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Chapter 547: Mitra’s Trap

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“…we are aware that many of you don’t know how to properly use a gun so rest assured, there is no friendly fire in this exercise and that your guns will only work when pointed at your enemy. That is a special feature but still be mindful not to point your barrels to your allies. In the real world, guns take lives regardless of allies or foes so don’t be delusional that you’re allowed to point your rifle in your allies’ faces! Anyone who did so will face an immediate severe punishment leading not only to your platoon’s disqualification but also humiliation to the person who had committed the crime! For your reference, I will now show you how the guns work in this assessment event.”

The proctor made an example and raised his own gun —a .52 caliber anti-shock anti-pers rifle— in a straight chest-level to demonstrate.

He pointed at the rack of guns at the side. Who knows when those guns were arranged there?

“Secondly, some things are made easy for you to adjust practical training skills you have yet to be trained for and made it so that it’d automatically be acted as soon as you confirm them. For example, planting a bomb. Since it is a specialization that only a soldier is allowed to be trained in, planting a bomb —any bomb— in this exercise is a matter of point and shoot, like a camera, confirming it with a yes or no button will complete the jobs.”

While he spoke, he demonstrated it by pulling out a C4 Sticky Bar from thin air, putting it into a crate, and then confirming the “set up” with a press of a holo-button confirmation…. just like a game.

“Of course, since not all of you have experience in using guns and actually seeing the horror of it, you will not see a shred of blood or gore in this entire exercise.”

At this point, the proctor pointed his gun and shot one of the side proctors’ leg who did not even as much as grunted but still had a reddish hole in his thigh —like a molten red polygonal hole—that tells a lot of how “game-like” this exercise was.

“It was just an example but bear in mind that it will hurt when you got shot by the enemies so I hope that you will take this exercise seriously since, well, this is not a game you’re entering. It’s the lifeblood organization of our planet. We’re the defenders of the people. We are soldiers of the World Government, ready to defend its integrity and protect the peace on Earth with our very lives so weaklings and kindhearted individuals with no spine nor a shred of determination to take the enemy’s life just because of morality is not allowed to exist within your ranks. Is there anyone here with that constitution?”

No one answered from the platoon but he asked once again just to be sure.

“I urge you… if you’re not prepared to take one’s life just to uphold your moral code, then please, I suggest you quit now because being a soldier is not meant for you.”

No one answered. Even the weakest-looking girl or boy in the ranks of the candidates gritted their teeth as they listened.

Seeing this, the proctor nodded, “Good. Thirdly! I expect that you all by now realized that obeying your orders down to the very last letter will save not only yours but also your allies’ lives. When you are in the battlefield, you have to keep an open awareness of everything happening. You all must be open your eyes and ears even while you think you are safe. Act like an entire Unit and your unit will as you want it to. In the event of…”

In the middle of his sentence, someone from the side proctors threw something akin to a tiny tube-like object, bouncing in front of the platoon just a couple of meters away.

Then, someone else from the other side of the platoon shouted in a loud voice: “GRENADE!!!”

“FIND COVER!!!” a proctor from the other side cried out in a loud rebuking tone.

The Drillmaster barked, “ON YOUR BELLY!”

Of the 21 people in the platoon, only four were able to react in time and lay on the ground, face in the dirt, as they covered their heads —the very definition of being on your belly. But alas, none of them sought to find cover.

BOOM!!

A loud, deafening explosion rung and those who were slow to react in the platoon were all thrown in the air —albeit not in any pain— but still felt the weightlessness of being thrown in the air with no kind of defense or ability to do anything.

It was the feeling of being powerless and weak to such a degree that it scared them silly. Many even cried out in fright, especially the women.

Furthermore, after they reached the apex of their ascent, they didn’t fall down and instead remained there suspended in midair with their silly positions and postures. The girls who had their skirts open like a gallery as they were stooped face down had it worse while the men behind them entrenched it all, every megabit of the memory of this ultra-rare chance to get a glimpse of paradise, into every tiny corner of their minds.

Alas, paradise didn’t last long. The fact that they were floating there powerless, pathetic, as well as defenselessly exposed was evident and the face of their Drillmaster-slash-proctor was grim.

“Awareness! I will say this again and again until you embed this on your thick useless skulls! You got to have awareness! You all have to be aware of every little thing happening in your immediate surroundings, down to the very last and tiniest of details! This is not playtime. This is the army! You are here taking that test to be qualified to join! We don’t need scumbags, princesses, and most even especially arrogant fools who think they are more special than the rest. Bullets don’t distinguish you in the battlefield. If you’re as much as a millimeter in the way of a bullet, you can guarantee that you will be a dead corpse in the next damn moment!”

His voice reverberated like a hammer and all the candidates felt the urging to curse but found that they couldn’t even find anything to refute him off.

