Kaden looked behind to the arena. Perhaps now that he was gone, Sidon would stop talking about him. Additionally, the gansters should leave him alone, if he is with the military.

As for the actual service. There was nothing stopping him, if he ever decided he had enough or was detrimental to his goals. So what? He could run and leave to live with beasts. There was no loyalty involved. Yet, if things did go well, he could rise up in the Saint Empire’s power structure. He could influence things! Such things would have to be left for the future, though.

Nelsen looked very happy about getting him come along. Kaden had planned good background lie to tell this time. If Sidon didn’t blabber anymore, he could hide most things related to himself. As long as nothing he said could be proven, all was fine.

He wondered for a moment, if that itself was a problem. Would have be able to rise in ranks, if nothing was known about him? Nor was he a noble. Still, the military power structure so far had always seemed to tie together with personal power. Roughly at least.

“Well, whatever the case is, I’ll play nice!” Kaden thought to himself as he decided how to deal with things. “Patience seems to work. Soon I will grow into a high beast and then I will no longer be a weakling! Channel Opening stage is still a minion level! This Nelsen is only at later stages of Formation stage, it seems. Still, he is leader of an elite team. Condensation would be likely higher officers. They don’t directly deal with me in a long time. I will have no problematic opponents until then!”

This is what he believed at least.

As Kaden entered Corand’s third layer, the military layer, he looked around. He had not been there before. He had not had reason to go there yet. It seemed like internal fortification. Even if the commoner layers get burned down by some attack, the military layer would last for quite a while. Beyond it, on the fourth layer and further in, there were first richer merchans, then nobles, then church and powerful experts, then withing the center there was the imperial palace where emperor and highest nobles and extremely important people resided.

Military was expected to sacrifice their lives for those losers, if need be. Kaden sneered in his mind. He would escape long before such thing happened.

“Nelsen”, Kaden started. “Why aren’t the bums outside of the city be dragged into army as cannon fodder?”

Kaden did wonder, why it had been necessary to forcibly take weakling villagers like from Dashire. He was certain the saints would do it too, if it was viewed necessary. There was even a law which allowed them to recruit people who didn’t matter. Just like himself now. Had he disagreed, Nelsen could have taken him forcibly.

“Thats captain Nelsen to you”, Nelsen replied, but continued. “As for the bums. They arent worth the time. Think of it as a ‘relevant reason’. Even if we could take them, they have no ability at all. Not worth it. We do test quite a few of them and many come to us anyway to escape that life. As for cannon fodder. There are very few reasons to do such a thing.”

“If you threw them out as baits to beasts or dress them up as soldiers, they’d still be useful, yes?” Kaden continued. He had not been made to look like soldier, but the number of people did seem to externally increase the army size. “You would also get rid of the stink outside and make them shape up so they’ll get stronger to avoid being used as cannon fodder. How does that sound...sir?”

Nelsen stared at Kaden silently. “Interesting ideas you have there. I think that would result into riots, though.”

“Easily crushed by a few Formation stage experts or stronger”, Kaden pointed out. “With unmistakable power and iron fist, they could only obey or die.”

“Your views are noted”, Nelsen said in a way that told Kaden to end it there for now.

Kaden wondered, if culture in Saint Empire was different from Sacronan. Probably not, he decided. They did already use him in such a way. Nelsen isn’t just degenerate who would come up with such plans.

Therefore, with the matter pushed aside, he paid more attention to the military layer. There were a few barracks. They were likely all around the layer and did house lots of soldiers. There were more usual looking buildings too. Kaden expected them belonging to higher ranks. There was probably an army housed in the city. Thats also probably just Corand. There were always beasts to fight. Repeated wars with Sacronan too. Kaden wondered just how many soldiers total Saint Empire had and how large portion of them were in the city? He would need to kill quite a many of them eventually.

Eventually Nelsen brought Kaden to one of the buildings that looked pretty much the rest. The military seemed to like making everything look the same. There was only a number 34 assigned.

Once he was taken in, Nelsen discussed some matters with someone and then led Kaden further in and past a training yard with lots of soldiers. Kaden noticed they were weaklings. He would likely have to spend some weeks with them. They were the common soldiers thrown at enemies. Barely cannon fodder. In other words, losers. All they were doing was swinging around swords.

Kaden didn’t want to mingle with them too long so he hoped Nelsen did his arrangements quickly.

