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[Chapters this week: 3/3

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Shen approved of Vinamour's proposal. It would be a great way for him and the Battalion Commanders to see how their troops performed on each level and let everyone experience working together.

He also liked how Blue Sky had decided not to give a damn about the exercise and just bring a random factor to it by having the E-ranks attack as soon as the battle started. That matched what he expected of a lansier, as her race was called, and would make things more interesting.

The E-ranks fought much, much better than Shen had ever at their level. The Acting General knew what he was doing when he put together this Exemplary Brigade. Still, they were only E-ranks, and only one Guardian really stood out, one who walked a Path of cloak and dagger and defeated more enemies than any other.

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| Bavon Stamofo (E) — Corporal

| Rising Star

| Race: Vanys

| Clearances: -

| Active Clearance Proposals: Flowing Shadow [Pending Brigade-level Approval]

| Dropped Clearance Proposals: Advanced Infiltration [UNFITTING PERSONALITY], Assassination [UNFITTING PERSONALITY]

| Commendations: 3

| Demerits: 27

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As the vanys's superior officer, Shen could see much of his information, including his race. He hadn't seen Rayna's race right after being appointed Brigade Commander because she had yet to be assigned to his chain of command. Now that everyone was below him, the military's Recognition Interface—the "add-on" to the Guardian System that kept showing everyone's identity over their heads—informed him of what he should know. He could also look with focus at most data in any window, and the system would give him more detailed information about it.

Not that the D- cloak Bavon used would've prevented Shen from figuring out his race. It looked cool, like flowing shadows, and hid his form from regular sight, but that was it. It couldn't hinder Shen's Law Vision, and as good as the E-rank was in hiding his identity, he was just E-rank.

The guy's race could be best described as a human-sized treant made of stone rather than wood. The vanys' were known for being slow at the commoner level, but he was anything but. It was a great example of how a Path made anyone more in any way they wanted.

Bavon wielded a dagger in one hand and a gauntlet with a blade in the other, but his Path didn't have a weapon-based Axiom. Instead, it contained the Axioms of Darkness and Light, with two Concepts from each. Shen couldn't tell what the Concepts were, but at least one should be related to hiding his presence, another related to speed. Probably, one also dealt with accuracy. There was at least a fifty-percent chance of a Concept helping him find weaknesses to exploit in his enemy, similar to Shen's Law of Conductivity.

Shen checked Bavon's Commendations and Demerits. The guy had been acknowledged for his ability a few times but was not good at following orders.

In fact, Shen had checked everyone in the five minutes he gave them to organize, and at least one-tenth of the troops were great fighters but lousy soldiers. Samir's Acting General probably thought he needed strength despite their issues. Perhaps he also wanted to have Shen teach them discipline. Maybe the General was doing other people a favor by helping shape those powerful Guardians into something the military could use.

Every undisciplined Guardian had a quirk. Bavon had an unbending moral compass. He often left his post to help people he shouldn't, even when ordered otherwise because it would potentially endanger others.

When deployed, he displayed so much ability that no one was hurt, so a Demerit and further punishment sufficed. However, he had messed up badly in the Expeditionary Training and was only allowed to live because he was a Rising Star. Shen hadn't known that was a thing; he only learned it now because it was written in Bavon's training report, which only a Brigade Commander could read. In hindsight, it made sense that a Title gave people some privileges, even in the military, including Racial Titles. Not that it would save Shen from SpecOps.

Shen didn't have most of the clearances his troops did, but the system offered brief descriptions when he focused on them. There should also be multiple clearances he couldn't see even as a superior officer unless he had them, such as elite combat training.

He didn't get a summary of clearances that had been proposed but denied. He could look at them if someone else under him had them as actual clearances or pending clearances, but no one had "Advanced Infiltration," which someone had proposed Bavon might get, then thought better about it. Still, its name was descriptive enough. It was obvious how Bavon's personality wouldn't let him stand still when witnessing injustices, which would mess with multiple infiltration and assassination missions.

The "Flowing Shadow" clearance proposal was interesting. The summary read, "Special techniques to fight as a shadow in a battlefield, aimed at causing chaos or eliminating high-value targets. Not fitting for duels. Includes scouting, infiltration, and assassination principles." It sounded perfect for Bavon. He likely only hadn't gotten it yet because of his personality.

Shen used his Brigade Commander status to change the proposal's status to "Trust Trial A-88", which gained a progress of "0/100." That specific trial was the most fitting for someone like the E-rank. Shen or another Brigade Commander would make a total of 100 requests of Bavon, each very similar to situations he had previously faced that touched his bottom line but never crossed it. If he could prove he could be predicted despite his unbending nature, he would be useful with a clearance such as a flowing shadow.

Otherwise...

A score of less than 50 meant execution. That was likely why Bavon's former Brigade Commander hadn't put him through the obviously fitting trial. Shen had no such reserves. Power was necessary for the military, but a spear that moved according to its morals no matter what, and such morals couldn't be predicted, had to be broken before its morals changed and it attacked the hand that wielded it. The military considered anyone with a score lower than 50 in Trust Trial A-88 a "potential traitor." With Bavon's history and Demerits, it became actual treason.

