The Ghost System - Chapter 18

As per usual Rhys found himself a spot tucked away from all the others where he could quietly observe the masses. All the freshmen were in their grey military uniforms, the same set of t-shirt, cargo pants and sneakers that had been given to them when they registered for college. Although Rhys had only been on campus for a few nights, there were other students that had been here for months already and the way they interacted showed it.

Rhys watched with stiff shoulders as people greeted each other with smiles and hugs and slaps on the back, apparently bonds had been formed over the waiting period. And these people were lucky enough to have been sorted into a class with people they knew. Rhys awkwardly stuffed his hands into his pants pockets, secretly disappointed that he had been put into a different class from Otis and hoping the door to the lecture hall would open soon so that he would not have to witness all this happiness.

The atmosphere was just too bright and welcoming, a feeling that made Rhys frown and lean further back against the wall. After such a violent initiation test, and finding out that his name was on the termination list, Rhys could not get himself into the same relaxed mindset as the others.

The light above the lecture hall door finally turned green and the door slid open to reveal a large empty lecture hall. The room was well lit but eerily quiet. It made everyone who was eager to go inside hesitate and hold their breath. Rhys watched as the students around him glanced at each other nervously, waiting to see who would be the first brave person to enter the hall.

One handsome guy with a big goofy grin eventually stepped foreword with a shrug. “Okay then, I guess I’ll go first.”

His bravery was rewarded with chuckling and light clapping from the other students. And once they saw him enter safely, the rest followed.

Rhys entered the hall and quickly sought out a seat near the back where he would have a good view of his classmates. Unfortunately, the others had the same idea as him because by the time he got inside the back rows had already been filled up with students.

After a few minutes, everybody who had been waiting outside had been seated, and among the students, Rhys spotted the girl with the poison generation ability near the back corner of the hall, as well as his roommate Connor, surrounded by a bunch of people. This scene looked exactly the same as what Rhys had seen in the cafeteria. The students were trying their best to get on his good side. They were so obviously fawning over him and cracking jokes with him like he was their best friend. In a sense, it was wise to make friends with the strong but the way they were so desperately clinging onto the uninterested Connor looked so pathetic to Rhys.

Among the group of suck-ups, Rhys recognised the brown-haired guy who had been the first to enter the hall. Rhys looked curiously at his luminescent light green aura and checked what his ability was.

[Aura Detection used + 5 Exp]

[Aura: Energy transfer (weak)]

[‘That one has a useful ability. Go solidify a comradeship with that human.’] Rhys rolled his eyes at the teacher’s words but did not disagree with him. People with the energy transferal ability were actually quite sought after. Especially in battle situations, people with this ability came to be even more preferred than people with healing abilities.

Energy transfers were on the same level as taking adrenaline pills, they allowed soldiers to go hard and fast for varying times depending on the strength of the transferer.

‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea to make friends with him, but I’m not so sure that he would want to make friends with me’ Rhys thought as he watched the guy trying his best to have a conversation with Connor who was so obviously disinterested. He was among the people gathered around Connor like beggars hoping for scraps. They had their eyes out for the people who looked strong, Rhys doubted that any of them would give him a second glance.

Suddenly the door to the lecture hall slid open revealing a man in its stead. To Rhys’s surprise he looked ordinary, painfully so. The most noticeable thing about him were the dark circles under his eyes and the way he slouched his shoulders. He walked lazily to the centre of the hall where a desk and podium were waiting for him. He quietly cleared his throat and slid a pair of circular rimmed glasses onto his face before looking up at the students. Although his appearance was lacklustre, his gaze on the other hand was noteworthy. His sharp eyes landed on each student before he coldly looked down at the papers in front of him.

“Stand up and greet me.” Despite his humble appearance his voice was severely authoritative.

Immediately the students shot to their feet, leaving Rhys and a few other clueless students to scramble to their feet afterwards. Everyone clenched their hands into fists and kept their arms at their sides and unanimously echoed, “Good morning, Sir!”

Rhys frowned wondering when everyone besides him had learned the formal greeting.

“Be seated.” His face was completely unimpressed.

“I usually like to start off the first day with a history lesson, but since we are limited for time, I’ll just give a quick recap that will hopefully remind you all of what your purpose is here.”

The tall thin man, stepped around his podium and approached the stairs in between isles of students.

