Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Dragon Soldier Project.
As the name suggests, it is a process of selecting soldiers who protect the dragon, or the emperor.
Those who are selected here will become members of the special mission unit, or the so-called ‘special task force’, and depending on their rank and talent, they can also be assigned to other agencies.
Usually, the children of nobles and commoners who hold high positions can participate as applicants, and the children of ordinary commoners are forcibly taken away if they show some talent.
If the number does not exceed the quota of one thousand, they would also kidnap from other countries or rescue from the slave market.
Then here is the problem.
Why would the children of high-ranking nobles apply for this suspicious selection process?
The answer was in the super-fast promotion and the power that followed, which the future selectees would enjoy.
To become the closest confidant of the emperor who had absolute power.
There could be no sweeter fruit than this.
That’s why the training was so harsh and life-threatening, but the application rate of the nobles and the wealthy was very high.
Of course.
For beings like Yan, who was a kidnapped slave, it was nothing but nonsense that did not resonate with him.
* * *
“…And from next week, we will enter the ‘Blade Mountain Range (Demon Realm)’, so try hard if you don’t want to die.”
Today, the ‘Chief Instructor’ made his first appearance.
He was showing signs of annoyance as he gathered the trainees and spoke to them.
The speech was about the Dragon Soldier Project.
‘Boring.’
Yan was not interested in the content.
In fact, there was probably no one here who knew more about the Dragon Soldier Project than him.
So instead of listening, he looked around.
This was the first floor central, where they gathered whenever there was something to announce.
Yan was standing on the far left.
On the floor, there was a white line drawn, and in front of it was the number ‘900’.
Not only that, but on the upper and lower clothes he received, the number ‘974’ was engraved.
The other kids didn’t know the meaning of the number and tilted their heads, but Yan knew it well.
‘I guess I’ll be called by number for a while.’
Before entering the training camp, the instructors tested their talents and assigned them numbers in order.
And they called the trainees by number like a prison.
In other words, he had the 974th talent among the 1,000 people gathered here.
The people around him were also trainees with similar talents.
He didn’t feel shocked or surprised.
He knew very well that his talent was mediocre.
It took him days to learn one thing, and he learned what others learned in two or three times over several days.
But he had one skill that could shake off all those restrictions.
Ferocity.
A stubborn ferocity.
Whisper, whisper.
“Ugh! I want to go home!”
“Please send me home!”
“I’m scared. Mom, mom!”
Among those who were brought here, there were some who cried or sat down on the spot and begged to be sent home without even listening to the explanation.
Most of them were trainees in the eight hundred to nine hundred range.
But the trainees with higher numbers kept their mouths shut and focused on the Chief Instructor’s words.
They didn’t hold back their tears. But they seemed to swallow them forcibly under the eyes of the nearby trainees.
‘Sigh, I’m going to die here.’
It was around that time that Yan thought that.
Smirk!
The man who introduced himself as the ‘Chief Instructor’ suddenly smiled at the place where the 800 and 900 numbers were gathered.
‘Shit.’
Yan tensed up at the sight.
He knew very well what kind of person that Chief Instructor was.
“You bastards like vermin!”
Whoosh.
The whole training camp shook.
The trainees who were causing a commotion here and there shut their mouths.
Some of them shivered, and some peed their pants.
Yan’s face also turned pale.
‘He’s still crazy.’
Voice Transmission (御氣傳聲).
A skill that sends out a voice filled with mana and will.
Only those who could be called ‘strong’ by anyone could use it.
‘He’s using it on kids who haven’t even lost their baby fat.’
Even he, who had prepared himself, felt his stomach churn.
There must be some people who were injured among them.
The Chief Instructor laughed and continued.
“Talent is the lowest, status is the lowest. What reason do you have to live?”
The kids shuddered at his words.
There was a deep killing intent in his tone.
The Chief Instructor looked at the trainees once and then stretched his arms to the sky and shouted.
