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Chapter 548: Oh Shit

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Bomb making and dismantlement, sniper skills, as well as CQC and trap-making and other types and orders of skills… were all specializations.

Military Specialization Skills can be studied but in this “event” what was tested was their capacity as members of the [Infantry] since in the UNICORN, there’s no lack of Engineers, Cavalry, Ordnance, or other specialized Military Units. Those are skills and specializations that can be ingrained by going into training; but courage, mental flexibility, as well as one’s capacity as a Soldier is something that is rarely available, and even seen, even from those that are already part of the Military.

Thus, in this “event” tonight, the UNICORN had decided to test if there were candidates here that were actually worthy of being taken in and trained by the UNICORN as new Military Recruits.

Even-leveled playing grounds were just one small key that’s going to test these young candidates’ planning ability, situational assessment, universal resourcefulness, and also preparation when face to face with the unknown violent world of war.

After all, the UNICORN’s enemies weren’t good folks who will smile at you during Christmas.

If they really wanted to join the UNICORN Military, then they needed to be baptized as soon as today or there will be consequences in the future.

Thus, this level of equality was given to all. Their imagination and capacity as future soldiers will be the ones to decide who’s worthy or not.

*****

After surveying the waterfall and the surrounding area until the on-board battery of the spy drone is depleted, the lady-ninja was already aware of the possible locations where there are traps to kill anyone that would try to disassemble his trap.

“Should we dismantle it?” she asked their leader since, after all, getting in the way of Mitra was the primary objective of them being here. Eliminating him when there’s a chance only goes second.

“Can you?” the leader looked at her and asked.

“Hmp. No matter how good he is, he’s still some young blood that’s still green in the ears.”

“Go on then. The rest of you, scatter around. You are not to engage with any of the candidates for our only task for being here is Mitra. No one else! Not even the proctors are aware of our existence here so be very careful when you spread. When you spot him, do not engage. Wait for my orders.”

The ninjas did not answer and only moved out of the waterfall area in six directions. Only the lady ninja was left and she pulled a 20m Garrote Wire from her wrist, tied and flung a knife at the end, and then angled it with a throw to hook into the robotic arm hidden at the side of the waterfall.

And yet, just as she was gathering momentum to throw it, something whistled fast in the air and hit her straight in the head.

“Wha—” she didn’t even know what happened but her entire upper body was blown away with not a trace of her head being left.

Halfway through until her body fell down, there’s the sound of something booming from the forest; a loud resounding BANG of a large caliber rifle.

The six ninjas looked back at her. The leader was surprised and he clicked his tongue.

On his ears, the sound of someone reporting was ringing in complete wariness.

“He got Mari. Jason, Freddy, go circle around the origin location of the gunshot but don’t engage. I want eyes surveying the area for traps. Don’t save your drones. Caution is a must. Move out.”

SWISH!! SWOOSH! SWISSH!!!

*****

Rex made a sigh. He was 2km away from where the waterfall was towards the center, and on his hand was the pen-tablet and the screen displayed was the view of the waterfall’s upper area. From the camera attached to the robotic arm that held a .56 Caliber Anti-Personnel Sniper Rifle, he saw all that had happened to the female ninja with plain indifference, showing Chronos how he expected everything that had happened was.

Rex had eight of them Sniper Rifles in his Hum-Vee and he had set up three of them as a circle around his designated ambush zone with the one attached at the side of the waterfall just being one of the 3.

Although it was basic tactic, to actually make it so that he could take out enemies with them was just too good to actually be true.

“Are they stupid? If they wanted to take out that set up in the waterfall, why didn’t they just throw a grenade and let it explode?”

[There are multiple possible answers to that, sir. I have analyzed possible reasons and listed them in descending percentages.]

A prompt showed in his vision.

Of course one of the reasons is that they’re truly and indeed are idiots. Another was that they were wary of him. Another was, and with a large ratio of the reasons in the list, is that they were trying to sabotage Rex’s operation —which he already had an inclination of believing since the beginning— as silently as possible.

‘I’m willing to believe of them trying to sabotage secretly me since Chronos already indicated it so on our talk earlier… but couldn’t they have done it with more secrecy so that I wouldn’t know they were here specifically for me? Geez… I could have done a better job at this than them. I mean, for someone on my position assumed to be at least smart enough to plant bomb-traps on that level, this is really underestimating me. Now I already know that they got a way to know where I am as soon as the event started.’

[According to my analysis, sir, there’s a large sum of possibilities seeming that all people taking part in this “event” are all leveled evenly. Even those assassins should be using the same sets of items available to you, sir.]

