Lost Origins: SS Ranked Awakening-Chapter 187 - 3 Days till Fall

"How’s the third wall holding?"

"We need more troops!!"

"Hold it!"

"Yes s–"

The exchange between the commander and soldier was drowned in the explosive sounds and tremors of the battlefield around them.

Dust and soot spewed up in the air around them, completing the wrecked look of the surroundings, like an elemental hurricane had just struck — one of the most feared disasters on the planet.

But what had befallen them was perhaps much worse.

Destruction was perhaps admirable in the hands of nature, but it was more fearful in the hands of intelligent minds, beings which seemed to have been engineered specifically for that cause.

Fuelled even more by their rage and thirst for vengeance, the beasts on the planet were on a quest to tear the camp apart and rid their planet of the influence of the humans.

"How did it get to this?!"

Harken, the commander of the military base under attack let his thoughts wander for a few seconds into the past few days, where and when it had all gone wrong. A futile action.

.....

3 DAYS BEFORE DESTRUCTION.

"The rumors might be true, those beasts survived the dead zone"

"Don’t say things like that", the recruit snapped at his partner beside him, looking up at the filled mission board.

What was once filled with exploration and documentation quests, was now filled with requests for support, and the quests for material gathering — one of the lesser-paid jobs had now skyrocketed to the top.

Yet, not many jumped at the rather obvious trap.

It was a waste of time to him, and a huge risk to his life.

Hunting beasts for materials was no longer a simple matter as it had once been. Not only had they become extremely scarce to come across, they never moved alone.

They existed in packs now, and groups of unnatural mixtures, moving in an unnaturally organized way for things as dumb as them.

The top beast species of the planet and anything that could have been a threat were said to have been wiped out when the military made their claim on the planet, but the current situation brought about rumors that were forbidden by the management.

_"The beasts had escaped into the dead zone, and had reemerged stronger."_

The possible existence and reemergence of those beasts wasn’t the issue here, but the fact that they had managed to do that under the nose of the military which had the entire planet in their palms for the past century

The cracking image of the military in the mind of the recruits was something extremely feared by the higher-ups.

Amongst all the 12 seats, the military threatened to be the weakest amongst them, their standing starting to fall below that of the two rival organizations — Galacticus and Zexter.

Any more cracks to their reputation could not be allowed.

The higher-ups understood that, and so did some of the recruits in this base — The Crescent Base.

The Crescent Military Base was a subsidiary base of the Origin Camp. A place that no one except its recruits and the higher-ups of the Origin Camp itself knew about.

The objective of this base was similar to that of the main base, Origin — to train and turn the recruits into soldiers.

But unlike Origin which slaved and poured its resources into making super soldiers for their very own rivals, the Crescent Base was a more personal creation. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Working to produce soldiers of a similar level for the Military itself.

The secrecy behind such a project was thus understandable. If any of the other 11 seats found out about their secret plan to amass power....well, it wasn’t gonna end well for them.

"It’s all a bunch of plays and tricks. Pointless if we don’t survive this." The recruit muttered, glancing at the bustle around him.

Back at the Orientation ceremony at the Origin Camp, several recruits who didn’t understand what they were getting into, were given the one-time chance to give up and leave the planet.

More than a few took that chance, but it was all a ruse! A part of the deception played by the camp.

Those recruits had been handpicked and told to take that option beforehand. After getting removed from Origin, they were brought over to train at Crescent.

The same thing happened with the recruits who got eliminated while at Origin, unable to keep up with the shredding competition between the tyrant heirs of several families and organizations. They were given another chance at the Crescent Base.

No one got into this place by accident without any context. Well, no one except Kieran, but that was an unknown fact.

The only ones that actually got eliminated and sent off the planet were those sold to the families and organizations, they were of no use to the military.

Crescent was one of the many unknown bases scattered around planet Kirshoff. One of the few remaining.

Over the past few days, rumors of the war and the fall of several other bases had reached them.

Suppressed as it was, it still spread. That was how serious it was.

"Holland!"

A voice called and he turned around, shifting into a salute immediately.

The voice was stripped of the naivety of his fellow recruits, carrying a weight only a soldier could. Unlike Origin, the rules were absolute in Crescent as in any other military organization.

"Follow me!"

The soldier wore a stern and sour look on his face, leading him further into the base until they reached a somewhat secluded area.

"You’ve heard the rumors" He started, leaving the pretense behind, an attitude that caused Holland to be wary.

"You will be going on an investigation, a reconnaissance to estimate the closest threat to our base!"

Holland’s face was ashen at the little sentence, but he still managed to maintain a straight expression lest he annoyed the soldier in front of him

"I’ll gather a team then..." he said, picking his next words carefully.

"That won’t be needed. You will be going alone." The soldier appeared unperturbed by Holland’s probe

"Here. This is all the information you would need. Gear up and leave as fast as you can."

The soldier passed him a small piece of paper before leaving.

Opening the folded paper, he saw in a rather neat writing a description of where the last major beast gathering had been sighted.

’He didn’t say which rumors were true.’

"Maybe all of them." The words that left his mouth, brought back the ashen look to his face.

’This still makes no sense’

The paper crumpled under the pressure of his fist. He had gone on several solo missions in this manner before, but reconnaissance was an odd request.

The military had had the planet in its hands for a considerable amount of time. Several methods of reconnaissance had been developed over the years and adapted to the climate of the planet.

Resorting to an outdated method like physical reconnaissance was beyond odd to him. No other recruit would have thought this deeply about a simple mission, but Holland liked his neck a lot, and making sure he wasn’t stepping into a death trap was one way of keeping it.

’I’d better go get ready before someone notices’

He turned around just to be stopped by the blare of a siren ringing throughout the whole base.

"All soldiers and recruits to the walls now!"

"THIS IS NOT A DRILL! I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!"

"THIS IS NOT A DRILL! I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!"

Those words they whatever thoughts he had out of his head as the instincts grounded into him from their grueling training kicked in.

’An attack! The beasts? That’s too fast!’

His mind raced as his legs shuffled as fast as they could towards the armoury.

A second ago, he was to go on a reconnaissance to estimate how close the nearest threat was, and now it was literally knocking on their front doors with them reacting only after it had arrived.

’Shit!’

This only proved his worries. The military surveillance methods had become ineffective or at the very least, the beasts had found a way to bypass them.

The only beasts with even a shred of intelligence needed for that to happen were those in the dead zone, which means the rumors were true.

The soldier wasn’t wrong when he said that. They were true, all of them.

Less than a minute was spent in the armoury, before rushing out into the open, towards the tall walls of the base.

The steps of the recruits and soldiers around him were steady, the latter from their grueling experiences, and the former from the result of their training. The fear on their faces didn’t slow down their steps one bit.

They all knew their positions like the back of their hands and took their place instantly like the cogs of a well-oiled machine that was this army.

Holland found his way to the top of the wall, a position that was dreaded by most but not to him. It allowed him to see what was coming first, and he didn’t like it one bit.

A hoard, no, it was only right to call it an army, one bigger than theirs.

An army of beasts spread out into the distance like tiny ants, and just behind was the Grim Reaper, and he didn’t mean that metaphorically.

The shadow of destruction was slowly creeping towards the base, and like a lone drop of water, a single thought appeared in his head.

"How do we survive this?!"