gestures to indicate their bitter willingness to become rat workers for another day.

"Yes, commander!!!"

"..." Heian Ciemnosc's darkest eyes watched as the vessel took off and didn't wait for the soldier units to get ready. His eyes glinted with numerous, particular thoughts. However, since his Team didn't move even an inch from their position in resting stances, he didn't bother asking what to do now and waited.

"Attention!!" Finally, one of the Third Step cultivators yelled several minutes after the commander left. Everyone's attention went on her, and Heian Ciemnosc felt his Team's tensed bodies relaxing as the cultivator gave orders. "Move out! Join your commander in space! Today, we're simulating evasive maneuvers for 10 hours, rapid battle formations in response to enemy ambushes, sudden engagement, and bombarding for 4 hours! I hope you had time to tell your beloved about how much you gonna suffer today... What are you waiting for?!"

"Huaaa!!!" The soldier units roared. They turned around, faced their Fighter or spaceships, and directly flew into formation without saying anything. They had flawless cooperation between their people, and as they moved outside the hangar's hatch. Slowly and orderly, they moved without bumping into each other other than necessarily to keep moving through. Heian Ciemnosc had no issue following his Team, but when they surrounded the Frigate they belonged to, he was surprised to see a bunch of Fighters latched onto it like flies to a fast-moving car's front windows.

"..." Heian Ciemnosc kept silent throughout the ordeal and could hear the tiniest traces of his teammates and team leader as their turn to exit the Carrier's modified storage, now hangar, breathing and gasping. Soon, as he was at the very rear, where no other Fighter accompanied him, and he could see every other Fighter's butt, Heian Ciemnosc found out why that was so.

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"... ... ... ..." Heian Ciemnosc became awfully silent as his mind returned to the feeling of entering space covered by a Fighter, like the heavy brunt of entering a large body of water for the first time in one's life, but everywhere, and without the risk of drowning, only of losing himself to the beauty of... nothingness.

A nebula was portrayed 200 degrees from the universal focus, below the Frigate and to the right but still below the Carrier. It was like an insanely bright orange eye with chains of light blue, pristine cyan, and starry sky blue smoke surrounding its corners, creating trials that formed even more beauty for millions of kilometers. It looked too small, but that was because this marvel was insufferably away from them.

The more Heian Ciemnosc looked at it and started comprehending the vast distance between the Carrier and the nebula, the more he felt his darkest eyes losing focus and any rationality. He stopped after he heard popping sounds from his ears and a sensation similar to when he suffered deliriously powerful strikes from his enemies that made him bleed from all his 7 orifices.

Then, he heard his team leader speak to him from the front as the other Teams' Fighters started slowly and smoothly separating from the Frigate. "Prepare to latch off. We will follow the sub-commander's orders. The commander's orders will be only for emergency movements. Pay attention, don't confuse them, and get ready to rejoin the incomplete Fleet's body at full speed in 3 minutes 53 seconds."

"..." There were no responses from the others. Heian Ciemnosc sat on his Ornament as he watched his Team separate from the Frigate's surface and did the same 4 seconds later to follow the rhythm they took. For this training period, Heian Ciemnosc and anyone else had to clear their cabin's windows before and after every activity. Thus, Heian Ciemnosc could see his teammates and team leader look at him in a stern but expressionless, semi-disgusted expression.

However, from what he could feel, even through space, as only his Spirit Sense could effortlessly last outside their Fighters longer than himself, they were glad of his procedures. Counting Heian Ciemnosc's Team, nearly 4 dozen Fighters were under this Frigate, and everything went perfectly. After Heian Ciemnosc unlatched from the Frigate, his teammates activated their mid-speed and advanced hundreds of kilometers before standing in formation. Heian Ciemnosc followed suit, only tarrying 10 kilometers. As he did, he received the actual Frigate's commander's directed words from the Frigate's channel.

"Team #!%&!$)!, who is far behind you? Hey, you! Stay in line!! Well done, but I don't like it! Do you want attention for yourself? What? Do you want to take this exercise at our behest all by yourself? Be my quest!"

Heian Ciemnosc: "..."

Judging by the blatant crackling and chuckling running in the Frigate's channel after the commander's words, Heian Ciemnosc and anyone with brains could tell this was just a reprimand out of one's balls, or inner eggs, in this case. Heian Ciemnosc didn't respond to his commander's headstrong voice and wished her a long-lasting life before forming with his Team.

There were 9 Teams per Frigate, at least from those who were officially the Fighter Teams that were top-notch pilots and were in charge of immediately defending the spaceship or going into a sudden, risky, and bombarding-attractive task in a battle or operation. After Heian Ciemnosc settled himself and followed every left and right, the team leader did so with utmost precision, moving like a wave and not rippling, which meant no desynchronization in the Team.

The team leader led his Fighter at the front, with Cara right behind him, forming their turtle's neck as the 2 lines behind them were 3-3, with Moy beside Heian Ciemnosc as he was in the center of the last line. As they moved, Heian Ciemnosc looked to his left, where Moy gave him a look, innocent but playful. He then looked to his right, where the mommy looked at him without hiding her intentions. This made Heian Ciemnosc look ahead, and his tummy felt empty, as did his head when he noticed they were starting to dive down, which only meant one thing.

'Oh no!' They were engaging in evasive maneuvers already!!

Whoo... Indeed, just as Heian Ciemnosc saw Ruo Wei's face and remembered Moy's facial expressions, he looked ahead out of instinct, which was necessary to calculate their proximate, sudden movements. Immediately, the team leader moved downwards, and everyone, including an instinctively responding Heian Ciemnosc, dived downwards like a long snake flying in the sky, suddenly dropping to gain momentum!