“If you’re aware of your surroundings, you can react faster and better to any abrupt command! I don’t have to tell you fools that those in midair right now are all DEAD! Of the platoon, only four survived but even they are also going to die because firstly, when a grenade explodes, it does not explode only upwards… it explodes in all the freakin’ damned directions! Did you think that just covering your heads with your hands would make you invulnerable from shrapnels? When you hear someone shout ‘grenade’ your first and foremost reaction should be to find cover! You even got an order for that but no one even listened!”

The proctor eyed them like the greenhorns they are and the vivid disdain irked their pride as this year’s contemporary geniuses.

“Lastly! The one who threw that grenade at your platoon is definitely an enemy and even if we take into account that you four survived that, what you should have done first was to survey the area and look for the culprit because seeing that there are people who had survived their surprise attack, the culprit of the ambush is sure to follow that up with a volley of bullets and every single one of you will be dead in matter of seconds!”

As he spoke, those four in the ground was still in a trance from the explosion because one, though it didn’t hurt, the explosion was still loud and they all felt it in their skins, shocking their cores and putting them in despair of the situation.

Furthermore, how should they know what to do in that situation then? They were all ignorant fools and that’s a fact, no matter how hurtful it may be to accept!

They heard the proctor criticize them but they are still reeling in shock that they couldn’t quite follow the events that happened after that.

Seeing them like that, many side proctors went to pull them up to their feet and pour cold water on them from a bucket —which actually came out of nowhere!

NOW they were awake and shivering in the cold.

The proctor didn’t care about them and continued with his pre-operation briefing.

“Alright. Now that you got a taste of what it feels like to be in the Military, and I’m telling you now, it is just the beginning; I would assume that there’d be many of you already thinking of quitting here as we speak! But too bad for you the time to back off from this is already over. Whether you like it or not, you are already being tested as we speak so those with daddy, mommy, or uncle waiting on the other side would know just how pathetic you’d be if you as much as announced on quitting. And for those who doesn’t have one, everyone else in there will also see how pathetic your faces are as you announce the fact that you have no spines and no right to be in the UNICORN Military! Heh, what do you think the World Nobles’ reactions be then? THAT I actually wanna see. Hahaha…!!”

A blatant taunt, disdain, and transparent criticism; his words not only stung those who was at the verge of quitting, it actually made them grit their teeth to endure it as they feared the humiliation of their incompetence being known to all more than their actual failure of being inadequate.

Too bad for them, the time to quit had already slip passed their noses and they had no choice now but to finish the test with all they’ve got, or face a flurry of humiliating comments once everything in here was over.

The proctor looked over at the floating once and the shivering four once before flipping a finger up and letting the ones above fall with a thud.

Many grunted. They felt the pain of falling.

It would seem that the pain receptors seemed to have been activated.

“Now, from this moment forward, the actual tests will begin. I will say this again, in order to save our time, we will be conducting calculated missions to accomplish goals and tasks. A mission objective is announced by us and for you to pass a mission is to accomplish them all within given parameters; or else, you have failed.”

As he speaks, the candidates lined up again. The proctors watched as they fixed themselves with a mixed expression of anger and embarrassment.

“Now, since you are all aware of your positions in this event, you will now be given thirty minutes of rest and prepare yourselves. There’s no need to take a bath since once you enter the barracks, all of you will be cleaned automatically. Dress up and smoke, eat something, do whatever you like, but I want you all in here in formation with your gears and equipment in your hands. Those assigned in the logistics team, support team, Intel team, and Comms Team, there’s no need to come into their formation as you have to head straight to all your designated tents! Your proctors will also be there to test your abilities so you better not let them down or you will regret it. Now then, SCRAM!!!”

*****

As soon as Rex appeared, the first thing he did is to survey the area. Unlike the candidates, he had Cortana to record the map detail on a customized window panel, showing all information within his immediate areal vicinity.

He also noticed that unlike the easy Point & Shoot settings for the candidates, his circumstances are actually quite dire.

Everything had to be done manually.

—I already expected as much but, this is still quite an unfair treatment, isn’t it?

He was talking to no one, of course but he still did thought of it seriously. Rex could only give a sigh as he still went with the survey.

When he’d used the spy drones to their fullest, it became useless and the spy drones fell off the sky, becoming debris in the far distance. For the candidates, they would rely on a tablet-like device to check for the recorded map of the spy drones from time to time until it was updated when they buy the satellite feature, but to Rex, Cortana was his guide so the tablet device was solely used as a panel for the hacking-console as well as for the wireless surveillance cameras and robotic arms he brought with him. He at least needed to keep up with appearances since Chronos was watching his every action.

To Rex, that was enough. He began to move. He marked an area with a waterfall to set up a small obstacle for his targets. He didn’t need to look at the tablet device to check the map. Cortana had a red marking sky-beacon on his vision 300 meters away from his location so he ran, leaving his Hum-Vee in between two large rocks and covering it in lots of camouflaging water proof ponchos.

He used the 200m long Garrote Wire bangle like a real jungle operator, setting up crude traps that were both obvious and hidden, creating a maze-like effect to those who were keen enough to see the surface traps. If they try to detour from those surface traps, they’d find themselves trapped in a quagmire of more traps, rendering them afraid to even move a single muscle… easy targets for an immediate execution.

