Chapter 1596: A Mission
Ning received a peculiar task from Franc one day. He was assigned to a task force that was meant to receive a ‘relic’ that was found a long distance away from the surface.
They had long since known about the existence of this relic apparently, having been found during one of the previous expeditions. However, because their task had nothing to do with the relic, they had marked where it was and returned.
After that, the shadowed time had begun and the surface was far too cold for anyone to go at all.
However, those months of darkness had been over, and the sun showed through on the other side of Krimanax, so everyone was back to work once again.
At this time, Redaime had been promoted to General, and in her spot, Franc had been promoted to Captain. As a result, Franc was now a direct superior to Ning.
Ning looked at the message, realizing that he had been given his first mission to go on an expedition. He had been asking for it for a long time, and it seemed they had accepted.
He couldn’t help but smile.
“They didn’t let me gather Spark. They must still be too worried about me for that,” he thought. “That’s why they are sending me on such a simple mission.”
The mission was truly simple. Once they arrived at the surface, all they had to do was walk a few kilometers to where the relic was marked and bring it back here.
They didn’t have to worry about teleporting things or maintaining gravity. It was a simple grab-and-return mission.
It wasn’t what Ning really wanted, but it was something. Given how bored he was, this was more than enough to keep his attention for a while.
The mission was tomorrow, but Ning had to go meet his team today. He needed to know them well before they could depart.
Ning found out where the teams were gathering and quickly found them. They were gathered in a room and Ning arrived a while later. When he did, he was confused.
There were already 10 people in a group here, one with each power most likely.
The people turned to look at Ning. “Hey! Ning, welcome,” a young man said.
Ning gave a small smile. “I’m sorry, I must’ve come to the wrong place. Please enjoy yourselves.”
“No, no,” the man quickly said, pulling Ning in. “You are in the right place.”
Ning looked at the man with a surprised face. “I came here to meet my team,” he said. “Is this it?”
“Yes, we are your teammates,” someone else said. “Come, have a sit.”
Ning sat down on one of the free chairs. “Am I bad at counting or does someone here not belong to the group?” he asked.
The group chuckled together. “We are all part of the group, including you,” one of the men said.
“You are an add-on, dear,” an older woman said. “Since our mission is easy, we were asked to take you with us and give you experience of the outside world. You don’t mind that, do you? Since this is your first time.”
Ning shook his head. “I don’t really have any complaint,” he said. “I was just hoping to be in a normal group.”
“You will,” the woman said. “That is how we all start. You will need to learn what to do and not to do out there before you can go. Normally, you would be taught here, but it appears you were a special case. They wanted you to get real experience.”
Ning sighed. “I suppose that is alright,” he said. “What do I do now then?”
“Sit around. Get to know us. We will be putting our life on the line outside, so it’s good to learn something about each other, and build some trust,” one of the men said.
“Okay,” Ning said and began mingling with them.
He learned who was what, and how they were going to make use of their power on the outside. He had seen it all being done once before, but hearing the thought process of someone involved was quite a good idea.
For one, Ning had never realized that the Converter was constantly sipping on his ‘Spark juice’ to constantly convert the air within their suits to one with more oxygen.
They did not understand the specificity of what they were doing, but they did mention that the female Converter of their group was responsible for clearing the air within their outer suits that got ‘stuffy’ and ‘damp’.
Ning had always thought that it would be the Breather’s job to do that, so he was surprised that it was the Converter’s job.
The reasoning for that turned out to be more simple than he could’ve thought. When a Breather created air for them to breathe, they simply didn’t have anywhere to let the air leave.
They had tried doing that in the past apparently, and it was too much of a hassle to constantly unzip their suits to let out the air. That was why people had switched to using converters instead.
Ning learned a little more about how these people functioned, and how the suits functioned. There was a special pack on their body through which they could suck in Spark juice to use their powers. Their job determined the level of concentration of the Spark as some needed stronger doses in a burst while others needed a slow but steady stream of powers.
Converters fell somewhere in the middle, where they needed to constantly use their powers, but also use their powers in bursts. So, Ning was handed his pack of Spark which was a thick slurry for him to slowly sip from.
Ning returned home after socializing with the group and made preparations for tomorrow’s leave. Early in the morning, he went up to the group of people who were gathered in the topmost floors of the city.
Ning’s arrival was met with a lot of greetings and Ning greeted them back as well.
“We should all get changed. We need to leave in a hurry,” the man who was in charge of the team said. He was a Captain, so no one even questioned his commands.
Ning quickly went to the changing room and dressed in a space suit that was created to fit him. A Carver sculpted rock around his body and a Converter changed that into fabric, directly making the suit.
Ning sighed seeing how much they relied on their powers for the tiniest thing. Should there ever come a day when they couldn’t use their powers, these people would be useless.
“Alright, listen up!” the leader said as they were gathered. “For one last time, here is the briefing of the mission.”
“About 6 kilometers south, a relic has been found. The previous team who found it say that it is in the center of a deep valley, about 300 meters away from where they harvested their last Spark.”
“We are going to go to that valley, get the relic, and come back before sunset. The mission is simple, so it should not take us any time. Go and take care of your bathroom uses right now as we won’t be making too many stops along the way. Is that clear?”
“Yes, leader!” the many people shouted. Ning was a step behind.
“Good! We leave in 5 minutes.”
As everyone prepared, Ning prepared along with them, connecting tubes to his body and from his body to other bodies. A tune was connected to his front to someone, and it was then connected to someone else from the back.
The tube formed a closed loop as everyone had their tubes connected to each other in a circle. This was the tube through which their air was going to circulate throughout the group.
Ning felt a probing in his mind and quickly realized that someone was trying to get into his mind. He quickly let it happen and the person who had just connected with him showed no sign of concern at all.
Had he rejected or taken his time accepting it, there might’ve been problems.
“Let us move!” the leader said and began walking through a large hallway, making their way to a large metal door down the pathway.
Ning realized making his way through a hallway was no different from when he had first arrived in this world. It had been on the other moon, but still, it was no different.
The cities were all made as a copy of one another anyway. What wasn’t a copy with these people?
They arrived at a large metal door that was guarded by a few cadets. The cadets saluted and the door opened. Ning and the rest walked through the metal door into another hallway.
They continued walking for a bit before they encountered another metal door with another pair of guards.
Once that door opened, they entered another hallway.
‘Just how many hallways and doors are there?’ Ning wondered. He had arrived quite deep last time, it appeared.
After passing another door with guards allocated to it, they arrived at a much more crude-looking hallway with large stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
“You should start converting air anytime now. We cannot afford to let the air go stale,” the captain said.
He did not understand it himself, but what he wanted was really for there to not be a carbon dioxide buildup.
Ning gave an affirmation and the Captain gave another order to someone else. Then a message came through their bonds.
“Prepare for Teleportation.”
Everyone braced for it and a second later, they were all teleported outside.
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