Perceived Fate

It took 3 days for them to return. With injuries healing and exhaustion to work on, they didn’t march until they were fully restored.

They got a week until they had to return; this time was covered by previous training camps going on their hunts.

The Outpost’s atmosphere was depressed. They got a return speech from their Captain and Malums group got an explanation as to why they hadn’t seen him.

The Troop Leader had the authority to mix, match, and join any group he deemed fit. He left Malums group because they were likely to survive and didn’t change any group as that’s what they had trained towards. What he did do was join the groups who he thought had the potential to survive.

From 59 at the very start. Now there was 36 of them left. More than 15 lives had been lost in a single 24-hour period and even that was extremely good.

Oliver, George, Harry, Jack, Jacob, Charlie, Thomas, William, James, Henry, Alfie, Joshua, Freddie, Archie, Oscar, Leo, Amelia.

The ceremony was held and Malum noticed that this alter was made of stone. Looking around it was the highest quality item Malum had seen in his time in the military.

Considering its amount of use, it was certainly justified.

Sadness was the wrong word for what the atmosphere felt like. Now they looked at the bodies in apathy, or guilt.

There was 1 other body that was with them, a Veteran who had died protecting some of the new recruits. His ceremony was extra special, with candles and flowers and hymns.

Malum only managed to question the wastage of them. His mind was too used to cold hearted logic that he could only see waste in the ceremony and he soon found the reason.

When you died with extra points the state didn’t reimburse the families with their loved ones points for them to use. Of course they didn’t, instead they used the points on these things and the rest followed disappeared with them into the afterlife.

Humans never failed to let Malum down further. The world grew a darker shade of grey.

To try and cheer himself back up, Malum went with the group to check his points situation and to see how close he was to escaping the hell he resided in.

Relieved from Duty – Cost – 10000 Credits

Looking back at the ticket home, hope managed to crawl back into Malums heart. If he got that, he could then begin his journey into cultivation. He just needed to bide his time and get there.

Now to look at his points, he handed his badge into the receptionist and she soon returned.

“You’re the group from Section C, Tim’s group right?”

“Yes” Malum replied, not seeing how it was relevant.

“Then to explain your points, I must explain that Tim personally transferred some points into each of your badges. Is Jerome here?”

He was, and he raised his hand. “Here.”

The receptionist showed a yellow grin, “Then your lucky because he gave you extra.”

Then he explained each of their points,

“Malum you had received 500 points by the end of your training period, that means you got every point you could outside of special situation. And for your first wave you’ve received 1 thousand points and Tim sent your 250 points leaving you with a very impressive 1750 points.”

Malum thanked the man for his fast calculation. To do such mathematics at such a high level, Malum guessed the receptionist was a scholar.

It was also a very impressive amount of money. 17 silvers and 5 bronzes was enough for 4 months of food and a little on the side. It was the largest amount Malum had ever had access to but it was unfortunate that he couldn’t spend any of it.

His life came first so the ticket home was his first priority.

He stepped back and let the rest of his squad decide what to do with their own points.

Gerald was thinking about where to use his points. He had long realised that this was what he was made for and had decided to make this warzone his home.

He ended up with a good cotton bed, and a bottle of the cheapest liquor. He would start slowing and eventually work his way towards buying a cosier battlefield life.

He looked to see the reaction of his teammates. The purchases were a clear indicator of what he was planning to do and he wanted to see who would spot it.

Looking at Jake he seemed unsurprised, Alicia looked shocked, Jerome was equally shocked, and Malum wasn’t even paying attention.

Gerald could only smile, it seemed about right that his troop was so strange after all he had just decided to life his life on the battlefield and if that didn’t make him the strangest person on site then Gerald wouldn’t know what would.

He would bathe in his strangeness, hunting as much as he could, chasing the thrill that only those beasts could provide. Gone was his problems, with only the hunt left to worry about.

A simple life. Something he had desired since young had appeared and Gerald was going to see it through to the end. He smiled to no end as he relaxed in his fate.

Malum stopped looking outside to notice some very strange expressions around him. Jake was giving Gerald a strange look, rightfully so as the man was pulling an expression of serenity or even bliss. In this war-field Malum wandered if he had traded in for drugs.

Alicia looked beyond shocked at something, and Jerome was trying to do figure out what was going on.

“Let’s go train!” Said Malum, knocking everyone out of their previous train of thought and back towards normality.

Gerald happily agreed and everyone else followed suit. The training went well and everyone used the time to let Gerald explain his previous actions.

Words were exchanged and ideas passed. Judgment was done but silently inside of their own heads. Malum thought Gerald ideas where masochistic but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t wish the man well.

Considering how much they had made in a single day, Malum would be lying if he said he hadn’t considering the option but his priorities were set in stone so the risky but lucrative job was sadly going to be passed up.

Time soon passed and they returned back to Section C.

Malum could hardly believe that hunting demons had actually begun to get boring. It got to the point that Malum actively went to hunt them with Gerald to pass the time.

He had learned some interesting news of Tim’s team. Trout had begun to make a recovery and apparently they got bonus’ whenever they killed a rarer demon so with that extra points Tim had paid of most of his debts and so Trout had been able to afford the ticket home.

