Earth: The Second

Emotional Burden

Before the discussion at the village begun, Roberto had placed his platoon at the other side of the hill that overlooking the village. Actually, Udeka asked him to bring his platoon together. But Roberto insists that the presence of the soldiers would only make the villagers feel unease. At that time Roberto himself does not know about the truth of what Udeka did to the villagers.

And so, that is where the soldiers standing by. In the middle of the road, where they can only see fields and the city’s wall. There are 16 of them, both male and female soldiers. At a glance, they seem very young and inexperienced. While it’s true that they are actually a trainee, they are the people who personally chosen by Roberto because of their potential to become future leaders, especially inside the military.

Their professionalism has already been shown since they are assigned to wait for further instruction. Although the job is kind of boring, they are not showing any signs of laziness. Their heavy armors are still intact, and swords are never out of reach.

After some time waiting, they noticed something coming from the top of the hill. One of them reporting everyone else, and everyone getting ready right away. That ‘someone’ who comes out from the hill is a man. He looked in suffer as he running towards the platoon, panting and dragging his extra-sized body. 

“Wait, isn’t that The Lord?” asked one of them. They noticed that since Udeka isn’t together with the captain, something bad might happened.

One of the soldiers is taking the initiative to get the Lord and take him to safety. It was one of the female knight, With her horse, she quickly gets to the Lord and asked him about the captain’s whereabouts. She noticed that there is blood on his clothes, although they seem still intact.

“Oh! What a disaster!” cried Udeka. “How terrible! Those barbarians are suddenly revolting out of nowhere and caught Captain Roberto!”

“May I know what happened with the captain?” she asked again.

“He was got shot with an arrow! It pierced right through his chest, but he manages to give me a chance to escape! Please help him?”

The man lied as easy as he breathes. His words are not twisted even though he is shrouded by terror while running. His expression also creates the immersion for the soldiers that something indeed happening in the village.

“Please! Help him!” he plead as if he is also the victim of the rebellion.

“Yes! Please climb to the horse, I will take you back to the mansion!” shouted the female soldier.

Both of them then returned to one of the soldiers which Roberto had given the ‘second-in-command’ position. 

“Report! There are attacks in the village! It seems like the captain is trapped inside it!” she shouted.

“Please! Please save him!” shamelessly, Udeka acts more dramatically. But turns out, that is successful to increase the tension between the soldiers. 

“Charge onward! To the enemy!” screamed the soldiers, and everyone shouting their battle cry at the same time.

Their weapon of spears and swords lifted against the direction of the village.

***

Meanwhile, in the village, the situation is unsettling. They have lifted Roberto to the table, it was a short arrow that pierced through his armored suit. Apparently, this arrow is the kind of projectile that belongs to the crossbow, and those weapons are infamous for their ability to pierce through metal armor. 

“Ugh…” they all can hear a grunt coming from Roberto. He is still alive! but how did they can save him now?

“I think, first, we have to take his armor off and stop the bleeding,” said Father. He is going to take Roberto’s armor off when he realized that with how Roberto’s armor is built, a slight disturbance with the arrow may make his wound even more severe.

“We can’t do anything while the arrow still gets in the way,” commented Thomas.

This is bad, think Adma. Udeka is nowhere to be found, he swears that this is must be also one of his dirty plans to escape, and with that, another bad thing probably will follow through soon after it.

“We have to get everyone to safety.” 

“Huh?” grunted Thomas, he is still confused about what happens.

“This is must be one of Udeka’s plans! Get everyone home, and warn them to not get out, no matter what, or that incident will be happening again,” asked Adma. Thomas looked at him deeply, his eyeball is widened, and worry are showed all over his expression. He then steps toward the people who are also confused about their situation.

“Everyone! Listen to me! I need you to return to your home right now!” he shouted.

Adma also looked at Father, and ask him to help Thomas.