“Ah~ ah. But don’t worry. His Majesty the Emperor, who is great and considerate, has given you trash a last chance. Now, everyone clap for His Majesty’s broad mercy~.”
A cold silence flowed through the hall.
Then the Chief Instructor lowered his head slightly, still with his arms spread.
Those who met his eyes started to clap desperately like puppets.
The clapping sound gradually grew louder.
Yan also clapped like the others.
There was nothing good about attracting the attention of that crazy Chief Instructor.
‘If I get caught, I’ll have to give up on getting out of here.’
If he caught his eye, he might give him some convenience, but what did that mean?
A fun toy.
That was all.
Yan was thinking that when a loud noise erupted next to him.
“Then, if I pass that project, can I slap your face once?”
Yan’s face stiffened.
He slowly turned his head and checked who shouted.
And he rolled his tongue inward.
‘He’s really out of his mind.’
It was Roman.
He had a black eye from being hit by him yesterday, and he was standing with his arms crossed.
Yan swallowed his saliva.
And he twisted his shoulder slightly. As if to say, ‘I have nothing to do with this guy.’
Far away.
The Chief Instructor smiled at Roman again.
* * *
The shocking first encounter with the Chief Instructor was over.
The trainees returned without saying a word.
They realized that the Chief Instructor was not someone who could be reasoned with.
Of course, there would be no communication either.
Why do I think that?
“Ugh.”
How about looking at Roman, who was hanging on the instructor’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, covered in blood?
After provoking the Chief Instructor, he was beaten until he was half-dead.
The sight of the Chief Instructor smearing blood on his hand with a smile.
It made his spine shiver just to remember it.
“Before you go to your quarters, go to the bathroom if you need to. After you enter the blood cell, you can deal with it yourself or whatever.”
“Me.”
Yan was the only one who raised his hand at that.
The rest of the trainees seemed to be too shocked to hear the instructor’s words.
So the instructor took Yan to the bathroom.
He walked a little and stopped.
“Come out in five minutes after you finish your business.”
Yan went into the bathroom after hearing that.
There was dirt everywhere in the space of about 10 square meters, and the stench was terrible.
Yan had no intention of doing his business in there.
He didn’t even come in for that.
So why did he come in?
‘It was around here.’
It was something that happened in his previous life.
When Yan was an instructor.
Some trainees disappeared in the middle of the training.
Of course, they were caught soon enough, and Yan participated in the interrogation himself.
“We, we escaped through the bathroom!”
Thanks to that, he found out.
There was a hidden escape route here.
‘Hmm.’
Yan recalled the structure of the bathroom in his head and slowly closed his eyes and walked, touching the wall.
He didn’t care about the dirty dirt that stuck to his hand.
He only focused on the sensation he felt beyond the wall.
Swoosh.
He swept the entire front of the bathroom and shook his hand.
There was nothing here.
“Then, it must be here.”
The stalls where you do your business.
There were five stalls. He went into the first one.
And he rubbed his hand again.
Swoosh.
He only felt a hard touch.
Yan didn’t get disappointed and went to the second, third, and fourth stalls.
But there was still no stall that felt the space beyond.
“Then, it’s here.”
He went into the fifth stall and rubbed it again.
And.
Swoosh.
His mouth curled up. His eyes opened.
“I found it.”
He knocked on the wall as if to knock.
Thud.
A hollow sound echoed in the bathroom.
It was certain.
There was a space beyond this.
Just then.
Bang bang!
The instructor banged on the door outside the bathroom as if to break it.
“Come out. Time’s up.”
“Yes, yes. I’m coming out.”
He said that and memorized the place he checked in his head and went out.
The instructor didn’t seem to suspect anything and took Yan to the place where he was locked up at first.
That’s how the first day’s work ended.
* * *
Yan reviewed his escape plan as he returned to the blood cell.
He didn’t get excited or anything.
