Bale... was still dumbfounded.
---
Within sequences of the final confirmation, the selected first division cadets, including the Divers, Navigators and Pilots of which were about fifty seven in total numbers made their way out of the Academy fort. Instructors guided the selected cadets toward a sealed passageway at the far end of the hall, one that Bale had only ever seen closed, its matte surface unbroken by seams or lights. It was opening now with a low mechanical hum, which revealed a corridor bathed in dim white illumination.
Bale, however, had not yet fully accepted that his name had been called.
' Someone pls tell me this isn't real...'
His legs moved, his breathing stayed even, and his face remained outwardly calm, but something inside him lagged behind, as though his mind had been left standing back in the assembly hall while his body continued forward without it.
"Bale."
He turned slightly at the familiar voice. It's was Tora's.
Tora was walking beside him, her neural suit already partially sealed along her arms and collarbone. Her expression carried a restrained excitement, the kind she only showed when she was trying very hard not to show anything at all.
"So," she said quietly, eyes forward. "Looks like you finally did something impressive without telling me."
He exhaled, a short, almost humorless breath.
"I didn't do anything," Bale replied. "That's the problem."
She glanced at him, lips twitching. "You say that like it's a bad thing. Your jacket though, seal it up."
Startled by her last words, Bale looked at her and immediately adjusted his neural suit. "O-oh, thank you."
"Bale." Tora called again, this time reassuring. " It's nothing. I don't want you thinking."
Bale stared at her for some moments.
"Y-yeah, thanks... Tora."
She answered with a nod and a slight smile.
Ahead of them, Tosin was walking while resting his head on his hands clasped behind his neck, but his facial expression was unreadable. Well, not that Bale could really tell from seeing only his back. Tosin hadn't spoken a word since the selection or acted as he used to, but Bale could tell from the subtle tension in his shoulders that he was far from indifferent.
With a smile he muttered, " This guy..."
Further ahead still, Liu Zhang strode as if the corridor had been built for him alone.
He was already speaking—laughing, actually—surrounded by his two other Scout cadets—Blake and Japhet, of course—who nodded a little too eagerly at everything he said. His confidence was effortless, bordering on careless, as though this entire mission were nothing more than a formality.
Even some of the Divers tried walking at a safe distance. No one wanted trouble, perhaps everyone's minds were filled with the anticipation of meeting with the superhumans, the Unbounds.
The only weapon of survival for humanity. The ones believed to be on the evolution path of godhood.
Oh, and the mission that lied beyond, probably waiting. The cadets surely felt entirely different toward their final destination. Anticipation, maybe, hope for strength, maybe. Different cadets with their various thoughts.
"Unbounds," Liu Zhang was saying loudly and nonchalantly. The cadets around didn't pay him any attention though. They merely just walked on, keeping their lanes. "I've read enough reports to know they're not gods. Just humans who survived longer than the rest of us."
Japhet chuckled. "Still, these Unbounds—"
"—are overrated," Liu Zhang cut in. "If they bleed, they're not special."
"Huh, who ever said they bleed?" Blake snickered, asking.
Liu Zhang shot him a gaze, seemingly surprised by his question, before bursting into laughter.
HAHAHAHAHA!
"Have you forgotten?My dad's one, remember?" He then lowered his voice, "At last I've met him once."
Bale was behind them, listening. He didn't need to respond anyway. He could already feel the distance forming—an invisible line between those who spoke loudly to reassure themselves and those who said nothing because they didn't need to.
No, Liu Zhang's cohort and the rest of the cadets.
Just then, the corridor widened abruptly, opening into a hangar space so vast it momentarily disrupted Bale's sense of scale.
The ceiling stretched high above them, segmented by structural ribs and soft, pulsing light panels. The floor beneath their boots was polished to a dull sheen, marked with guiding lines that converged toward a single object resting at the center of the hangar.
The ship.
The spaceship driven down to the Academy by the Prometheus men who came in earlier.
It was long and narrow, its hull angular and matte-black, absorbing light rather than reflecting it. The surface bore no ornamentation. Only a series of faint geometric markings that seemed more functional than symbolic designed the hull.
Near the forward section, a designation was etched cleanly into the hull:
PMS–AURORA VEIL
Code: VFP-Σ07
Bale, however, was staring at the ship longer than he's supposed to.
"That's… smaller than I expected," Tora murmured.
"It's not a transport ship," Tosin said quietly, having slowed just enough to speak to them. "It's a vector carrier ship. It is built for precision in movement, not comfort. Throughout the flight, the boarders don't have a sense of drifting or turbulence. It's always like it is driven on smooth road."
"Hm, you seem to know a little about ships. Don't you?" Tora asked.
"Ah, hahahaha," Never expecting the question, Tosin squinted his eyes, laughing lightly and scratching the back of his head. "Now you know."
The Prometheus men were already waiting.
They stood near the boarding ramp, dressed uniformly in vanta-black suits that seemed to devour the ambient light around them. Their expressions were neutral, their posture identical, as if they had been arranged rather than gathered. The ones that accompanied the cadets back outside joined them, one of them entering into the ship.
One of the lined-up men then stepped forward.
"Selected cadets," he said, his voice calm and unamplified, yet somehow carrying across the hangar. "You will board in the order you were called. Follow the indicators. Do not remove your neural comms unless instructed."
His voice dictated strict procedure, nothing more. Prometheus do their things that way.
