It was a situation none had prepared for, nor could anyone have prepared for it, even with five days' notice.
How do you stand before that?
Despite having met Captain Creed before, Adam and Kave were still recovering from the fact that he was towering ahead of them like Goliath of David, except that this Goliath wouldn't even flinch at a sling.
Currently, they were all inside the Command Center: Adam, Kave, Megan, Sergeant Elena, and, of course, Captain Creed. The entire building had been cleared, and the Men-at-Arms were told not to answer any questions regarding the giant.
As for the man in question, Adam was shocked to see him sitting inside the Command Center on a large crate, fiddling with some small electronics and wiring circuitry together like an expert electrician.
He was over 150 years old; the skills he must have picked up through his long life were probably nothing short of extraordinary, as he used tools much smaller than his body with absolute finesse. The Captain glanced at the four nervous individuals in front of him, seeing that Kave had started looking healthier, Adam had become much cleaner, and Sergeant Elena seemed to have grown more accustomed to her stay with this group.
He then turned to Megan, giving her a single glance, before shifting his focus back to his tech project.
"It has been a while, Adam Clay."
Creed spoke calmly, then stood up and headed towards a corner of the Command Center, the group following him with their eyes. He found a project he was working on and started connecting some wires inside. Adam stepped after him and spoke.
"Captain, it is good to see you back," he said, examining the contraption the Captain was assembling. "You are making yourself busy with an interesting project."
"It has come to my attention that your Command Center was in need of a Shrine," the Captain spoke, looking back after installing the part he was working on into the contraption and closing the hatch he had made for it.
As it was finished, it looked like a lectern, similar to those seen in lecture halls and churches, with a microphone extending from it. It was wired to the base computer and showing signs of being operational, with lights glowing and the machine humming from within.
Adam stepped back a few paces to the screen of the main base terminal, and a line was now flashing green.
— COMMAND TECH SHRINE — /ONLINE/
The Tech Shrine was a significant piece of technology, and the fact that Captain Creed was personally at the base, putting his own hands to work, could only mean one thing.
"It seems you require assistance, Captain," Adam said, turning to the man who had come to stand behind him.
"That is true. The one I came here to see was Sergeant Elena, but it seems you have made great strides in your endeavors, Adam Clay." Captain Creed said, eyeing Adam closely with his fiery, radiant eyes. "Your presence has grown stronger. I can feel strength within you."
The Paladin shifted his gaze as he looked back at the others, as if trying to find something linking them all together.
"You too," he said, pointing at Kave. "I may have dismissed you for a madman before, but I can sense it now. Something extraordinary must have awakened inside."
He then turned to Megan; she appeared rather nervous, a slight shiver running through her entire being.
"I felt it before when we met four days ago. You are keener than them." The Captain gave her a closer look with his radiating eyes, the same as he had given Adam. "It feels like you are an Esper."
Upon the mere mention of that word, everyone instantly reacted. Megan stepped back, sweating from every pore; Kave's eyes widened as if something was screaming inside his head, while Elena looked at Megan with shock.
Adam, on the other hand, stepped immediately between Megan and Creed.
"She's not."
It took Adam a lot of nerve and balls to stand between his girlfriend and the nine-foot-tall giant who suspected her of something mortifying. He looked firm, but he was clearly sweating to the point where his olive-colored shirt started to darken and stick to his body. Captain Creed, who was still looking at Megan, simply moved his gaze to Adam and drew his head back again, giving only a single nod.
"Of course." He turned around and went to another corner of the building where there was a wooden kitchen table with something quite large on it, but he still turned back and added, "We wouldn't be having this conversation if she were."
While they could breathe out a sigh of relief, there was a lot to process just from those few lines that were exchanged.
But Creed was right; if he suspected Megan to be an Esper, this conversation would not be this peaceful. The Solarium's attitude towards non-sanctioned Espers was execution upon discovery.
Espers are a variant breed of humans in the Solarium's lore, blessed (or cursed) with Extrasensory Perception abilities—powers that are dangerous to themselves and those around them, but valuable for navigating Hyperspace, thus leading to the sanctioning of Espers as Stellar Ark Navigators—a fate, to some, considered worse than death.
