Chapter 1520: Registering
More expedition parties were being sent outside to venture further away from the regular zones from where Spark was already harvested. Ning saw many of the Lieutenants and Captains talking about how much more people they had to send out, and it was clear that were really close to not making it.
They needed a few successful finds before the shadow of the giant took over the land permanently.
After his duty at the elevator was complete, Ning directly went to the Administration office located on the 6th floor. He had to wait in a queue for a while before it was his turn to enter.
Upon entrance, Ning saw a Chief Officer in the room, looking at something using his DODS. Ning had no way of seeing what he was looking at.
The man pulled away the data core and looked at Ning.
“What is it, Cadet?” the man asked.
“Sir, I recently discovered my Spark power and would like to register it.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “A power you say, which one?” he asked.
“Conversion, sir,” Ning answered.
“Conversion… should be no issue to use it here. Do you have Spark on you?” the man asked.
“I do, sir,” he said.
“Show me your powers.”
Ning nodded and took out his small vial of Spark before licking a fingertip of it.
The Chief Officer handed over a small piece of Paper, which Ning took and immediately converted into metal. The paper shrunk to a thin plate of iron, incredibly thin, but equally as sturdy.
Ning released his breath and handed it over to the man who looked at the conversion with some surprise. “You can convert stuff into metal?” he asked. “Have you any experience with using metals?”
Ning didn’t immediately understand why the man asked that question. After all, who wouldn’t have any idea what a metal was?
However, upon further thinking, he realized that the fact that they were living underground with most things around them made of rocks, and metal was a hard thing to come by.
“I have had some experience, Sir,” Ning said, hoping to not have to explain any further.
Thankfully, the Chief Officer was okay with his answer. “Give me your data core, Cadet.”
Ning took out his core and handed it over. The Chief Officer took the core and placed it on the DODS for a moment before handing it back to Ning.
“After your exercise tomorrow, you will be called for the actual registration. Do not be late.”
Ning nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
“You are dismissed.”
Ning saluted the man and left the room, going back to his room. There wasn’t much left for him to do except waste his time.
Ning checked his core to see if there was something written onto the core, but the core was the same as it always was. There had been nothing added to it, which made Ning wonder why he had taken it.
‘He wanted my name,’ Ning realized. Thinking along these lines, he understood the simple reason why the man wanted his core. To register him into their system so that they could call him tomorrow.
While the reasoning was simple, that brought on further questions for Ning. ‘How does this technology transfer information around?’ he wondered. From what he could see, his DODS plate had no wire attached to it. There was a battery inside, making the whole thing portable, and needing no wires.
‘Is it wirelessly transferring data around?’ Ning thought. Maybe the technology was better than he gave it credit for.
Ning went over to the cafeteria to eat after nightfall and met up with the small group of people he had come to be acquainted with.
He had a fun time chatting with them and having his dinner. He learned more about the city through them than through any book he could’ve read.
One of the young men’s father was a Cultivator, and he had a large farm where he grew potatoes day in and day out. Apparently, he could grow up to 500 kilograms of potatoes in just a week.
Ning didn’t think much about it at first, thinking that a Cultivator could grow plants at any time, but when he learned that the area of land that man’s father had was pitiful, it gave a new perspective on how good that man’s father was.
Another one said that his father sold water to people. He was a Soaker, capable of creating water from consuming Spark, and used it to sell to people.
As Ning learned more and more, he cleared up a misconception that he had kept since the first day he got to this place.
He had thought that anyone who could eat Spark could use Spark, but apparently, the truth was not so simple. He had known that there were people without power, known as Sparkless, but it turned out that even among people with power, not everyone could use it properly.
This came down to many different factors that could not be so easily determined.
First of all, a general lack of training usually causes someone to not have a good handle on their power. For example, to become a person Water salesman, the person needed to be able to make liters upon liters of water without problem. That sort of skill needed a lot of training.
Second of all, a person also had an affinity to Spark itself, which dictated how much of the Spark they consumed could actually be used. The higher the affinity, the less Spark they had to consume to do the same thing. As a result, even though they had powers, not many could use them efficiently.
Finally, Spark was expensive and people simply couldn’t afford it. Sometimes, that was all there was to it. A poor person couldn’t buy Spark to train and thus couldn’t do anything with it.
They had to settle for doing other work.
After listening to the talks of his fellow Cadets, Ning returned to his room, wherein he began his tests once again.
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