Chapter 366: Army Screening
Induction Centre
Duskhand Military City
Githal
November 2nd
530th Divine Year
’Fuck the army.’
Arthur barely stopped those honest thoughts from slipping out as he laid back on his seat amongst the recruits.
The boy had to listen to a series of speeches on the bus, and right after getting to Duskhand, they were taken to this building where they had been undergoing multiple physical and medical check-ups.
After this, they were scheduled to have their existence realms, affinities and skills checked, and then some other things that Arthur dozed off when they were spoken about.
’A medical check-up, huh?
That involves blood samples doesn’t it.’
"Next Batch! Move into the Waiting Room!"
Being part of the next batch, Arthur got up and moved along with them, looking around to see the surveillance devices set up in the area.
He did a little scan and detected zero existences above the grandmaster realm within a kilometre of him, perfect for his plan.
The instant the waiting room door closed behind him; he took action.
"Stop. Accelerate."
Arthur gave two commands to the energy of the law of time, covering the surveillance devices, the Privates who were watching the recruits and the passing doctors with cosmic energy and halting their movements.
He also did the same to every recruit in the waiting room, before accelerating his own time and moving towards the passing doctor.
"I’d take this..."
Arthur swiped a syringe from the man, and then extracted the blood of a random recruit, before discarding the needle with a hint of destruction energy while the blood sample was tossed into his subspace.
Immediately after, he released the time stop and continued moving in sync with the others, ignoring the recruit who touched his arm and felt like he had been pricked by something.
However, as Arthur took care to heal the wound, the person saw nothing on their arm and eventually ignored it altogether.
[Why did you do that, Master?]
Celestia voiced her curiosity about the actions which he had just taken and Arthur gestured to the doctors passing while replying.
’They’re taking blood samples. I don’t want to have to explain why my blood is silver.’
[Come to think of it, your blood is silver for some reason.]
Arthur took a seat amidst a random bunch of recruits from a different batch who were still waiting, and when he looked around, he noted that this batch had quite a large number of late teens.
With the law of time, he could infer that they were mostly seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, with a few nineteen-year-olds.
’I look more natural with this bunch.’
It should be noted that Arthur didn’t bother changing his appearance, only just using his contacts to make his eyes appear black.
’If they have something to enable them to see through disguises, I’m not confident they wouldn’t see through mine, which would then pose the question of why I’m disguised, and lead to a different set of complications.’
But complicated reasonings for his actions aside, Arthur was bored waiting here.
’And I can’t just whip out my tablet and watch a movi—Wait, why am I considering Movies first?! CELESTTIA! YOU’VE INFLUNECED ME!’
[I did nothing of the sort.]
The sword easily denied his allegations, but this then pulled up a different question in Arthur’s mind.
’This has been on my mind for a while but, how exactly does a Sword ’watch’ Movies?’
Celestia clearly didn’t have eyes, so she had to be perceiving the display on the screen somehow.
[...]
But this time, he received no reply from the Sword.
’I’m Bored...again.
Let me just talk to someone.’
Arthur ignored Celestia’s matter pretty quickly and turned to his left, only to see the person who was there had a gloomy look on their face while shivering.
’This one clearly doesn’t wanna be here.’
So, he turned to his right and called out to the person seated there.
"Heya, Whatsup?"
"Hmm? Oh, Hi."
The person seemed to be focused on something written on the walls, but Arthur didn’t know which as there were a lot of things there. Their attention was pulled towards him upon being called, and when the person turned around, he was met with a pretty girl around his age group.
She had a cascade of brown hair that framed her face, flowing naturally with a hint of soft waves. Reflected along with Arthur’s image in her brown eyes, was a depth of curiosity.
’Oh...her eyes are pretty.’
The thought crossed his mind, despite her eye colour being fairly common, it somehow looked better when combined with her well-defined facial features.
"This whole process is taking a lot of time, isn’t it?"
"Oh, yeah. It is.
The Soldier mentioned something about some Higher Ups coming over so that delayed things a bit.
Besides, this is THE Duskhand, it’d be weirder if they didn’t take this much time to screen us."
"Indeed, it is THE Duskhand."
Arthur replied with a nod as he looked around the room they were in, with a single glance being all he needed to see that even a superior grandmaster would be hard-pressed to demolish these walls at full power.
"I can’t believe I’m going to be entering here."
He tacked on that little statement to continue the conversation and the girl replied with a hint of excitement in her voice.
"I know, right?
Though I’m a bit scared...I mean, it is the army, after all."
"Yeah, the mixed feelings are hard to describe with words."
"Exactly. Verbally describing it is quite hard, right?"
"Yeah, I get you."
Arthur did NOT get what she was talking about.
’My acting skills are top-notch. I should enter the movie industry in my spare time.’
Celestia rolled her figurative eyes at Arthur but the boy ignored her and continued talking with his brown-haired seatmate.
They chatted a bit about random things, ranging from where they were from to how the journey to Duskhand was for them.
"The Journey here was a first...hadn’t left my hometown much."
Arthur wasn’t lying when he said this; just that the ’here’ he was talking about meant the Valmone universe as a whole and not just Duskhand.
"The soldiers suddenly showed up and gave us this long speech before calling us out, it was a bit shocking."
"Oh, you were conscripted?
A lot of people who were conscripted recently tried running away."
"Yeah, I heard."
’I am taking the position of one of those who successfully ran away.’
With such thoughts in his mind, Arthur listened to the girl describe the scene of the soldiers capturing one of those who tried to run in her batch and bringing them back forcefully.
"it’s that guy over there."
Turning to the direction she pointed at, he saw a soldier standing next to a recruit who was looking around anxiously.
"Oy! What’s with the guys in the store?! The Syringes aren’t complete! Get some more!"
"Yes Sir!".
Arthur looked on as a soldier ran out of the medical area and back to the store, smiling wryly as he was the reason why they weren’t complete.
A few minutes passed and Arthur saw the soldier return with a tray from the corner of his eye, but he didn’t pay it too much mind as he was focused on talking with the girl beside him.
’Rank and File Soldiers everywhere—No one I CAN’T use my Time Manipulation on.’
Just as he thought that, a soldier’s voice rang out from the speakers in the room.
[Recruit 559!]
"That’s me."
The girl got up and was about to wave Arthur bye when the soldier called out another number.
[Recruit 659!]
"Would you look at that? I’m right after you."
The two chuckled lightly at the coincidence as they walked towards the doors, but they had to separate as males and females had different Medical Rooms.
Upon entering his, Arthur was inwardly surprised at the level of their medical equipment, but he very quickly returned his focus to the military doctor who was flicking a needle in front of him.
He did all the needful preparations, but just before he could pierce the needle into Arthur’s skin to take his blood sample, his vision flashed monochrome for a nanosecond.
"...Huh? When did I...?"
"Ouch...that hurts more than I thought it would."
Arthur’s voice snapped the man out of his confused daze and he saw a thin line of red liquid dripping down the boy’s skin from the point that ’he’ had pierced.
"Ah!"
He quickly used a cotton wool and cleaned it up, before moving on to the next set of tests...ones that involved magic scans and one of said scans indeed had the side-effect of distorting magical disguises.
’Seems like I made the right call...’
"Alright, Recruit 659...Arthur?"
"Yes, Sir."
"You’re clear. Head to the Combat Testing Area."
"Yes, Sir."
Arthur received his medical report card with his name and number, leaving the Medical Area at a time that happened to coincide with when the brown-haired girl he was speaking to left the female side.
"Same time, huh?"
"Same time."