“In March, two thousand and twenty-six, Earth came under attack by the Xerserth Empire, a race of humanoid type aliens who had already conquered tens of planets.”

Rhys was immediately taken back to his high school classes where he had seen pictures of the Xerserth. Despite their amazing technological and scientific feats, the Xerserth Empire functioned like a large kingdom. They had a king and queen who reigned supreme with knight-like warriors all swearing allegiance to sovereignty.

“Meteor sized projectiles were launched at the Earth which lead to the drowning of the majority of the old continents and a reduction in the Earth’s population from eight billion people to five billion people.”

The lecturer walked slowly up the steps and past the students, his voice getting louder in Rhys’s ears as he approached.

“From then on, what remained of Earth’s forces faced full-on battle confrontations with the Xerserth battalions. These confrontations led to the widespread discovery of cores and gems which made up for the fossil fuels, oil and energy plants that were lost in the initial attacks.”

The lecturer’s face was completely blank as he spoke. He simply projected his words round the hall as he continued to climb the steps, now only a few rows below Rhys.

“With the huge losses in population and land mass, world governments almost entirely collapsed. Leaving the desperate survivors to fend for themselves. During that time, the various military powers stepped up and became autonomous from their separate states and began to work together to defend Earth. Because of the military’s efforts the Earth as they knew it managed to survive for five years.”

Rhys nodded slightly thinking about how the military and the government were still autonomous today. The fracture from back then still held try to the present.

“After the fifth year, the most devastating attack was launched against Earth. You with the hair, what was the name of this attack?” Rhys had a mini heart attack when he looked up to see that the lecturer had stepped into his isle and was pointing at him. Just as he was about to speak the girl beside him started muttering.

She had big curious eyes and her long pale blue hair was haphazardly shoved into a messy bun.

“Yes sir.” She stood up immediately. “The Pangea attack also known as the continental devastation attack, sir.”

Rhys sighed in Reid realising that the lecturer had pointed to the girl next to him. Even though Rhys knew the answer, talking in class had never been his thing. A mix of social anxiety and stage fright.

“Correct.”

He shifted his glasses up his long nose before continuing.

“The Pangea attack was carried out by what the Xerseth call a Saint. A being powerful enough that he was able to rearrange the continents to the configuration that we have today, which also matches the configuration of what Earth looked like three hundred million years ago.”

“This attack was carried out without prior warning leaving billions of people to face tsunamis, volcanoes, and hurricanes without any protection because of the continental rearrangement. This attack reduced the already sunk population of five billion people to a little less than eight hundred million.”

It was hard to even understand what type of core that Xerseth person must have inhaled to have the power to rearrange continents. What the hell did that even look like.

[‘It seems that these Xerserth people are far more advanced than your race, it’s a pity that the inheritor could not have been one of them instead….’]

Rhys ignored the teacher and sunk back into his own thoughts. Even though Rhys had heard it many times before, it was still shocking to think how many people had died because of the Xerserth. From 8 billion humans to 800 million in five years. That meant that only a tenth of the world survived.

“Then came the enslavement of humanity. The surviving eight hundred million were colonised and were being used as miners to dig up all of Earth’s hidden gems and cores to send to the Xerseth bases. Due to the Xerseth’s poor treatment of humans during their enslavement a further hundred million perished in the mining projects.”

Rhys cringed thinking about all those people. He had seen pictures in his textbook of skeletal-like humans dressed in rags dusting off gems and cores that would he shipped to other planets.

“As you all know, it was because the Xerseth considered Earth to be defeated and became complacent in their organising of humans that the military began to work underground again. The military continuously and successfully rescued people from the mines and carried out organised attacks on Xerseth bases. The military allowed for humanity to gain a stronghold again and allowed for full blown bases to be constructed underground. I won’t regurgitate the fine details of the sequence of events that led to Earth’s independence, but you should all known that because of the military, Earth was finally classified as a Phase 4 planet by the ACRONX union. And so the Xerserth forces were forced to retreat and leave Earth alone.”

The lecturer had made his was to the back row, the highest spot in the hall where he could look down at all of us.

“The military fought fiercely to win Earth back, and it did so successfully. But only fools would be happy with the temporary peace humanity has achieved. If one day the Xerserth convince the other allied races of the ACRONX union to invade Earth again, we will have no help but our own. Our temporary classification as a phase 4 planet is the only thing keeping humans from being enslaved or killed off by the Xerserth.”