It was great news, for Trout. For everyone else that meant a strong combatant was walking away and the demons now had 1 less person to fight.

Tim’s group then become a group of three and with those numbers, Malum reckoned even Tim would struggle.

They would get fresh numbers in the form of new recruits before the next wave but their usefulness was severely limited especially if they were bottom of the rankings.

They had gone to the city to get better weapons and equipment for the entire Outpost and with Malums group potentially helping both teams were still optimistic about their success.

The Troop Leader also came round for a chat. He gave some hints about their location and told them to move the outpost a few hundred meters to a better position.

His strategic advice was soon to be invaluable as Malum realised as they practiced how much these new position could increase their demonic slaying efficiency.

He also sparred with each member and gave them rough advice as to which direction they should be heading towards.

For Malum he simply said, “Break your style down further. Deepen what each stage does and overall just get better at analysing and adapting. It’s a good path and you should do well.”

Malum thanked him and he soon went on his way. His help was needed far more in other areas, so the Squad sent him on his way.

Malum followed his Leaders advice but didn’t quite understand what exactly he was supposed to do. Practice made perfect, though, and with ample practice dummies he soon made progress.

He was starting to learn some patterns. Like humans, demons equally followed similar behaviours. During a wave they were aggressive, every attack they could do, they did; even at the cost of taking some damage to inflict it.

With this in mind, Malum could make counterattacks more thorough as he could spend longer thinking about what would happen after action Am (The demon attacking), instead of thinking of action B (The demon retreating) or action C (The demon defending).

This allowed for better plans for more likely scenarios. In the of chance the demonic beast broke this pattern, then Malum was in more danger, that was the trade-off however with patterns being more likely than the occasional injury was better than a constant beating from demons.

Most of it was subconscious, experiencing predicting what the demonic beast was going to do. Malum was trying his best to not only gain more of that subconscious prediction but also to bring it into his conscious where he could better utilise it to whatever he wanted.

He spent the better part of the entire time he had left trying to perfect this new idea of his and by the time the next wave was coming up he felt better prepared then he had ever done before.

As another hunting group went out for their last run, that meant they got the chance to return to the base camp and here they re-met the other partners in their Outpost.

Tim, Roger and Agatha all had brought with them some more equipment and looking over the new items Malum could only say he was very impressed.

Each member would now have a copper chest plate and new weapons and maintenance equipment would allow their blades to remain sharp.

Tim had essentially plunged himself back to the start of his point journey by paying of his debts and yet Malum felt the man wasn’t disappointed in the slightest.

With this equipment the next 10 months were going to far easier to survive then before and with newbies reliably coming in every month that meant success in their eyes was guaranteed.

They soon met their new group of 5 and they were mid-range in the rankings. They also met their Troop Leader where the same strategy was implemented yet again, defence, defence, defence.

After that was reiterated, the new Outpost members caught up as they marched down. The new members were called, Jane, David, Troy, Trever and Blake.

Malum put himself at a distance to these newbies as their likelihood of dying was to high and so he learned as little as he could.

They soon arrived back and began their construction with the time they had gained. Since they had moved, they had already done most of what was needed but it was never enough and finding something to do was not hard.

The schedule agreed upon was Tim’s group helping the newbies to try and survive, whilst Malum covered the other six hours as they wanted extra practice time. Everybody won, now they just needed to get started.

The sun never failed to rise, and soon it reached its peak. Celestial mechanics called forth the innate desires in all demons as they soon began to descend onto their new position.

This new position allowed for far greater natural barriers which funnelled the demons far better than before. This allowed for less time delivering and more time butchering, meaning more dead in less time.

By now Malum’s group had dealt all the way up to Variant – 012 which was a strong demon called the Velociraptor, a fast and ferocious beast with speed being its main strength.

Today was not their lucky day, as just as Malum cleaved through another Triceratops, he found himself looking at the head of a much more dangerous sequence beast.

032 – Pterodactyl in other words the most common flying demon there was. Any flying demon was highly dangerous as it could surprise attack any resting soldiers.

Malum needed to alarm the newbies as quick as possible. He shouted.

“A FLYER!” Gerald and Jake noticed what he said and they also shouted.

“A FLYER!!” Their voices managed to reach Alicia and Jerome.

“A FLYER!!!” Finally Malum saw some movement inside of the outpost.

He saw the beast eye him, before it turned towards the torches around the Outpost. Sometimes attracting them away wasn’t the best of ideas and the demon soon disappeared above the clouds as it made for the Outpost.

Malum wandered if he should rush back. Perhaps he could help them. But he knew that wasn’t his job. He trusted Tim to take care of the demon and he knew Tim trusted him to keep the demons away from the Outpost.

He signalled to his Squad to stay in position and whilst he got some glares he was happy to glare back. A solider couldn’t abandon his post unless the entire formation be destroyed. It would lead to more deaths and chaos in the battlefield lead to complete annihilation.

He focused on the demon in front of him and put all of his anger into his blade.

The poor Ankylosaurus never stood a chance as Malum cleaved it’s neck to brain. Blood covered the fear Malums once felt. Now he had become the hunter, and these demons were his prey.