To distract the group from these negative thoughts, which they surely were all sharing, Adam gathered what remained of his courage and stepped forward to stand beside Captain Creed, who was viewing the large objects displayed on the table.
At first, they seemed like scrap metal, but when Adam took a closer look, all the thoughts he had just a moment ago vanished like steam.
"Holy fuck!"
He immediately stepped forward, not minding Captain Creed in the slightest, and looked at the pieces of Power Armor that were lying there, damaged to a sorry condition, with cracks all over them.
The others immediately joined around the table and slowly started to react similarly to Adam, with shock visible and fear clear on their expressions.
Adam turned to Creed, obviously intending to ask what could damage his Power Armor like that, yet Creed was already answering.
"I have delved into one of those reality tears at the outskirts of the city," Creed said, holding his armor's chest piece upward in his two large hands, looking at it with a complicated expression.
"You've been… into a Rift?" Megan looked at him, her breathing becoming heavier as she spoke. "What's on the other side? Are people there? The kidnapped ones?"
Overcoming the primal fear of meeting his golden, fiery eyes, she revealed the critical nature of her inquiry. Creed's eyes, however, didn't part from his armor before he put it back, causing the table to squeak from its weight.
"I did not find a human on the other side," he denied with a brooding look. "Only monsters," he added.
"And the monster that could destroy a Solymer Plate?" Adam asked, cold sweat forming on his back.
"A giant wolf the size of this building," Creed replied, his expression easing up a bit. "A worthy battle, but eliminated nonetheless."
"Was it like… a Boss in some dungeon?" Adam asked, his expression darkening. "Like some sort of a game?"
"While I am unaware of the nature of what you consider a game, calling it the 'Boss' of that Rift may sound logical. After all, the moment it was vanquished, the Rift started to collapse."
"Fucking hell!" Megan's face was as tragic as Adam's. "Systems and Dungeons. They must be connected."
"'Course they are; they appeared right at the same time, right?" Kave replied, as if stating the obvious.
"Not that. The style itself," Megan corrected him. "It is like… how do I explain this? A Game System that awakens people with Rune Powers, and a Dungeon System that invades the world with Boss Monsters to be slain to halt the invasion." Megan then came to a conclusion: "They must come from the same source."
Her thoughts may have revealed something grim.
The Runes and the powers they gained may not be here to help them; they may actually be a neutral party, or, even worse, a part of the invasion itself.
Adam decided not to withhold such information from Professor Hendrick, making a mental note to contact him as soon as they finished their business here.
"My Lord," Elena asked, addressing Creed with reverence. "I understand that you need me to fix your sacred armor." Yet he just nodded.
"While I am confident in my ability, I don't believe we have the knowledge or the means to process Solymer. The best I can do is take measurements and replace the Solymer with Steel Alloy," she said with an ashamed face.
Facing such disappointment, Captain Creed simply stretched his long arm, pointing at the contraption he was working on just now.
"Knowledge," he said, pointing at the Tech Shrine he had finished by hand for the Command Center.
Then, with his other hand, he reached for a container that he had salvaged from somewhere and placed it lightly at the center of the table, following up with a single word: "Means."
Elena stretched her hand and held up the container, made of fancy material, as if scraped from a jewelry store, and she opened it, with the geek trio gathering around her, only for a light to shine on their faces.
While it was shining and shimmering brightly, Elena failed to recognize it, but the three geeks were in for a surprise.
"This is nuts!" Kave couldn't help but exclaim.
"Adam, do you know what this means?" Megan, on the other hand, was holding her head, no longer knowing what was going on.
"Commander, what is this?" As for Elena, she turned to Adam, asking.
He reached out his hand, but before touching it, Adam remembered the nature of that thing. He looked at it, breathing heavily, and couldn't believe he was seeing one of those things existing outside his scope of summoning.
It didn't make any sense, and it shouldn't have, in the first place. Adam looked at Captain Creed and let the words flow:
"This… this is the very thing they used to make Star Paladins. This is the reason why humanity never abandoned a scorched world like Urd in your universe," Adam explained to her as her expression grew wilder with every word he uttered. "This is a Fragment of Sol Imperius, a Sun Shard."
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