Adam watched from the balcony the surroundings of his expanding camp: the uneven ground and broken houses that hugged the vast area they occupied, and the scorched earth that was gradually healing due to the unending activity of the humans now dwelling in it.
He watched Elena's harsh drills, and he wished he could train alongside those men and women, but his duties only allowed him brief breaks every four hours or so, as he was assembling a Data Core for the base, a data storage unit of sorts, with a special design that maximizes data transfer efficiency.
It wasn't Adam's design, but one of the many possible recipes Adam found on the Crafting Workbench he'd been glued to for the past few hours.
Speaking of which, Adam had grown fond of his workbench; he started modifying it as a side project, trying to add some customized upgrades. He found a magnifier lamp, which he added right away to spare himself the hassle; salvaged a gaming chair from a nearby house for extra comfort; and augmented the material scanner with better lenses and an analysis function by copying lines of code from the Command Center's building parts tracker to create his own crafting tracking program.
He even copied a part of that program onto a thumb drive and paired it with a note to further develop the program that keeps track of specific resources and the most optimal craft and build order to avoid wasting resources on large-scale projects.
But as he was in his crafting and coding bliss, Adam found a new partner in crime who enjoyed the calmness of crafting and tinkering almost as much as he did. That partner was Captain Creed, who kept checking the main command terminal, asking Adam to read some lines for him as he memorized the shapes of words and letters, before returning to the big thing he was tinkering with.
With all his aloofness and weird Star Paladin antics, Captain Creed was intensely interested in helping Adam finish up the Command Center as soon as possible. But it wasn't just for the mystery of the Sun Shard or the fixes he needed for his armor; it felt like he was investing in the base to gain much-needed fire support after he encountered a Boss Monster in a Rift.
It was too weird, almost comical even, to see such a Goliath fiddle around with a screwdriver designed for human-sized hands, as if he were using a sewing needle.
In the RTS games of Wartopia, Star Paladins weren't even controllable units unless the player played as a Knight Order, an independent Solarium sub-faction. To even spawn a Star Paladin, players needed to rack up Requisition Points to call for reinforcements and supply drops from orbit. Once one of the Star Paladins is deployed, they fight endlessly but independently, and regular troop squads and bombardments must assist them all the time until they reach the heart of the enemy base.
Adam, who was very familiar with the aloofness of the Star Paladins, couldn't help but strike up a conversation with his first summon as he sipped on his bland herbal tea that Biscuits made.
"So, what's your plan, sir? Will you fix your armor and head back to the field again?"
The Captain's eyes drifted off as he simply stared into nowhere, thinking deeply, before replying:
"For the moment, I shall oversee the completion of this Command Center while the Sergeant forges steel-alloy plates. If Sol wills it, we shall raise a Holy Furnace to forge Solymer Plates."
"I see. A Sun Shard is required to construct a Holy Furnace, but…" Adam thought for a while and shrugged, "I guess that's for the second phase. It won't be possible just yet."
Captain Creed frowned, then asked:
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, in the RTS game… the 'War Simulation,' as you call it, you'd need a Level Two base to unlock the Holy Furnace. This is done by upgrading the Command Center into a Base Bastion."
"I see."
"The other requirements are to build a Scriptorium Monastery dedicated to technology research, more so than the Tech Shrine, as well as train Script Monks. Another requirement is to secure enough Strategy Points on the map to be eligible to upgrade from a Command Center to a real Base," Adam explained.
"What you are speaking of are Bellarium and Ordinarium expansion procedures," Captain Creed noted as he analyzed Adam's information.
"Well, we knew them as Game Rules," Adam said with a shrug, sipping more of the bland tea before turning around with his chair to face his workbench, whose arms had finished automatically welding new components to the PCB with laser precision.
On the other side of the room, Creed left what he was working on and looked toward Adam. The words Adam kept using started to get on his nerves a little, but he understood the differences between their worlds and wanted to ask something.
"Is this all a game to you, Adam Clay?"
Adam's hands, which were about to get back to work, stopped midway, and he turned his chair back to face Captain Creed.
"What makes you ask that?" Adam asked.
"The way you speak things has always been like that since the day I first met you. A game, a story, a fiction," Creed said with a grim look. "As I roamed your lands, I found paintings as tall as buildings, but they were no recruitment propaganda or any praise to your Gods. They were all products: people laughing, colorful attire, all engrossed in excess, pleasures, and… games."
Adam listened to Creed's tone, and a slight sneer formed on his face along with a single dry chuckle that jolted his head backward.
"That's late-stage consumerism for you." Adam smiled and looked into nowhere. "We kind of did worship money, sex, and, well… games."
"And a world like that deserves saving?" Creed asked, checking Adam's signs with his golden eyes.
Adam knew that he was being tested, and Creed wasn't subtle about it either. If he bullshits his way through this, his 'Creed Cred' will plummet, so he needed to choose his words carefully.
"It's my world, Captain. It was a cruel place, fractured; people were killing people, the rich oppressed the poor, lies upon lies on social media, in the news, in politics. We were rotting, and we were going to fall one day, but not like this," Adam said and stood up from his chair, approaching Creed. "Rome didn't fall in a day. It rotted beforehand; then it fell gradually. All empires had that: the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Turks, the West, and the East. We were the last of this line of great empires. Certainly, we weren't eternal, but the stakes were too high, and the fall was too steep."