“This is an emergency, but please provide the orphanage as a safe house for everyone,” 

“I understand… But what will you do now?” asked Father.

Adma looked at the grunted Roberto. His face clearly showed that he is in pain. With the situation right now, if he is not able to save Roberto, all of the villagers’ struggles are futile. Even worse, they will also be framed as the ones who killed Roberto instead. 

“First, I have to remove the armor first. Think, Adma, Think! how can you remove this hard metal armor without making the damage even worse!?”

Adma doesn’t know what he is going to do. All of this time, his abilities are just the ones he can use in combat. What he will do now when he has to take a different take than he used to be?

“There must be some way! Think! How can you cut up the pieces of steel!” Adma screamed. This time to himself. He closed both of his eyes, and enter the deep trance that only he can feel,

“Metal… Steel… Are hard materials… What can I do to cut them up?” said Adma again. His mind is wandering far behind, to the time when the world is still familiar to him. At this time, he knows that people have manipulated steel for how long that he knows. Because of that, the people from the old worlds are thriving with their technological progress.

“The most important is the fire… Fire manipulates steel, making them bend to what they want…” Adma recalled his time walking around the city. He saw the blacksmith that is forging a weapon in the open.

“To cut the stell, you have intensified the fire, and aim the heat to one focused direction… and started to wielding the steel.”

Wielding, are one of the words that he hadn’t heard for a long time. Because of how the technological progress of this world, of course, they won’t be able to create a machine that can be cutting another machine.

“But how can I obtain it?” How can create the welding machine!” although Adma feels that he finally gets an answer, it turns out a dead-end until Navigator decides to step forward.

“Do you need any help?” asked Navigator.

“Navigator, how can I create the same function as a welding machine?” asked Adma. He started to sound anxious, and desperate. At second thought, he feels that it’s totally impossible.

“There is a way,” said Navigator, which is surprised Adma.

“Wait, what? How?”

“According to the amount of the emotional burden you have acquired, I have granted you permission to access more to the advanced material-customizable function that is available inside your body.”

“Advanced… What? What are you talking about?”

“This function at first is restricted only for recovering your body material from the battle. But after I see how much needed these functions are for your progress, I decide to let you know the number of capabilities that you can create with this function.”

“With these abilities, you can reform the structure of your body, and create any tools and any shape that you needed to. But to activate this ability, I need to know every detail of the equipment that you wanted to make. The simpler the equipment, the easier it is to make, and vice versa.” said the navigator.

Although confused and full of questions, Adma realized that it is probably the only way he can use to solve this situation.

“Then, I need to create a weld! The equipment that is able to cut up steel and metals!” shouted Adma.

“Please input your design.”

Adma closed his eyes and started to think again. What is inside of the welding machine? First, he needs the electricity generator, which would deliver the electricity to the steel, and then he would need the arc, which becomes the medium of the steel and the machine. This arc is the one that lets out the blue-like flame, which actually comes from electricity.

“Input received, forming the right hand, to the equipment needed,” said Navigator.

Suddenly, Adma felt his right hand is numbing. He feels the same as when his arm turned into a void canon, but this time, different shapes emerge. 

the steel and structure that formed his hand looked like melting and hardening at the same time into a single shape that looked like a thin stick, with the hole that letting out the blue-like flame on it.

Will this really worked? Adma did not know, what he can do, is just to try it out for himself.

The arch and the steel make contact, and together with it, flower flame coming out from Roberto’s armor.

“Notification: the weld efficiency to the steel is at 96 percent. told Navigator.

“Good! It’s working!” shouted Adma. He can also see how his weld is able to do its job.

“If we can take out the arrow and stopped the bleeding, he can be saved with Kiki’s healing magic!” said Adma full of hope.

That was until he heard a galloping sound from the road outside of the village, together with the screaming shout of war cries.

“Protect the captain! Attack the Rebel!” shouted one of them, followed by another scream from other soldiers.