Autophagy

"I've some good news for you," Aston said smugly while crossing his arms in front of his chest. Song Lei raised one of his brows before asking.

"What is it?"

"I may have found a way to create soul weapons," Aston said, his smug grin still hanging on his face.

"Really now?" Song Lei said. He turned his head towards Aston. "How?"

"It's simple, let's start from the root of our problem," Aston said. "The biggest problem we currently have is we don't have a forge in this orphanage. If we disregard the problems about the integrity of the soulite with metal which has already been solved by me, the only thing we need to do is to find ourselves a smithery where we can actually craft weapons," he explained in one breath. Because of his excitement, he was left gasping for air.

"This is where my plan kicks in," Aston said after gathering his breath. "What do you think about the words 'Field training'? It's pretty understandable, right? We're going to be on the field, outside."

"If we go outside, we can somehow find ourselves a smithery..." Song Lei muttered while holding his chin.

"Exactly," Aston said with a smile on his face. Normally, he wouldn't show many expressions on his face. Now, however, was a special occasion.

Seeing his state, Song Lei smiled widely. He wasn't the only one who had been suffering during these five months. As he was sacrificing himself for Aston to progress in his research, a huge workload and responsibility were placed on Aston. He wanted to make sure that Song Lei's efforts didn't go to waste, However, he couldn't think of a way to craft the weapons they needed. Now that he had found that small light of hope, he would hold onto it.

"Anyways, as you have said, you should rest during this week," Aston said. "Depending on the situation, you may have to be the one to craft the weapon so I'll teach you how to do it."

"Alright then," Song Lei answered. "How do you even know how to craft weapons?" He asked. He could understand how Aston would be able to do a lot of things, however, he didn't know where he would've learned crafting weaponry.

"I didn't," Aston said. "I simulated it in my head."

"Huh..."

Song Lei didn't answer as he didn't know what to say. Although Aston's words sounded like total bullshit, they were still plausible just because Aston was the one that was saying them.

After their conversation was over, they went to their next class. As their class, too, came to an end, Song Lei ran back to his dorm room.

Now that he had become the runner-up of the arena, he didn't need to keep going to fights anymore. He could just lie down and relax during his free time until he was woken up by Aston for his night guard duty.

Throwing himself on his bed, Song Lei sighed deeply. There were lots of things he had to deal with now. First of all, he had to learn how to craft the weapons from Aston. After that, he had to check out the situation with the trainees that were coming from other sections. He wanted to get a proper understanding of the situation.

Lastly, he had to check up on Lewis' brother Adrian. Since the time he had come into the orphanage, he hadn't had the chance to do so. Partly because he had forgotten of his existence. After all, he wasn't Song Lei's real brother. It was hard to keep an unrelated person such as Adrian in his mind while dealing with the whole soul worm ordeal.

However, this didn't matter much, as Song Lei wouldn't be able to go visit him as going to the other sections was prohibited. He had tried a few times to see him during his morning training however, he couldn't manage to do so.

Now that they had gained the right to travel between the sections of the orphanage, he could visit Lewis' brother. He also wanted to go and see how Gabriela was doing with her family.

'She should've been placed into their apartment with her family by Poison Eye by now...' Song Lei thought.

Dispersing his thoughts, Song Lei went into a deep sleep...

...

After resting for some time, Song Lei finished his night guard duty without any further problems. During these five months, nothing out of ordinary had happened in the orphanage. Although it seemed a bit meaningless to stay up every night, Song Lei knew that he couldn't act carelessly. After all, dream spaces worked in bizarre ways that couldn't be foreseen.

Fortunately, today, he could sleep as much as he wanted. As soon as he closed his eyes back, he fell asleep. It took him eight hours to wake up.

"*YAWN"

Song Lei yawned widely and jumped out of the bed. All of his roommates had already left, leaving him the only person that was lazing around.

"Huh..." Song Lei muttered while looking around the room. For some reason, he could hear weird, mumbled noises coming from somewhere he couldn't identify. Disregarding the noises, he took a shower, changed his clothes, and left the room to get some exercise. Although he wanted to laze around for his whole holiday, he had to keep his form for the upcoming field training.

After going outside, Song Lei realized that the whole orphanage seemed to be much emptier than normal as if ninety percent of the trainees had disappeared into thin air.

Not being able to bear the weird atmosphere, Song Lei walked up to one of the passing trainees.

"Hello, friend. Where is everyone?" Song Lei asked. The trainee looked at his face as if he had asked the stupidest question he had ever heard.

"They're fighting," the trainee said. He didn't wait for Song Lei any further and quickly left the place. Song Lei was about to stop him however decided that it wouldn't do any good to do so. The person didn't seem like he intended to communicate with Song Lei further.

After watching the trainee go away, Song Lei sighed deeply. Previously, he was totally oblivious to the situation. Now, however, he knew that the other trainees were 'fighting'.

"Are they in the arena?" Song Lei thought. Although the arena had never been popular enough to accommodate ninety percent of section A, Song Lei couldn't think of any other answers.

After a short trip, he managed to reach the arena building. Unfortunately, he couldn't find anyone there either.

"Where are they..?" Song Lei thought out loud. Suddenly, his eyes sparkled with an idea. He quickly left the building and started running towards Section C of the orphanage.

Section A, B, and C were three different buildings, all spanning a few kilometers. This orphanage was truly big. Section A was right in the middle while B and C were to the sides. There were wide openings between sections that were covered with pseudo-forests. If anyone wanted to go to a section from another, they would have to follow the roads through these pseudo-forests.

As Song Lei kept running towards section C, the strange noises he had heard earlier started amplifying. After running for ten minutes, Song Lei managed to reach the pseudo-forest between sections A and C. The noises were very much clear now. It wasn't hard to understand that a large-scale battle was going on in the forest.

Thinking about what their firearms instructor had said, Song Lei sighed deeply.

'So this was what they were aiming for...' He thought. Since the beginning, a whole week of holiday seemed to be out of place to Song Lei. In this orphanage that dictated every part of their lives, there was no way that they would give such leeway to the trainees. He knew that there must've been some kind of ulterior move behind this. And very much so, he was right.

Not waiting for another second, Song Lei dived into the forest and started running towards the nearest screams and shouting he could hear.

"You pretentious lot from section A must be thinking you're high and mighty huh? Kneel on the ground right now! We may forgive you if you do so!" A hoarse voice resounded near Song Lei. As soon as Song Lei heard and processed the sentence in his head, he facepalmed hard.

'Oh god... Are these those infamous disposable third-rate villain characters?' Song Lei thought. Without giving it another thought, he started striding towards the place he had heard the voice from.

"I'm sorry friend but that won't happen," another voice said. From his way of speaking, Song Lei could guess that he was a Section A trainee.

Shortly after, he reached an opening in the middle of the forest with a diameter of eight meters. This place was totally devoid of vegetation with dry, yellowish soil as the floor.

  In this opening, there were six people confronting each other. All of them wore the same uniforms, except the fact that two of them had the letter A on their chest while the remaining four had C.

'This is troublesome....'