Extra's Sign In System: The Hero's an Idiot!

Chapter 213: Chapter 213: Directive Nine (1)

Chapter 213: Directive Nine (1)

The northern gate opened at first light.

GROAN.

Forty tons of Star-Iron rolled out onto the dead road on eleven heavy transports. They were followed by scaffolding wagons, water tankers and a field kitchen.

Two hundred and six workers of Bastion Seven walked out through a wall that most of them had never once stepped past in their lives. They had lived their whole lives surrounded by the walls.

Master Engineer Dorn Halvers rode the lead wagon. He carried the expression of a man who had waited thirty years for this single morning.

A Morning of Liberation!

This was the first step. First step to fulfill a long lasted wish of their ancestors. A wish that will grant them their freedom!

"Keep the spacing!" he bellowed down the line.

"Anyone who bunches up gets to explain it to me personally! You are taking part in a mission much more important than your own miserable life! If you plan to stay miserable like you’ve been your whole life, remember that I will not let you! Get your asses moving now!"

Draven walked on the flank of the column in a plain gray coat with the hood up.

No mask. No armor. Nothing that marked him as anything other than one more contract laborer walking north.

A rigger near the third wagon was singing. Badly, and loudly, and three of the women around him had joined in out of what sounded like spite.

Behind them, a young mason was gripping the tailgate of a transport with both hands. He was staring at the gray horizon like it might reach out for him.

Imagine living your whole life surrounded by the walls and the first time you stepped out, the horizon itself is calling you.

’None of them are soldiers,’ Draven thought.

’Every fighting force I have ever moved could shoot back. This might become the most difficult mission of my life. If necessary, I may need to leave some of them behind. It pains me, but it is necessary. It won’t happen because we have taken proper precautions before heading out. And my Map can tell about any new Monsters appearing as well, so it will work out fine.’

The wall shrank behind them.

At the eleven kilometer marker, a rusted iron post leaning in the dirt, the System spoke.

DING.

---

[Directive 09: Reclaim the Green]

[Objective: Establish and successfully activate a functioning Miasma Clearing Tower beyond the Great Wall of Bastion Seven.]

[Reward: 25,000 System Points on first activation.]

[Standing Bounty: 10,000 System Points per additional tower brought online and held operational for thirty consecutive days.]

[Current Balance: 63,000 SP.]

---

Draven read it twice.

Then he read the header again.

’Establish,’ he thought.

Every Directive the System had ever handed him had been a knife.

Secure an alliance. Prevent a massacre. Prune a rotten branch. Execute the anomaly.

Nine Chapters of his life issued as kill orders and interceptions, all of them phrased in the language of subtraction.

This one wanted him to build something.

He stood on the dead road with the convoy grinding past him and turned the thought over.

’It has never once asked me to make a thing. I quite understand these directives now. It always makes me do things that will prove beneficial for the survival of the Humanity. That just means these Towers are just that important.’

He dismissed the screen without an answer.

---

Ninety minutes later the sky changed.

The morning light dimmed as though a cloud had crossed the sun.

Except there were no clouds, and every worker in the column looked up at once.

Something was descending.

It came down slowly, and the air around it warped with heat, and the gray Miasma over the road peeled back from it in a widening circle like frost off a window.

THOOM.

Lord Commander Helion Goldmane landed in the middle of the road. The ground did not crack, because he did not permit it to.

The convoy stopped.

Two hundred workers went silent all at once. A teamster hauled his animals back so hard the harness rang. Somewhere down the line a crate hit the dirt and nobody bent to pick it up.

Helion stood in the road in his white and gold coat with his hands behind his back.

He was not radiating pressure. He was not projecting anything at all.

That was somehow worse.

Draven pushed his hood back and walked out to meet him.

"Lord Commander."

"Draven."

Helion looked past him at the column.

At the transports. At the field kitchen. At two hundred and six citizens of his Bastion standing on a road outside his wall.

"I did not learn about this from you," Helion said.

"No."

"I learned about it from a payroll requisition." His golden eyes came back to Draven’s face.

"Two hundred and six wage entries filed under a construction designation that does not exist in the Vanguard registry. It crossed my desk at four in the morning with a land grant attached to it."

He let that sit for a moment.

"My clerk thought it was a clerical error. I am wondering about the reason I was never told about this side quest you were planning."

Draven did not look away.

"It is a Miasma Clearing Tower," he said. "Project Eden. We solved the core problem last night."

"I am aware of what it is." Helion’s voice stayed absolutely level.

"I read the blueprints before your engineers did. What I am asking you is why two hundred unarmed people are standing eleven kilometers outside my wall, and why the man who put them there did not think to mention it."

"Because you would have made it policy. It would have taken enormous time and the risk of it leaking to the Capital would have been much higher. We needed to move without then knowing about this secret operation."

"That is what policy is for."

"Policy is slow," Draven said.

"We only have three days. Three days and we will expand our territory beyond the Bastion Walls!"

Helion’s expression did not change.

"Explain that sentence in great detail."

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