The next morning.
Another day had passed ever since Claude successfully received his Bio-Contact.
Following his previously arranged schedule, Claude was supposed to report to the 2nd Procurement Division for his first day of duty today.
He woke up just before the sun rose and did his morning exercise on the field.
After getting integrated with [Vigor], his body's physical limit for muscles development had increased quite drastically, allowing him to once again pick up on his exercising routine.
Claude ran along the tracks for a couple of laps before moving on towards the variety of gym-like training equipment that were present all over the large field of the activity area.
He continued to exercise non-stop until the chirping of morning birds brought him out of his trance-like state.
*chirp* *chirp*
The relatively rigorous training ended right on-time as the residents all around the district started to wake up and begin their activities for the day.
*pant* *pant* *pant*
Claude caught his breath and let his body recover naturally while getting covered in sweats without using Load.
'About time...'
The provisions for every residents in Sector-07 were all handled by the 3rd Support and Logistics Division who distributed the food and drinks thrice daily inside a huge pavilion-like structure with wide roof and no walls called the 'mess hall'.
And just like everything else here, the mess halls in Sector-07 were divided by Divisions. The time when many people started walking out of their cabins in the morning was usually the time that the mess hall began their 1st service of the day.
Claude walked towards the 2nd Division's mess hall where many Rangers were slowly gathering up, he picked up a metal tray and quietly lined up for his breakfast amongst all the other Rangers.
Although the food was nothing to brag about, Claude had to admit that the 3rd Division considered the diets of their citizens carefully, with the everyday menus being served with a balanced nutrition in mind.
'Some of the meats are even delicious! Wonder what animal this is from...?'
As he carefreely pondered about many unnecessary things in his mind, he was approached by a familiar figure who walked towards his part of the long table carrying the same set of food on his tray.
"Your first day today. Excited?"
'Scarface.'
"Should be fun, I think?" Claude replied light-heartedly while still munching on his food.
"I certainly hope so, haha! By the way, your Bio-Contact is...?"
"[Vigor]"
"Oh! Interesting... The most suitable for us hunters and gatherers who make a living based on our quotas." Scarface rubbed his chin with a smile and asked.
"Should I assign a senior with [Vigor] as well then? For you to learn and compare during your probationary period."
"Oh, that'll be helpful actually! Are there a lot of Rangers who've chosen [Vigor] in the 2nd Division?"
"[Vigor] users are not a majority in any Divisions, though you could say that we have the highest percentage of them. One is even a 4-star rank officer past the werebeast realm."
"Werebeast realm?" The new term suddenly caught Claude's attention.
"It's when your Integration Rates have reached at least 50%. Oh, do you know about Integration Rates?"
*nod*
"Good. Yeah, so it's like that, basically. At that stage, your attained power combined with human's intelligence and tactical prowess can easily subdue most Grade-4 beasts with enough preparations."
"Incredible..." Claude muttered as he imagined the power of such a human.
"It is... And yet, living side-by-side with idle Grade-5 beasts and above surrounding us, we're still just like a trapped rat in this Biome..."
"..."
"How is it that those Grade-5 and above beasts don't seem to bother us though?" Claude asked curiously.
"They do, sometimes. Usually when their natural preys aren't around. But for ones above that... Well, let's just say that tigers don't usually kill insects for fun right?"
"Hmm..." Claude hummed in agreement,
"While we're on the subject, can I ask about how my probationary period will work? Cause I thought most 2nd Division Rangers have free reign on their activities as long as they fulfill their quotas."
"Right. Actually, this will usually be covered during the briefing today but..."
"Basically, a probationary officer will help their senior Ranger fulfill his/her quota for the next month or so until they were deemed independent enough to work on their own."
"I see."
"Don't worry about it, and I think I have someone in mind who'll be perfect as your senior officer. Come together with me to the admin cabin after breakfast."
"Alright."
.
.
Shortly after, the two finished what's left of their food without talking about anything else and went on their way to the 2nd Division administration cabin together.
"...And so!"
"Please welcome our new [Vigor] user and 2nd Division Ranger, Claude everybody!"
*CLAP* *CLAP* *CLAP*
As soon as they reached the hall of the cabin, Scarface did a similar announcement as the one he'd made when he'd issued Claude his Division tag.
Some familiar faces, combined with new ones also followed through with another round of claps for him around the hall.
'Haven't we done this already though...?'
"Now... Hey, do you know where Lyra is?" Scarface turned towards one of his staffs to the side to ask.
"She was... Oh, speak of the devil." The staff was about to answer when a figure coming through the entrance stopped his train of thought.
Passing through the gate of the admin cabin, the figure of a somewhat buff woman Ranger wearing her uniform and carrying a shock spear on her back could be seen walking in as she carried a bag of dismantled rabbit meat on her hand.
"Morning everyone, beauty reporting for duty!" The black-haired ponytailed girl smiled as she greeted everyone with a joking tone.
"..."
"Lyra! Over here!" Scarface quickly gestured for her to come towards him.