Rhys gulped heavily, feeing the weight of a reality he had not thought about in a long time. With all the troubles of district 20, he often forgot about the impending alien invasion. Humanity was seriously fucked it it didn’t get its shit together.

“For the convenience of strategy, what was left of the population was divided into twenty districts and five sectors. As you all now, each sector contains four districts. All of your are from the fifth sector, which means you are people from the twentieth to the seventeenth district.”

“It’s not a secret that the fifth sector is under the military’s control, and is the most impoverished sector. Those of you from the twentieth district especially might resent the military for the poor living conditions that you have lived through…”

It was true, no one in the 20th district could speak very well of the military. They saw the way they lived and new it was directly linked to the military’s government of the district.

“Please know that unlike the government that controls the other four districts, the military puts all its resources into finding ways to save humanity. The military doesn’t waste money on superficial things like street lamps and neighbourhood restoration. That money goes into research, and creating weapons and bettering our chances against the Xerseth…”

Rhys’s jaw clenched at the garbage that was spewing out of the lecturer’s mouth. He leaned his head forward against his hands to hide the anger that he knew was spilling onto his face. Nobody in district twenty was asking for ‘street lamps’ or ‘neighbourhood restoration’, people in the 20th died meaningless deaths everyday because the military simply did not care about them. There was no police force in the 20th, and unless you had money there was no healthcare. Schools fed children into gangs, and gangs fed the people to their graves. It wasn’t like people could immigrate to a better district either, people from the twentieth could not migrate without a special passbook and government approval which was getting increasingly rare. Rhys hated the way the lecture diminished those problems like it was a matter of the military not wanting to waste money.

“Your purpose at the military college is to let the military grow you into something capable of defending Earth. The path you are walking on now is one of bravery and righteousness…”

Rhys wondered if this guy wrote his own script or if it was given to him by the military.

“With that said, let us commence your first class.” The lecturer turned around and pushed against the back wall of the lecture hall. An opening suddenly appeared in the wall that led to what looked like a gymnasium.

“Today we will be joining another class for you initial evaluations. I’ll give you about fifteen minutes to warm up and another five minutes to get into groups of four. Your group does not have to only be people from this class, you can team up with students from the other class as well.”

The atmosphere quickly thickened as people hurriedly got out of their seats and stormed into the gymnasium. They wanted to get into the strongest teams for the evaluation test.

“Hey Connor, you’ll team up with me right?”

“Let’s make a group man!”

“Connor I saved you a spot in my team.”

“Come on, Connor, please.”

“Hey babe, you’ll group with me right?”

Rhys rolled his eyes at the frenzy that was happening around Connor and continued into the gym. The fifty or so students from the other class had some nice abilities too, but nothing that could match the electrokinesis and poison generation from Rhys’s class.

Rhys paused when his eyes caught sight of a bright red flaming aura. His stomach dropped to the floor as he heard the teacher guffaw in his head.

[‘You idiot, I told you! You should have finished him off when you had the chance’]

“Check it out…” Rhys’s head shot up when he heard the familiar snicker of the guy he had left alive in an alley back in District 20.

“Oh my days. I was wondering when I would run into you.”

[Aura detection used]

[Name: Sampson Welsh]

[Aura: Fire manipulation (Average)]

“Sampson.” Rhys swept a hand through his black hair in an attempt to calm his anxiety, aggravation, humiliation and rising anger. “What are you doing here?”

“I have more pride than to let some freak, who I used to chew out for breakfast, beat me bloody in an alley and just leave it at that…” Rhys gritted his teeth at the sickening grin Sampson’s face.

“But for now, let’s team up.” Sampson suddenly broke out into a strangely non-evil grin.

“Huh?” Rhys stared forward at Sampson, not sure if the guy was joking or not.

“Join my team. We know each other’s abilities pretty well so we’ll make a good team. I plan on doing well in this evaluation, so join me.”

Rhys did not believe for a second that Sampson didn’t have ulterior motives, but as he looked around the gym, he saw that everyone had already gotten into groups.

“Fuck my life…”

Sampson grinned happily down at Rhys.

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IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING

Connor’s full name is Connor Twenty. They give surnames to Orphans based on the districts they come from. Connor is an orphan of district Twenty so his name is Connor Twenty. I don’t know why I wrote it as Connor Twelve in the previous chapter… just had a brain fart or something.

Anyway say it with me, “Connor Twenty!”