RB Chapter 143 First Mission And Message

"She will have to adapt to it eventually. I don't have night vision, but I had to adapt, as there were some nocturnal beasts which would attack your place of rest." Chloe said. She was right. Her disability wasn't going to make them give up from participating in night missions. They just had to protect her until she acclimated.

They finally directed their gazes towards the place where they had stood before the war. Right now, there stood a building, constructed in the form of a square, a kilometer long and wide.

It was black, not the black which glistened, but that which absorbed all light. Staring at its walls made you think that you were looking into the void. It was built with a material capable of absorbing almost 99% of the light that fell onto its surface.

"That's expensive! Are they planning on absorbing the photons from the sun?" A voice came from their side. Another team had also coincidentally just made its way out of their tent.

"You do know, that the demand for energy is high, right? Trying to have the city's reserves support this camp will weaken its abilities. They took that into consideration, so alternate sources of energy have to be used." His companion explained to him. Even Eric's group nodded agreeing with the man.

Upon entering, rows and rows of staff tapping away at their workstations entered their eyes. They were on the left and right respectively, leaving a long and 5m wide walkway leading to the desk at the end. The width of the walkway was also equalled by that of the entrance.

Many people had already entered and made their way towards the end. Eric and his group also didn't disturb the working staff and proceeded to head to the long desk at the end.

The desk was in the shape of a semicircle, with the inner part facing the crowd. At the two ends of the desk, were two screens facing the crowd.

Words filled the two screens and they were colored differently...

[Escort the vehicle carrying slaughtered beasts from the front line back to the city.

Requirements; atleast a team of two energy channelers]

Those words were in yellow, denoting that this type of mission was less risky.

[It has been suspected that there is an energy channelling beast deep in a grove, at the northwestern direction of the city, ten kilometers away.

"Requirements; at least a team of three energy channellers, with one having experience.]

This text was on the upper part of the screen and it was colored in red, signifying that the danger level was high. There were also green colored missions, signifying mid-level danger.

The staffers who were sitting in the rows they had passed were the ones who were sorting through all the data that was coming from the front lines.

There weren't just the ants and the drivers of the laser weponry alone! There were also those who had driven large trucks to go and collect the beast corpses. The corpses were resources and they couldn't afford to leave them to rot in the wilderness. Some were taken for research, others for fertiliser, others as food...and many other uses.

Some energy channellers had already accompanied the trucks as they drove by before the main camp had even finished construction.

Eric and the others had found that such a job didn't suit their skill sets, so they had decided to wait for the camp to be constructed.

This camp wasn't the only one as there were two other camps on the north and east side of the city respectively.

The South, led to lake Victoria, so there was no need for a camp, but just in case, the defenses on the southern part of the city had been strengthened dramatically.

"Should we take that mission in the north west?" Leah asked curiously.

"Yes, let's hurry up!" Eric, said before syncing his patch with the board and choosing the task of investigating the grove in the north west. They were situated in a crowd of people and it was starting to get uncomfortable, so they wanted to hurry up.

"How are we going to get there? Is it going to be on foot?" Elena asked.

"I have obtained additional information upon accepting this mission. The vehicle will arrive shortly at the entrance." Eric answered. 

They pushed away the crowd and walked out of the mission center.

Elena and Leah both took in a deep breath upon making their way out of the building.

"I almost suffocated to death inside there!" Elena exclaimed while greedily taking in large mouthfuls of air.

Both Eric and Chloe shook their heads, helpless looks plastered on their faces, coupled with wry grins. These two girls were still too green! What if they had to stay in a foul smelling environment for a long time? Wouldn't they die then? The two were starting to wonder whether the wilderness they experiences was the same as these two.

"Have you noticed, that there were very few missions related to energy channelling beasts on the board?" Chloe asked after some time.

"Yes, there is no way that the wilderness only has such few energy channelling beasts. There must be something abnormal!" Eric also commented.

"Aren't energy channelling beasts supposed to be rare, though? I don't think its that suspicious, like that monkey. There were many monkeys in the forest, but only five were energy channellers." Leah was puzzled.

"Those five monkeys were a single organism." Chloe said, causing the two girls' eyes to widen to their limits.

"Are you for real!?" Elena exclaimed.

"Yeah." Eric also agreed.

'How come they didn't notice such a thing?' Eric was shocked by their denseness.

"But that still means that the energy channelling beasts are rare." Elena came back to the previous argument upon regaining herself.

"They aren't that rare! There are supposed to be at least 50 missions on that screen related to energy channelling beasts." Eric commented.

"There might be a spectrum beast plotting in the background." Chloe speculated, her hand on her chin.

At this time, as the conversation had entered a temporary lull, a notification sound was heard attracting Eric's attention to the patch on the back of his right hand.

"This...is a message...from Michael!?" Eric was puzzled. Before separating from the man, Michael had asked for his contact information.

As his eyes gazed in the message, he found that it was a captioned video.

-----

The time was 6:00pm, the sun was sinking into the horizon, painting a very nice picture.

The atmosphere was filled by purple mist causing the light that fell onto the brown city wall to appear purple. The sand in the horizon was showing signs of distorting the last rays of the sun. The heat waves escaping from the sand were the cause.

The city wall, which had been entirely brown at one point was covered in purple fluids, and some parts of the wall had already corroded extensively showing what was underneath the brown. The good thing was that an energy shield seemed to be protecting the insides of the wall, preventing it from being breached.

A pile of corpses covered with black exoskeletons stained with purplish blood were piled up kilometers along the city wall, almost reaching its height, which was ten meters.

Every second, more were being dropped down adding to the pile.

Atop the wall, a few rail guns could be seen, having been turned into scrap and multiple capsules, containing residual yellow droplets could be seen. They were supposed to contain synthetic ATP, but now, they lay there, discarded, their contents, already used up! They were many of them, mixing with the purple rivulets of blood on the wall.

Blurs were moving along the city wall, not even deigning to stop on just one place for long. They were like a shield, which killed every scorpion that managed to scale the corpse mountain and tried to leap onto the city wall. Every scorpion was killed in an instant and then its body was blown away from the wall.

Among those blurs, was a man with brown hair, bordering on golden. His vertical slitted brown eyes were moving around in there sockets with such speed, that they would appear white, or brown to the normal observer.

His body was like a well oiled machine, no movement wasted as he clawed at a palm sized scorpion with his claws, causing it to be slashed into multiple pieces! Before it even dropped, his body blurred, only to appear at another section, kicking a man sized scorpion, which had been trying to take advantage of a gap to step onto the wall.

Its stinger blurred as it stung towards his leg at the same speed as his foot, but it passed through, as if the foot was an illusion, but it was still kicked away, with such force that its carapace shattered instantly and it turned into meat paste.

Michael, being a spectrum warrior, had controlled a few muscle groups in his foot allowing it to exceed its previous speed. Spectrum level lifeforms had a perfect level of control over their entire body, that they could explode with speed capable of matching Eric's lighting fast reflexes, when he moved his muscles with electrical impulses!