‘I thought as much. If they’re really using a more advanced set of equipment than me, then there’s really something to talk over with Chronos in this entire event, isn’t it? I could use Mitra against him if that actually happens.’

[That’s a possibility as well. But Chronos might as well ignore your protests and decide to still bring you to his fold, ignoring the dangers it will bring to the entire organization from the other members of Mitra. The candidates are being tested while you as well are being tested by Chronos. Cheating it is not far from his whim, if our analysis of his ego is correct. Well, if we assume that Chronos didn’t believe Mitra being a group of Nobles, then he might really decide to be unfair but if he believes them, there’s minimal reason to assume that the assassins are using advanced tactical weaponry against you.]

‘I see, I see…’

[Besides, if they were really using more advanced equipment than you, that woman wouldn’t have used a tactical knife strapped into a Garrote Wire like she did. It’s just so crude considering they’re actually supposed to be a Special Unit. I’d assume that there are actually ten of them or even more, and that one of them is a guy at the desk running their movements back in their vehicle base.]

‘They deployed their spy drones three times now and assuming that all those map and locational data are sent to the guy behind their desk, then I think it’s better if we get our hands on at least one of their communicators, isn’t it? If we get that then we can hack into their Comms Link and gather more useful information.’

[It’s imperative, sir.]

‘Well, I will handle it, then.’

It was a four second thought-link conversation so during that time, Rex was looking at the panel on his vision showing the scenes where there were different angles of the candidates’ activities. All of these were the live feeds coming from Chronos’ Office that they’ve tapped into even before the beginning of this event.

As soon as Chronos decides to tap out of this event, then Rex will also lose his connection with the live video feeds and extracting a copy of the several private servers they have would become a tad bit more difficult to accomplish, though still not a major unsolvable problem.

The reason why he wasn’t attacking the bases of the candidates and doing his mission is because they were still undergoing Military Conditioning.

He knew because the live video feeds told him so of its every detail, even seeing Angus Gregory, in a fit of his arrogance, demanding his Drillmaster to show him respect because he was a Conclave Invitee yet he was called a maggot. In the end, he was heavily castigated and was brought to reality to endure 200 repetitions of pushups.

But that was earlier. Now, the candidates are on the move and it was time to make his own. It was his plan to create a funnel, as it seem, so he can force the candidates to the waterfall’s location for the ambush. He had hoped that their conditioning would take a longer time since setting up all the necessary trap preparations would take hours.

As he lowered the tablet on his hand, Rex saw a shadow fleet past 50m from his hiding location in between the bushes and trees, going towards the location where the 2nd Sniper Rifle had fired that eliminated the lady-ninja.

Rex smiled.

The reason is because, just as the ninja was 80m away from the tree where Rex had setup the arm for the 2nd sniper, he stopped and looked at the space just 4 meters away from his location before looking left and right.

In there was a booby trap —not the explosive one since he was already out of landmines— but was an area-spreading booby trap complete with a set of trip wires, spike traps, entanglement, grenade, and even the horizontal guillotine at the height of his chest. Of course, they were all wire-made.

The “Garrote Wire” is a hair-thin transparent wire made of ultra-durable flexible metal fibers. Latest Metallurgy-Techs developed the Nano-Graphene Strings produced using latest NanoTech means.

Bound together, it creates this Military-Grade high versatility use Garrote Wire. With the right tension and the right hands, the wire becomes a weapon that could make expert eyes like the ninja stop on his tracks and re-examine his surroundings. But it was too late. He was already inside the trap and he perfectly knew it.

Getting in was easy. Getting out was not.

No actual metal sheets were included. But for the trained eye that recognizes the (hidden) wires in the trees poorly veiled or deliberately shown, it was easy to trace the wires and directions when specifically searched. The moment he recognized that it was a guillotine trap he felt cold sweat and immediately came to a stop.

—it would have been better if I get my hands on at least one of their Auricle Communicators.

“Come on, what are you going to do then?” Rex was just watching the scene from where he was with both mockery and excitement.

He deliberately voiced it out so that Chronos can hear his words. After all, he was also watching his own self as Chronos saw him and his immediate surroundings.

A window suddenly popped out of existence that startled Rex. It’s an eagle eye’s view of the area he was in right now and in it were two more ninjas in blue body-lights, running at full speed towards the first ninja from two different directions.

Rex was tempted and just as he was about to turn his head to check, he heard Cortana.

[Sir, don’t look in their directions. Chronos might get suspicious of your actions.]

—shit… my curiosity almost killed me!

‘Thanks for the reminder.’