Speaking of arrangements, he was taken to a room with some contraptions.

“Get the test ready”, Nelsen gave some orders. “This is a new recruit I picked up. He is… special. I want to see how he ranks up.”

An older bearded man with quite a few scars was sitting at back of the room.

“Captain, we already have had new recruits for a while. Adding a new one...”, the older soldier began.

“He is far beyond those recruits of yours, sergeant”, Nelsen interrupted. “He just need some basic training and to get into the system. He will be moving up to my group soon. I believe this shouldn’t be a problem. I already discussed the matter.”

The old sergeant gave a look at Kaden. “That kid? Isn’t he too young?”

“Barely past the age when youngest start their training”, Nelsen nodded. “Yet, he is almost at advanced Channel Opening and basically a freak. Perfect for my elite team. So have him tested.”

The sergeant looked at Kaden oddly and then frowned. He shrugged and then started to set up the machines.

Kaden wondered for a moment what it was. It was testing something? It might be dangerous, but there was no getting around it. Considering how he was there was no avoiding it. Eventually, somewhere, someone would take a look at him more carefully. It was better to be done at such a basic location rather than someone with greater and more advanced resources.

“What is this for?” Kaden asked. “…..sir.”

“We’ll give look at your cultivation, talent and other things”, Nelsen answered. “Military needs to know available resources. I’m well aware that you aren’t normal so don’t worry about any oddities. It might even be good for you since you might have problems along the way due to it.”

“I can handle it myself, but whatever”, Kaden replied. “How does this work.”

The old sergean pointed at a crystaline ball. “Just touch it, since you are at Channel Opening, use your mana on it too.”

Kaden frowned. He decided not to use his core and suppress it. Which happened to be quite difficult this time. Before touching the ball Kaden quickly inspected his core. He hadn’t planned this newest move so the core was evolving at a bad place. It wasn’t still done whatever it was doing, but perhaps soon. Controlling it was getting harder.

He then touched the orb and channeled mana into it. The orb lit up and some numbers and graphs appeared on another tool next to.

“Ok, you can stop”, said the sergeant.

Kaden let out a small sigh of relief. Nothing seemed to have been revealed. The reactions would have been different.

“This is indeed one weird kid you picked up, captain”, the sergeant said as he was rubbing his beard. “As you said, he is indeed at mid Channel Opening, very good talent, and honestly speaking he should be at advanced already, even at limit.”

“What? Limit?” Nelsen said with a surprise.

“His channels are extremely wide and their walls are thick… very thick… too thick. Mana he would require for these is too large.” There was quite a bit wonder in the sergeants voice too. “Can he even cast any magic? I’d imagine it to be next to impossible. These channels should be too rigid and hard to control.”

“He does … I personally saw him cast a creepy necromancy spell”, Nelsen replied.

The sergeant looked at Kaden with a frown again, who in turn didn’t show much emotions about the results. This was very interesting to Kaden, he had never been compared to ordinary humans. Thick mana channels? That was given, considering the amount of mana core regularly sent through them. Even, if his body was strong and was able to contain a core, his channels might not if they were not strong.

“Where did you find the kid? I haven’t ever seen something like this”, continued the sergeant.

“He was literally tearing apart some gangsters. As for his origin, unknown, but apparently he has been experimented on. So… about that, recruit?” Nelsen looked at Kaden curiously.

“Some necromancer wanted to mix humans and beasts”, Kaden lied confidently. He had practiced all this in his mind already. “He hid in some explored remnant and thats where I escaped from when something ate him, I think.”

None of that could be confirmed. Even, if he had to confirm it, he could show the remnant and Trohin’s lab. He had figured that very few people actually knew about it and most, if not all of them, at least ones that military personel would be connected to, barring bad luck, are already dead. Some risks could be taken. Whoever had leaked that location no longer was a problem, since Kaden was in the army now. So even if that part leaked, he could always claim that Trohin had such experiments too.

“Well, I can’t say if this is succesfull experiment or a failed one”, the sergeant said. “Your channels are messed up. I don’t even know how you cast spells… and whats that? A ball of channels? A fake core or something? Does it even work? Not only your channels are messed up, but your body mana specially is off the charts. Its something you would find, if you hooked up a beast to this testing machine. Yet, even if that could be considered succesful, thats where most of your mana is. Your channels, despite their wideness and strength, contain in total relatively small amount of mana. You have big and strong channels, but very little inside them.”