They could try to solve them, in fact, but if when they do, they’d soon realize that as a big mistake.

In fact, Rex was looking forward for them solving these traps of his to see the reactions on their faces when they realize their folly.

After all, these were traps created from those that were available in the Net, the crude traps he had designed back in Mitra meant for large monsters or groups of people, and the ones created using Cortana’s magnificent calculation abilities based on the materials available back in the storage.

Rex spent all of his grenades and 2 of the three Garrote Wire bangles he brought with him just to setup this elaborate ambush zone that formed a triangular surveillance area along with 3 Sniper Rifles overlooking the site.

The entire ‘setting up’ took about two hours’ time.

It was enough a time for any unit to cross 1.6km of varying terrain challenges but it wasn’t long a time to also be wasted in just setting up simple to solve elementary traps. Rex made sure that all of his movements were exact and precise. He acted with no mistakes and complete synch with the big picture slowly building the more he worked on his elaborate traps.

And it was only one area of 100m or so large that surrounded the waterfall’s front area. When he was done, Rex realized that he was a bit tired. His senses were on edge. He knew that enemies are bound to find him anytime.

Rex was sweating a bit. He looked up to the blue clouded sky as he made a sigh, giving a command to Cortana, ‘How’s our inventory holding up?’

[We used 70% of all our miscellaneous supply in setting up this entire trap alone. If we don’t take down a candidate encampment or our presumed assassins group, we’d never get any resupply. Or we can gather resources while waiting for some people to activate these traps.]

‘Let’s just see what’s applicable in the situation.’

Rex can’t voice out anything or Chronos might get suspicions that someone else had tapped into the inner workings of their private server, enabling an outside communication directed only to Rex.

‘You can’t sync with any in-server item here?’

[Negative sir. This is a standalone server and the items here are synched with an outside detection and regulating system guarded by a firewall that’s also assumed to be guarded by [Database] so it’s risky to try to hack into that firewall and takeover the entire private server’s items archives.]

Rex couldn’t help looking back at the waterfall and clicking his tongue in annoyance, ‘Yeah. I guess we have no choice then.’

[We’ve already set the installed camera in the arm setup of the rifle to shoot upon target sight. They should be enough for the purpose of all the traps we have setup in this place.]

Rex sighed and after checking the integrity of the trap he installed close to the robotic arm holding the sniper rifle with its sights pointed to the trap-area for an ambush fire, he departed for the hunt.

Half an hour after he departed the waterfall area, explosions rung a hundred meters away from the forest in the river connected to the waterfall as seven people in ninja outfits appeared, escaping the burning forest in haste.

Modern Ninjas, perhaps, were just about the way to describe their outfit but in truth, they’re nothing close to them. They’re something else. They have state-of-the-art equipment, gadgets, and insulated morality acquired from training that wasn’t similar to any other mode of training in the international mercenary scene. Although they were nothing but the “check him out” Unit, they're still international-level mercenaries so they are pretty skilled when compared to normal Military-people.

They could act and accomplish their missions in a manner befitting of their designations. This was in light of their prestige.

Of course, because of these “designations” and the superiority of their organizational alignment, it was just natural that in the international mercenary business, they take pride in their name.

And it was this pride that made them look down on these crude traps that made them scatter in many hundred fleshy pieces.

Smoke was still rising in the forest as the seven basked at the sight of that scene.

The one in the middle looked at his setup behind them and was impressed with the trap he laid as the obstacle.

“He’s truly cunning.” The leader said and nods.

A woman from beside him clicked her tongue with undisguised anger. “How can an ordinary boy do this much damage?! We’ve lost two people in his traps just like that! Is he really how the boss had told us about, taking out that Kanzu and his team singlehandedly?”

“Of course he is.” Answered the leader. “Just the fact that he was able to take out Sydney and Chix with a four layered trap was enough testament of his training. He’s not some ordinary college stud as stated on his profile. Nobody can create those explosive traps with mere patched up knowledge downloaded and studied from the Net or even in the movies. This is someone trained in Military Tactics on an international level.”

The woman clicked her tongue in irritation as she looked around the edge of the waterfall before pulling out a spy drone from her backpack and throwing it in the air, surveying the waterfall’s face as well as the entire area around them.

Although it was already surveyed earlier, there’s nothing wrong in surveying the place again. After all, their leader implied that underestimating this [Mitra] will prove to be a huge mistake.

Just look at Sydney and Chix. They thought they could solve the easy and visible amateurish trap but ended up being taken out in a simultaneous activation of different traps instead.

The thing about this “event” is that everyone was given the same amount of treatment —whether you’re a proctor, the special group, or candidate; so everyone else had the same access to similar equipment and item choices. What will be the true difference are their skills. After all, in the Military, if you’re skilled in Lego Building or you were one of them garden geniuses, as long as you’re not someone skilled on a skill-tree needed on specific tasks and designations, your immediate landing is the Army —and in the Army, everything is useful.

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Rex on the move!

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