*step* *step*
"What's it old man?" She greeted the chief of staff, Scarface, with a raised hand.
"This here's Claude. A new recruit. Introduce yourself." Scarface pointed to his side with his thumb
"Heya Claude! The name's Lyra, so what's this? A marriage interview for me?"
"Claude, a pleasure." Claude returned her introduction with a stretched hand and a smile.
The tall well-built girl's attitude was somewhat refreshing to him.
Seeing Claude's polite greeting, she returned his stretched hand and met it with her own as they shook,
"What a polite young'un! Even though you look older than me." She commented with enthusiasm.
"Thank you."
"Actually, Lyra's age is around--"
"STOP!!" Scarface was about to correct her statement, but a shout suddenly burst out in reply,
"What are you doing old man?? Another word there and I would've sent you into an early retirement! A marriage interview is supposed to start with the best impressions."
"And whose marriage interview do you think you're attending?" Scarface was almost speechless looking at her behaviour,
"Claude is a new recruit, you'll be his senior officer during his next month of probation. I'd say take good care of each other, but... I'd rather you just act more normal."
"Eeeh~"
"That's a pain... I mean, no offense." Lyra slumped at the mention of her new task before turning to Claude with a sincerely apologetic look on her face.
"This is a mandatory duty Lyra, Claude is a [Vigor] user just like you, I was hoping you can teach him the ropes."
"Oh, really? His personality sure doesn't look like it's suited for [Vigor] though..." She made another observation on Claude.
'Personality?'
"We won't know that until we see it. I personally believe that he has some of Combat Ursa's tenacity in him." Scarface turned to Claude as he remembered the last moments of his exam when he killed the Smilodon in one decisive charge.
"But I still--"
"There's also the wage bonus for being a senior officer."
"Nice to meet you Claude. We should leave early for our hunt!" Lyra quickly perked up at Scarface's last sentence.
"Um, sure." Claude looked on at the two's interaction with a smile as he assented.
.
.
Inside an enclosed room with metal walls and floors.
Two people wearing the same exo-skeletal suit of armour stood side-by-side in front of a man in formal suit sitting behind a desk.
"...That's all?" The man in a suit spoke slowly with a mature but not too old of a voice.
"Yes. The underground tunnel beneath the hill does have trails of Old Era relics, but we don't find anything new or noteworthy that we haven't seen before. All structural relics we've found had already been towed back inside the Capital." One of the two men reported.
These two people were exactly the ones who had gone digging through the tunnel with the Old Era ruins from which Claude had emerged.
"Maybe we really should've looked deeper to see if we can discover anything else..." His colleague, the other guy spoke.
"That's not part of the task. We can't risk leaving our trails for any Naraka inhabitants to follow them all the way up to Eden." He was quickly shot down by the first stern-looking guy.
"The tunnel might not go all the way to Naraka."
"Still not within protocol."
"..." While the two guys in armours were debating, the man in suit didn't interrupt them and continued to look through the files on his desk.
He riffled through every reports and photographs quickly without reading too much into it, that is, until one image suddenly caught his eyes.
'...'
"Hey." The man softly called out to the two guys in armours and pulled up one particular photograph out front.
It was a picture of a bunker with its door broken apart.
"What is this?"
"That's one of the broken bunkers we've found amongst the ruins." The first guy replied sternly.
"...I know. Do you see HOW it was broken?"
"..." The guy in armour turned silent.
"Well let me tell you. The metal on the joints were sliced cleanly using some sort of cutting tool, but if you look more closely, the end of the cut metal shows signs of deformation through extreme heat."
"And the cutting patterns... This type of markings couldn't have been made using any known artifacts of the Old Era."
"Lastly, even at a glance, any morons would be able to see that the thickness of the dust covering the severed joints was nowhere near the dust on the rest of the bunker's outer layer, so let me ask you again,"
The man in a suit inhaled a breath of air as if he's patiently holding on to his temper,
"What is this?"
.
"...There's someone who had explored the tunnel before us?" The face of the two guys turned grim as they looked towards each other.
"Yeah, no sh*t."
*sigh*
The man in suit gave a long sigh, knowing that the matter had become more bothersome.
"ERA... Which Sector is the closest to the site?" He asked,
"That would be Sector-05 and 07."
"Go and request a meeting with the Commander of each Sector. Ask them for a comprehensive interview with the person or people who have discovered the site before us."
"Yes sir!"
"Not finished, upon meeting said person, do what you must to acquire whatever stuff they've taken from inside the bunker. Offer some compensations, Those Rangers most likely wouldn't reject."
"..."
"Go!"
""Sir, yes sir!"" The two guys replied exactly at the same time and quickly walked out of the room through the only automatic metal door on the front.
*VOOM*
The door opened and closed just as hurriedly responding to the movement of the two men.
*sigh*
"..."
The man in the suit stayed behind his desk and scrutinized the photographs taken for that one particular bunker once more.
'The dust inside the bunker was all over the place but was completely clean in that one corner of the room.'
'Either there was an object placed there before, or...'