Heian Ciemnosc felt his limbs becoming empty next, but everything was fine. It was only that this was his first time, and that even with his Spirit Sense, to catch onto the movements of the Frigate, which they had to follow as if they were slowly moving through invisible corners, but at a rapid speed, and nonstop, with the latter suddenly activating and deactivating its smallish engines... It was a lot to take in.

"Enemy sighted before us! Blast to focus 180, advance 80 km, crash, and return!!" The sub-commander's orders entered everyone's minds through his Spirit Sense, immediately showering Heian Ciemnosc with a many times stronger Spirit Sense than his, showing how it wasn't just better experienced in space-moving but were so resilient to the speeds a Frigate could move even when going maximum speed for half a second.

Pf- pf, pf, pf- wooos... pf, pf~- whoo...

Heian Ciemnosc heard the noises of Fighters suddenly moving and effectuating their thrusters as they employed maximum speeds at nearly 55% of the time, whereas the Frigate only did so for half an instant. Heian Ciemnosc's Team waved up and down, elongating their motion until receiving that order. They suddenly dived directly down, faced their Fighters upside down from the universal focus, and went full ahead as the Frigate seemed about to be left behind but appeared at their side just a second before Heian Ciemnosc and his Team slowed down again.

"!!" Heian Ciemnosc's darkest eyes looked to his right, where the Frigate was still facing the universal focus the right way, unlike them, which were upside down. However, just like before, when he heard his Team's Fighters' constant noises, he wasn't distracted, and like a robot, his limbs kept moving to interact with some switches and commands from his control panel as his Spirit Sense did others. He wasn't paying attention, but he didn't look different from the team leader and his teammates, who have been very experienced for decades.

"... Look at that miserable fucker," in the Frigate, the commander, who was once an instructor who obliged Heian Ciemnosc to strip down to his boxers, said as she gazed at her right. Her team of experts nudged their heads sideways for half a second in response, praising but not praising Heian Ciemnosc simultaneously. She grinned and nodded at her sub-commander, who nodded as his tentacles waved and used his Spirit Sense to communicate again.

"5s left! The rest, right! Full ahead and reassemble 10 km behind the enemy! Immediate cone-tight formation!!" The sub-commander's words reached the Frigates' Fighters, who immediately abided after engaging in the last step from the previous orders.

Heian Ciemnosc knew his Team was the #7 Fighter Team in the Fighter, so he prepared to follow his team leader to the right, and not beforehand. The 6th Fighter Team took to the right first, followed by Beto, who led the Team to the right. Heian Ciemnosc was in complete formation this time as they went full speed ahead, and he could already imagine a similar situation. The enemy spaceships were to their left after stabilizing their Fighters' formation to the universal focus, and their Fighters put up their defensive devices to draw enemy fire and defend the Frigate.

Heian Ciemnosc saw as the Frigate they were ought to protect rush into the enemy formation, covered with their energy shield enhanced, with array formations and Vigor energy covering it. But even as the enemy had prepared for this, they were overcome by the Frigate, and the enemy's formation was broken as dozens of enemy Fighters were crushed to dust by the intense might of the Frigate's all-out charge with their smallish engines activated.

... After the second order, Heian Ciemnosc and his Team continued receiving them, one after another, until 42 minutes were spent like this, deceiving and slowly downing the enemy's numbers until they could either destroy them instead, flee from them or distract them from affecting the incomplete Fleet, let alone the Fleet in a battle.

He faced several different scenarios, each one as harsh as possible, without any advantage to their side, forcing them to adopt evasive measures without any chance to employ even their machine guns, granting all attention to their anti-missile turrets. They didn't have, nor could use, defensive formations and Heian Ciemnosc experienced exhaustion from thinking about solutions while only being able to flee, not capable of stopping even once for a sacrificing Fighter to give it all and save the rest.

If that was possible, if only one Fighter could change a battle, spaceships such as these, for war, would've been useless since time immemorial. Naturally, it was not. While transporting ships, like the ones the Wrath Nihility Academy used, were weak against second or third-handed missiles the enemy back then used, those and a Frigate spaceship were nothing alike. Their differences were ginormous, starting with the armor of a Frigate spaceship being several times tougher and all-Elemental-resistant than a Frigate warship of the same Step.

Let alone transporting ships the Wrath Nihility Academy had already bought for who knew how long and had to be modified for warring against ground units. They could only rotate to utilize their anti-gravity array formations and structure's thin armor.

Now that Heian Ciemnosc had gone through 1 session of evasive maneuvers, he felt exhausted. However, as it ended, and the commander's 'sweet' voice was heard again, to which Heian Ciemnosc's mind reminded him of a Demoness with her tail used as a whip, he was astounded to see everyone's attitude after such marvelous wonder.

"Oww, so refreshing..." - "Yaawwn, mpla mpla, tsk. How cozy." - "Mn, I finished my meal this time. I got better!" - "Hm, it does get boring without someone else here, by my side... alone..." - "Not again, stop enticing others." - "Hey Cara, did you see me? I was in front of you all the time!" - "Yeah~, nice work Georgieee~." - "How's the newbie?" - "Uhh... I muted him for now. He's having a moment." - "Whatever you say, Beto."

Meanwhile, after Heian Ciemnosc heard everyone's mood as he was sweating and feeling his body contorting everywhere after such practice, Heian Ciemnosc was... panting and... chuckling?

"... He- heh, heh... heh, heh, heh... ... ... ...- heh, heh..."

...