Rex cursed his impulsiveness. He was a God, for goodness’ sakes. He lived trillions upon trillions of years with an abundant amount of battle and life experiences. He had conducted ambushes and raids at least a hundred billion times, fought back ambushes at least trillions of times, and retaliated against a number of the demons’ reconnaissance provocations at least in almost battle memory he could remember…

…so he shouldn’t be this impulsive. He should be composed. So why, then? Why does he seem to regress from his typically composed and daunting persona, into this impulsive youth who seemed to lack self-control and had immature delusions?

[Sir, I may have an answer to that.]

From Rex’s confused thoughts, Cortana voiced a report of her analysis to his situation. It made Rex a little bit surprised.

When he looked over at her in his vision, he saw her fixing her glasses like a teacher —no— Rex was pretty sure Cortana had entered her Teacher Mode... and her stoic expression and the way she fixed her glasses while wearing that teacher dress uniform was a testament of this ‘mode’ of hers.

He blamed himself. It was his inner demons that’d created this ‘mode’ of hers. She was a Vulpine so it only made her more attractive, no, scary. Scary was definitely it. She was too intense!

[You are currently having a balance between your old self and your renewed self, sir. if I should put a finger on it, what it all root out from is pride. You are a God and there are only so few back then in the Terran Universe to actually enter your eyes. A simple provocation exacts your punishment and it was this impulsive desire to enact your immediate punishment that ignites your violent tendencies.]

—w-what?!! Does that mean I was just plainly just a violent person and was always looking for any reason to be violent, is that it?

At least that’s how Rex understood it from the way Cortana had put it.

[Sir, all these changes started the day when you admitted your affection with Amanda. Your innate self was the epithet of violence and destruction while your renewed self had chosen the path of gentleness and compassion. Accepting Amanda’s mission to create for you an anchor you can use to rein-in [Siva] whose influence was ingrained in you since he was your absolute alter ego began to restrain your innate impulses. By accepting this notion, sir, you have gradually controlled your self and had also learned restraint while also learning of the severe consequences that may incur upon the release of your own wrath. But old habits are persistent and because of the unconscious desire for getting violent you ingrained into your soul that you forcefully suppressed, the impulses are resurfacing and you are subconsciously trying to apply anything that could be used in inciting battle to implore you to commit it and if successful will lead to a battle which you also loved instinctively.]

Rex was utterly silent. It’s like he just received a huge slap of reality by his entire mental state just analyzed and stated in front of his table like a fact.

‘So in short, the more I suppress my tendency to be violent, the more stressed I become and so all these “reasons” to get violent comes out of me to relieve my stress without me knowing, is that it?’

[Precisely sir.]

—I have no reply to that.

——it’s not that I love doing it but it’s true that my body just moves on its own when in battle and I myself laugh at that feeling since it truly did felt good… as the more things I hit, the more things I destroy, the more I feel relaxed and feel that it all should just be natural.

———in other words, it’s not that I actually took Amanda’s mission at heart but it’s because I am consciously trying to control these impulses that brings onto me stress and so things like the one that happened in Alexandria happened…

————but it’s not I am also dismissing her…

—————more like, it’s because it was her that I am trying my best to prevent myself from igniting the same catastrophe I brought out in Alexandria and Horbe…

‘It’s because the more bottled up I become when trying to suppress my subconscious desire to get violent, the graver the outburst turns out when I actually lose out of control… is that it?’

[Yes sir.]

One could only take note that whenever Cortana is explaining something lengthy, she was doing it like a calculated habit —that stoic expression as she fixed her glasses.

Again, it was a product of Rex’s preferences.

While Cortana almost had a universal usage when in the hands of Rex, her original and fundamental purpose was to actually make Rex become aware of his own weakness which is his unstable mind.

His dad sent [Cortana] to monitor his mental state, to help Rex control it so that he could properly overcome this weakness and accomplish his goals as he progressed on his ultimate task… saving his little brother; but it was Rex himself who set up on what manner Cortana could do this task and so he ended up ordering her to be direct and exact on her [treatment] about it… thus her strict and also that rampant truthfulness on her choice of words.

She wasn’t even strict, in fact, but the impact on Rex is severe because it was rex himself who will create the shackles that should, eventually, help him to rein-in [Siva] —the God-side of his mortal self at least in Terroa.

If it was just Rex, if Baron and his parents’ safety wasn’t tied with the safety of Terroa, he could’ve just unleashed his anger in everything and let it all burn… hell if he cared… he would eventually say.

Alas…

Cortana’s words were meant for him to have the fear on the consequences of him losing control.

Knowing yourself, your weaknesses, what makes you strong and how you are weak, Rex had slowly built up the founding knowledge on how he could properly “fix” himself with the help of Cortana.