Shen agreed with the assessment, as cruel as it might sound. He wanted the vanys's to either become stronger and help save lives or, if he were a traitor, die before he could endanger his Brigade.

Shen thought and did that while the E-ranks were still fighting and he moved to remove them from the fight. They were just so slow and weak that he had no trouble interfering.

To no one's surprise, Bavon's side lost. He was only one person, and finishing him only took the right trick. If anything, Shen was more surprised at how long the D-rank Platoon Commanders took to figure out how to hinder the vanys's mobility. They should've known better. The post-activity debriefing would have to be more detailed than Shen had initially planned.

Then came Mark Williams's ploy.

Shen found it excellent. Williams was also correct: people of the same power rank could fight each other, even if Shen's explanation was purposefully vague and, contextually, suggested the opposite. It was part of the exercise to see who would notice it and test the boundaries. Mark had pointed out that Corporal First Class and Corporal were technically not of the same rank but failed to notice that the Battalion-level C-ranks would fight the Brigade-level C-ranks despite being of a different military rank. Sure, that might be an exception, but it was another clue.

The Battalion Commanders knew the truth but were forbidden from informing their subordinates if asked. However, Williams's scheme had an unexpected consequence.

Blue Sky shifted.

Lansiers were a race with traits from elementals, animals, and plants. They looked like ghosts, white and transparent, but were as corporeal as any fire elemental. For reasons unknown, every lansier looked like a humanoid mammal female, but they weren't mammals. They had shark-like teeth in a mouth too wide for their faces, reptilian slits for noses, eyes so wide they were almost a perfect circle, and hair that was an amalgamation of snakes, like a Medusa from Earth's mythology.

Lansiers were hive minds. Blue Sky wasn't an individual from a hive-mind race but the actual hive mind. Every snake in her head had its own mind and contributed to the lansier's ability. They all shared the same Path, which was a feat for a being with so many personalities, often very different from each other. Few lansiers ever reached D-rank, but whoever managed to master a Concept, thus closing their Path for a new Concept, and hadn't gotten too many Concepts, usually reached at least B-rank. After all, multiple minds were gaining different insights all the time.

Multiple minds also meant stronger willpower, though it wasn't a straight addition. Every extra snake helped a little less than the one before. After 33 snakes, the gains sharply diminished until they stopped at 99. Still, at 33 snakes, a lansier had 6 times the average willpower of other Alliance races.

Cutting the snakes lowered their willpower. It was also how the lansiers reproduced. They were hive-minds and never willingly let go of one of their minds, but when it happened, the cut-off snake curled and became a seed that germinated by absorbing enough mana. A new lansier grew like a humanoid plant over a long period. It was defenseless when growing, but any nearby lansier would protect any bud they found with their very lives. While each hive-mind was separate from the other, they could still interact like individuals, speaking and making deals, and had the instinct of perpetuating the species. Before touching a Law, they were also incapable of lying to or betraying fellow hive minds.

From a military standpoint, the issue with every lansier was their personality shifts. A primary mind always controlled the main body, and the snakes always fought for supremacy—with arguments. A lansier was always discussing things with itself. Themselves. Herself.

The personalities decided if one of them should replace the currently dominant one through a vote. The rules were complex, and each lansier had some personal tweaks, but one thing was shared among all lansiers: the mind on the "front seat" couldn't debate whether it would keep its position, nor did it have voting power.

If not for walking a singular Path, lansiers would be impossible to predict. Fortunately, their Path also worked like an internal social contract. They chose how to walk the Path, including moral concepts they adhered to. It made the hive mind almost as predictable as any other Guardian.

The exception was that even people with the same beliefs might behave in opposite ways in certain circumstances.

So, when Blue Sky's primary mind shifted, the new dominant mind decided to discard her previous agreement. That was within the rules of the exercise, and the entire hive mind had little problem with it. Instead, she wanted to fight Shen before anyone else had the chance and only cared about the exercise enough to yell a single command, "Attack!"

Or rather, Blue Sky couldn't stop herself from fighting Rayna.

The drow and the lansiers had a history. The lansiers were one of the races that had once betrayed the drow, who thus proceeded to decimate the lansiers when they had the chance. Alliance law had prevented them from eradicating the enemy race, which, instead of learning their lessons, decided to make it their life goal to exterminate the drow.

However, the lansiers no longer posed a danger to the drow as a race. The drow had perfected the art of dealing with lansiers so much that a lesson in elite combat training had been an analysis of the tactics the dark elves used. The drow guaranteed any drow individual who fought lansiers was evenly matched and curbed the lansier population every ten Standard years with methodical precision.

The drow treated lansiers as a mix of training dummies and a pest.

Now, Blue Sky, clad in spiked dark blue scaled armor—sans the helmet—rushed at Rayna with a staff in her hands and rage in her 34 pairs of eyes. Rayna smiled with mirth as she calmly put her helmet back on and prepared to do pest control.

They were about to meet each other in combat.

Both women release their auras in unison.

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