Kaden didn’t care about that problem either. He knew this was the case. His mana was in his core and very little of it in his human type parts. That was not a problem since he could take mana from the core, which itself probably had much more mana than several Channel Opening cultivators total. Not that all of it was usable, but he should be way beyond their limits.

“Do you see any problems?” Nelsen asked with curiosity.

“Problems? Haven’t you listened what I just said?” The sergeant replied. “The kid is walking bag problems. How is he alive? How does he cast spells? Or even cultivate to begin with?”

“I eat things with mana. Beast or people. Doesn’t matter”, Kaden replied. He cast the Devour and showed it. “Useful thing I picked up from the necromancers lab.”

The sergeant grimaced.

Thats right. Kaden knew the Devour spell had become one of his trademarks already. Everyone who cared would find what it does and it would explain why it allows him to cultivate. They needed not know that it wasn’t useful for long term cultivation for the time being at least. He could eat a few people, but then he would have to either waste that mana and flesh to heal himself or wait until he could devour more. It was plausible enough that, if he didn’t directly demonstrate it under examination, it would not be discovered. Next he intended to ask help for his actual cultivation method.

“I have an actual mana system, but its doing nearly nothing. I hope to get better one from the army”, Kaden added calmly.

“We will see about that a bit later”, Nelsen replied. “There is great selection, but they require some contribution points that you will need to gather from completing missions. Once you are with my team, some missions can be arranged.”

“Waste of time!” Kaden shook his head. “I want access to books and other materials related to formations. I’ll make my own. Do you think any of the the mana systems will work for me?…. Sir.”

“Probably not”, Nelsen realised. “Wait… formations?”

“I have picked clean many corpses. There was once some formation master. I found books from him”, Kaden replied.

Nelsen sighed and even the sergeant as looking curiously. Then he started talking. “So spit it out, what can you do? Anything special? We are going to ask all of this later, but the sooner we know the better. I meant what I said you back there at the arena. Military supports geniuses. Not only do you have strong mana cultivation… despite its oddities, but now we find you have understanding of formations? Even better! Do you still own those books you have or anything else valuable?”

Kaden frowned.

“You can talk”, Nelsen continued. “I assure you, military does not confiscate things that our soldiers find or own. We do not want to stop their growth. It is good way to make everyone work harder, if they know they can keep the things they get their hands on. Even if you did find something that military would like, you will be compensated fairly! You might take part in missions to acquire things, but all of that is compensated well too!”

There was no way to hide it forever so, Kaden decided to take a risk. If what Nelsen said was true, he would get resources in exchange for completing military missions. He would eventually need to ask for those resources. People would find he had things that he probably shouldn’t have. It could not be hidden. He took out his spatial bag.

“Where did you get that?” Nelsen asked immediately.

“That formation master”, Kaden replied lying a bit again mixing in some truth. “I killed a dire beast that was muching on his corpse. Not sure if it killed him or whether it just found the corpse. Can’t say who he was either.”

“Well, you are lucky. That thing is indeed valuable and I doubt your dire beast killed the man. It wouldn’t have been able to kill anyone able to afford that”, Nelsen pointed out. “Yet, spatial bags are not unusual in the military. This one will be marked to be yours. We might ask you to help carry things with it, but its yours. So anything else?”

“Before ending up with that necromancer, I lived in a village thats now gone”, Kaden continued lying. “My father was a blacksmith. I planned to mix that skill with formations.”

Kaden took out his gauntlet and showed its effect. “This is my first functioning product.”

Nelsen was extremely happy. He had only expected to have brought in a young genius with good fighting power. Now he found that this genius was more so than he had expected. Not only could he fight, but he knew useful professions! Finding such a seedling was a great merit for Nelsen! Someone with potential crafting skill was more valuable than a fighter! Kaden was both!

Kaden noticed this joy that Nelsen was feeling. Even the sergeant who silently listened everything was shocked.

“Good, it worked out!”, Kaden thought to himself. Everything was going just fine. They were eating his lies effortlessly and the truths he showed were good!

The more valuable he was the better. His faults would be ignored! Nelsen was easy to make happy, it seems. It was indeed a good idea to reveal his abilities! All this would cement his position. Once it was unshakeable, he could start acting.