The lashing words she said and the educational manner she said it all, it made him only think of his own threat not only to his enemies but to also the people he wanted to protect the most.

Around the time that Siva finished his rumination of his thoughts, the pen tablet device’s spine give a throb and as he looked at the display, it was only there that he saw one of the ninjas going at the poncho-covered human sized dummy he had setup for the 2nd robotic arm.

Of course, although he already knew the man was already there through Cortana’s spy-view of the panel displayed in Chronos’ Office, being advised not to look at that direction was actually exactly for this moment the 3rd robotic arm holding the 3rd sniper rifle with camera picked him up.

“Ho? You think it’s that easy to sneak on me?” It was a play, of course, for Chronos to hear. On the old man’s view, Rex should only be noticing him now and not on the same time as he did a few more seconds earlier.

He didn’t have to do anything because the robotic arm was an item available to everyone else and he even expected that it wasn’t only him who used it in this manner. But Rex’s set up was made for the moments like these. Although it was too early for them to be used, and such as waste at that, there was nothing wrong in dealing a massive blow to his enemies if they can be used like this.

The 2nd ninja managed to dissolve the trap that was setup 50m away from the 2nd sniper setup but just as he was about to take a step, he noticed something on his left, on the bark of a tree. It was connected to a lynchpin 3/4 of the way out of the latch with which a grenade’s primer was held.

“Yes. This is an ‘oh shit’ moment for you.” Rex was laughing as he spoke on the ninja’s behalf.

The ninja was yet to release the wooden linchpin that he removed at the trap Rex made as a decoy, when he lifted his foot up. But instead of stopping the grenade’s pin from being removed and hitting the primer inside, the lynchpin only fell further, at the same time when the wire hidden in the ground that he stepped on retracted, twining on his foot, trapping him in place.

It was indeed a horrifying “oh shit” moment.

Trapped, he tried to pull his knife to cut the wire and run away but the moment it was cut and he took a step back, his foot stepped on another wire hidden in the ground and it coiled on his foot like a snake in but a moment.

“That’s an ‘oh shit. Shit! SHIT!!’ moment.” Rex just continued watching and laughing as he delivered the lines the ninja should be saying.

By the time the ninja cut the wire on his foot, the five seconds meant for grenadiers to run away upon throwing a grenade ended and it exploded right on his face rendering him dead.

The explosion rocked the 3rd ninja just 40m away from the 2nd and the 1st ninja was also startled that he froze in place.

BANG!!!

A sound from far away, but by the time the sound was registered to the 3rd ninja’s ears, 1st ninja’s upper body was already blasted into smithereens.

Five dead, five more to go. Because Rex already saw them at the top of the waterfall, he perfectly knew just how many assassins he had in his tail.

“You think I’m easy because I’m alone? Heh.”

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Rex’s current inventory:

x1 Anti-Tank Sniper Rifle and Case

*****(Ammo: 100)

x1 Garrote Wire Bangle (Wire Stock: 65m)

x1 Nano-Graphene Armor (Durability: 100%)

x1 Ironman Energy Pack (Battery: 99%)

x1 Ironman Boots (Durability: 100%)

x1 Ironman Exoskeleton (Durability: 100%)

x2 Deus-EXIA1911 Extended Barrel-Custom

*****(Ammo: 60)

x1 Pen-Tablet Multi-Function Display Console

x1 Hacking Module

x2 Obsidian Tactical Knife

x4 Energy Bars (ration)

Hum-Vee Inventory:

x1 (Built-in) .60-Cal “Vulcan” Vehicle Rifle

*****(Ammo: 100)

x4 Detachable Solar Panels

x6 Amphibious Installation SpyCam

x1 [Nikita] Rocket Launcher

*****(Ammo: 100)

x1 .52-Cal M-19A9 “Hawk” Sniper Rifle

*****(Ammo: 100)

x1 .56-Cal CA-16A1 “Pluton” Semiautomatic Rifle

*****(Ammo: 100

x1 .58-Cal RX-23AC “Riviera” Sniper Rifle

*****(Ammo: 100)

x1 .38-Cal M36C6 “B-3-1” Assault Rifle

*****(Ammo: 100)

x5 Water-Repellent Optical Camouflage Poncho

x1 Long-Bow (Arrow: 100)

x1 Crossbow (Quarrel: 100)

x4 (magazines) Deus-EXIA1911 Handgun Ammo

x1 Rock Light (flashlight)

x1 Omni-Functional Sweets Army Tool Kit

x2 Gallons Gasoline

x3 Water-Proof Tactical Backpack

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A one-man army against everyone else…

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