He had learned from his long experience of missions that the more he rushed, the more likely he was to succeed.
‘I’ve found the way.’
He knew where the escape route led to.
He would have to walk a bit, but he could definitely get out.
The problem was how to get into the escape route and how to shake off the instructors when they started chasing him.
He had only one chance.
If he got caught?
He would be executed without a doubt.
Maybe he would be killed very brutally as a warning to the other trainees who had similar thoughts.
In the end, even if he prepared for this and that, if he went out bare-handed, he would have a very high chance of dying without being able to resist the moment he was caught.
He needed a card that could create a little bit of a variable.
‘Let’s try to learn ‘that’ first.’
As a special task force leader, he had encountered many secrets and techniques.
Among them, he had briefly learned the most outstanding secret.
‘…Well, to be precise, I learned it as an experiment to check the safety before the emperor learned it, but whatever.’
The part he learned was the beginning of the secret, just a few pages.
But.
‘It was much more effective than the ‘Dark Dragon Sphere’ I had learned before.’
『Dark Dragon Sphere』
The top secret among the special task force’s techniques.
It was a mana technique that only the leader could learn.
He was satisfied enough with that and lived.
One day.
The legacy of the founding emperor, the first emperor, was discovered by chance.
『Breath of the Divine Dragon』
The emperor, who was always bored to death, personally searched for the pieces, which showed how valuable the legacy was.
‘He was so bored that he was dying. But he was afraid of dying himself, huh?’
Anyway.
Thanks to the new secret, Yan was able to surpass several levels of enlightenment at once.
He reached the second level of enlightenment, which was very rare in the continent.
If he could learn the whole thing… he couldn’t even guess how far he could reach.
‘Breath of the Divine Dragon… The name itself was very arrogant. But it was not lacking at all.’
Then he suddenly thought.
‘Maybe I was able to break free from the brainwashing because I learned that?’
Yan couldn’t find a clear reason for why his brainwashing was suddenly lifted in his previous life.
He was just making various guesses, but maybe this guess was the closest to the truth.
In fact, the founding emperor was a great being who was recorded as the ‘first emperor of the golden age’.
If it was a secret that he created himself, it was highly likely.
‘I’ll learn it from now on. Even though it’s only the beginning, it’s enough to train my body quickly.’
Yan closed his eyes and recalled the formula.
He felt the mana coming into his nose and guided it.
Sssss-
The mana that came in through his throat rotated in his body.
He got greedy when a lot of mana came in.
‘This… I can make a core right away?’
Normally, he had to make it slowly over a few days, but it seemed like he could make it right now with this momentum.
‘What the hell, I’ll try it and if it doesn’t work, I’ll just spend some time.’
He made up his mind and went ahead.
He quickly rotated the mana and settled it below his navel.
But soon, cold sweat started to drip.
It wasn’t as easy as he thought.
Sputter.
The mana kept spinning, but it didn’t settle in the core.
It wasn’t because of the lack of quantity.
But he had a rough idea of the reason.
‘It’s not complete.’
The part that the emperor gave him was only the formula for ‘inhaling’.
The part for ‘storing’ was missing.
He thought he could do it with the amount of mana he sucked in, but it didn’t seem to be the case.
Yan stopped the circulation and lay down on the spot.
“Sigh.”
And he let out a deep sigh.
“I could find the remaining pieces if I wanted to…”
He knew where they were hidden.
He had been serving the emperor all along.
And it wouldn’t be too hard to get there.
But there was a problem.
His goal was ‘escape’.
But to find the remaining pieces, he had to stay in the training camp.
‘The surveillance will be very strict when the Blade Mountain Range test starts. The brainwashing will also intensify. Then I’ll never have a chance to escape from here.’
Yan closed his eyes.
‘But I can access the Breath of the Divine Dragon anytime I want if I get out. The difference between having freedom and not having it is huge.’
So he had to put aside his regret for the Breath of the Divine Dragon for now.