As Bale ascended the ramp along with the rest of the cadets, a subtle vibration passed through the soles of his boots—a low, constant hum that felt less like machinery and more like a held breath.
The interior of the Aurora Veil was stark.
'Different..'
This was his first time boarding a ship that wasn't the Academy's. Oh, that reminded him of how his first flop incident happened. This ship, however, was entirely different.
And no flops this time too.
The main compartment was elongated, lined with fold-in seating along both sides. The lighting was dimmer here, deliberately so, casting soft shadows that blurred edges and reduced distractions. There were no windows—only a curved, forward-facing display that currently showed nothing but a muted Prometheus insignia.
Some of the Unbounds... were already present.
Bale recognized them immediately—not by appearance, but by presence which immediately assaulted his whole sensibility and perception. He caught himself feeling suppressed under some certain pressure...like dominion and authority.
'They're actually like they were spoken of.'
Even the highest ranking Pilot cadets were not spared. Their usual indifference about Unbounds or matters related to them were now totally replaced by being dumbfounded.
The Unbounds sat scattered throughout the compartment, some leaning back with their eyes closed, others quietly observing the cadets as they filed in. They looked… ordinary. Too ordinary. No glowing vermillion eyes. No wings like angels. No horns like the devils. No visible augmentations. Just people.
And yet, the air around them felt subtly different, as if the space itself had adjusted to accommodate them.
Three figures stood apart near the forward bulkhead. These ones however, gave off more domineering aura. They were obviously stronger than the first ones. The weak minded cadets were already feeling a sense of veneration. Some even muttered that they're really gods in human form.
These ones though, did not look at the cadets. They did not speak, too. One of them—a woman with closely cropped hair and a faint scar tracing her jaw—stood with her hands folded loosely behind her back, gaze fixed on the inactive display.
Bale swallowed.
"So that's them," someone whispered behind him.
Tora leaned closer. "They don't look like legends."
"No," Bale said softly. "They look like survivors."
"The atmosphere has changed."
"Yeah."
At that moment, the boarding ramp sealed shut with a muted hiss.
A moment later, the hum beneath their feet deepened.
"Departure sequence initiated," a neutral voice announced through the ship itself. "Destination: Prometheus Planet. Estimated transit: nine sequences."
The Aurora Veil lifted smoothly, without the violent jolt Bale had expected. The motion was so controlled that it took him several seconds to realize they were no longer grounded.
'Tosin really did know his way round ships. I should cling to him.'
Only when the forward display flickered to life, revealing the receding hangar and the vast curvature of the Academy planet beyond, did the reality settle in.
They were leaving.
Tosin exhaled slowly. "No turning back now."
A few distances away, Liu Zhang grinned. "Why would we want to?"
The ship slipped into transit with a sudden compression of space rather than speed—a sensation like being briefly folded inward, then released. The ship warped into space.
Bale... was always dumbfounded whenever this phenomenon occurs. Though it was not his first time boarding warp flights, he was always still ever fazed by what neural technology had brought about in this current era. With that aid of neural technology and discoveries through the vortexes, so many things had become very easy for humans. Communication could be done with a simple thought through neural comms. Even many aspects of technology had made utility of resources feel almost like an idle man's job.
However though, these thoughts got replaced by the one still bothering him.
'Why me?'
Bale had to be frank with himself. He knew that among the cadets, he was neither the strongest nor the fastest. And obviously not the most synchronized, if not the least, everyone knew that. His VCI barely placed him above the threshold that separated liability from potential. The only area where his performances were average for a cadet were in academic theory classes. He was barely holding on, generally.
And yet, Prometheus had chosen him, confirming from their mouth, more precisely.
A subtle chime sounded through the compartment.
One of the Prometheus men stepped forward again, his presence commanding silence without effort.
"You are being transported to Prometheus to join a joint operational caravan," he said. "This caravan will include personnel from Cerberus major headquarters at Tirn planet."
His gaze swept over them, pausing—just briefly—on Bale.
"You are not here to prove yourselves," he continued. "You are here to observe, assist where instructed, and survive. Any deviation from protocol will be noted."
'W-why did he look at me like that?'
Tora shifted beside Bale. "Comforting," she whispered.
After a few space warp jumps covering over a distance of 1.2 billion kilometers in space in just around 30 minutes, they finally got to their destination.
Actually though, if a spaceship somehow covered 1.2 billion kilometres in just 30 minutes, it would have to be moving at roughly 6.7 × 10⁸ metres per second, which, honestly, is more than twice the speed of light. And that's where things get awkward. According to normal physics, nothing with mass is supposed to go that fast. So with regular engines, that trip just doesn't work. The only way it begins to make sense is if the ship wasn't really "racing" through space at all, but sort of bending space itself — compressing the distance so the journey becomes shorter than it looks. From far away, it would seem faster than light, even though the ship locally never actually breaks that limit. It's the kind of idea that sounds impossible at first… and maybe still kind of is.
But with the current technologies in this interstellar era, this was not something surprising anymore.
As the ship settled into its transit corridor after travelling some distances after the last space warp, the forward display shifted again—this time revealing a distant, artificial glow ahead.
Prometheus Planet. They have arrived the territory of Prometheus.
Even from afar, it felt different.
It felt...
Cold, measured, and watching.
Whatever waited for them on Prometheus Planet, whatever role he was meant to play in this mission, one thing was already clear.
This was no longer training.
And for better or worse, he had stepped into the world that lay beyond the Academy's walls, at least as far as he could remember.
Whether he belonged there or not remained to be seen.