Adam paused for a while and looked around, paced back and forth, before continuing:
"But it happened. Not the way anyone imagined it. Certainly, no one on Earth wanted it like that, but here we are. Somehow we fell, somehow we should claw our way up, somehow this world is no longer ours, somehow we must return it."
"And the world before? Is that what you want to return to?" Creed asked, disgust in his voice.
"I wish!" Adam made a natural expression, but he still shook his head. "Nothing will return, Captain. We lost it all. We can't be the same anymore." Adam took in a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh.
"And the Solarium, what is it to you? Do you intend to bring it here? To lead it?" The Captain asked. His voice was no longer as friendly, not that it ever was, but there was a certain sharpness.
"I have to," Adam said. "Necessity demands it."
"What necessity? Worlds die all the time. Death is part of life," Creed said and shrugged without care. "Xenos will inherit this world. It will be that of monsters and aliens, but your civilization has failed; it is natural."
"Failed?" Adam asked, anger stemming within him. For the first time, he found the nerve to glare at Creed, but he was at a loss for words; his anger found them for him. "We were overrun, disemboweled, thrown from buildings, eaten, beaten, and… we fell… we failed."
Adam couldn't help but avert his face. The word "Fuck!" spoke volumes of the frustration he felt.
"You're right." He continued, his back to Creed, "My civilization fell as all others before it. It is the end of civilization as we know it. But…"
"But?" Creed waited for Adam to continue.
"We'll be damned if we take it lying down," Adam said and turned to Creed with a glare. "The Solarium didn't fall despite the endless decay within because there was nothing to fall. It was one; it was unity; it was a single civilization for all. One government above all, worshiped and obeyed."
"And you can build it? Command it?" Creed asked again, closing the space between him and Adam, who didn't falter back, looking at Creed, who was twice his size.
"I must. I will," he replied, gulping, but didn't break eye contact even though his heart was about to jump out of his chest.
"Will you… command me?" Creed asked again, his face getting closer to Adam.
This is it, the ultimate question, facing primal fear, the terror that is a Star Paladin, a being forged with a fragment from the sun, capable of tearing men like Adam to shreds, capable of toppling cities, and even breathing fire like dragons.
Adam felt his body melt, his face burn, and his lungs collapse as if being pressed by a boulder. He still stood tall and fiercely gritted his teeth.
"I will," he said, his expression distorting. "I may not be much now. But the one you see now is leagues ahead of the one you saved when you first got here. I will command you, Captain. One day, I will earn it—your respect. I will earn it; I will strive for it; I will work my bones for it."
"You will?" Creed asked, his aura even fiercer than before.
"Smite me if I lie, Angel. I swear I will do it!" Adam shouted the last bit of willpower within him, thinking that he might collapse as he spat the words out. But then, Creed stopped.
Adam felt a cold breeze as his entire body was now drenched. He looked at Creed and saw him almost three paces away from him, yet he could swear Creed was standing over him.
"That's overly ambitious of you," Creed stated; somehow, his tone was much lighter than before.
Adam was unable to reply immediately. Calming down was hard, but it took him seconds for his sanity skill to work its magic.
"Well… I've been called worse."
As he replied—more like mumbled as loud as his aching lungs could—he watched Creed and wanted to ask something, but Creed suddenly lifted the big thing he was working on and fixed it upright.
Adam thought he was making something for the Command Center's garage, judging from its size, and since he simply didn't want to ask the Sun Paladin what he was doing, but it seemed he was doing something else entirely.
"Captain, what is…"
As he was about to ask, Creed interrupted.
"Legio Bellarium Commander Adam Clay," Creed spoke, for the first time addressing Adam with a title.
That was… an approval! Adam realized. For some reason, it felt more terrifying to face that man's approval than his questions. Being doubted by him was easy to imagine, easy to deal with, but being in a place where he had expectations… that was nerve-wracking like nothing before.
"Yes… Captain." Adam fixed his posture, knowing that in the Bellarium—the Ministry of War—a mere Commander of a small commandery like him was severely outranked by a Star Paladin Captain, who can command an entire Stellar Ark, a literal space fortress.
In terms of ranks, Adam was lower than his summon, Captain Creed. Ironic, but the summoner now answers to the summon.
"What I am about to hand you can be considered the keys to the kingdom," Creed said and turned to stand beside Adam after he situated the construct properly.
"That is…"
Adam's heart was having one of its worst days as it skipped beats and jumped out of his chest more than he could endure. The surprise Creed had prepared was nothing short of terrifying, even by Solarium standards.
"An Auxiliary maker," Creed said, cracking a joke of his own, but to Adam, it wasn't even funny.
"We… Sergeant Elena and I had agreed to prepare a chamber for the auxiliary training module, a hologram chamber."
"Why for?" Captain Creed frowned, pointing at his construction and puffing out his chest with pride. "This machine has birthed the greatest Solarium soldiers for centuries. They call it the Mother of the Bellarium."
"Not anymore, they don't!" Adam turned to him with a horrified face. "I am the 'Lore Buff' here; this thing… it was banned by Solwoken Theron Luminor for a reason!"
The Slayer Paladin rolled his eyes like a teenage girl with a "Ugh! Bannerets."
As for Adam's terror, it was not an overreaction on his part. He knew the lore well, and he knew that this thing Creed created wasn't only banned in-universe but it was also banned on Earth, literally redacted from the comic books after a lawsuit was filed against Warforge, the developers of Wartopia, for violating many visual media policies, including drug use and self-harm.
Yes, that bad. Indeed, for it is the Iron Maiden.
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