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It was our third day on the Xing Long and I was assembled with my platoon within the large hanger that I now knew to be the main assembly point for the military personnel on board. Ship time was training time, or so I quickly came to understand and one thing the army did better than anyone else, was marching drills.

In Du Gok Bhong, we learned the basics of military formations and drill routines, but we were like rank amateurs compared to even the most basic of the soldiers here. Normally, the Legionnaire Platoon on board would be on the viewing side of such activities, taking in the various drill routines and competitions as entertainment.

But the dumb asshole Jei Su Long decided to make us compete against the other soldiers, putting me in charge while he and his uncle lounged on the dais next to the General and watched us make fools of ourselves. With but a hour’s notice and practice, we were now trying to replicate the complex drill routines that the infantrymen knew from the depts of their souls.

“This is complete bullshit,” Juk Sui muttered as we failed yet another attempt to get the routine right. “Why are we being subjected to this loss of face?”

“Because that’s what the Senior Commander wants,” I said with just as much venom, but I had to at least try to keep my men’s morale intact. “Just deal with it for now. Remember our true mission.”

“But he brings us shame, Commander,” Jin Po, a stocky cultivator with deep brown skin and green eyes said. “We are being mocked as Graduate Legionnaires by common foot soldiers!”

His fellow countrymen, Li Hei and Ben Wu both nodded in agreement.

I glanced about at the barely-out-of-their-teens infantrymen who were stomping around us in their polished boots with ease, performing the drill routines flawlessly. I couldn’t sense any malice coming from any of them. If anything, there was even a little lemonade from being able to see us Legionnaires up close.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “These guys have nothing but respect for us still. Trust me.”

I glanced back up at the dais where Jei Su Long was clapping like an idiot for the latest infantry platoon on display. It burned me up inside. He was doing all this because of me, forcing my men to face disrespect just because he wanted to embarrass me personally.

Little prick, I thought.

But I held my mask of indifference as I put shoulder to the task and reformed my men for another attempt. I barked out the orders, barely remembering them myself. About half of them had gotten it, but poor Dim Wei had two left feet.

The whole thing was frigging ridiculous.

We passed by the other ten platoons on display, and I suddenly felt a strong sense of anger. I looked for where it was coming from and noticed one of the Infantry platoon commanders staring at me. I shot him a questioning look and he quickly broke eye contact with me, glancing away as his soul spiked with fear.

What the hell?

I decided to pay him no mind and kept up the effort performing the drill routine, but in the end, it was all for naught. We screwed it up just like the previous six times and were finally kicked out of the event. Mumbles and curses filled the ranks as I pulled my platoon to the side and away from the remaining teams.

It took Jei Su Long a whole ten minutes to realize we weren’t in the competition anymore and when he finally did, he jumped off the dais and stormed towards us like the pissed off Karen he was.

“Why have you shamed us so, Iron Bull?” he shouted. “Can you not do what even these lowly soldiers can?” He then smirked. “Clearly this proves the President’s wisdom in placing me over you as Senior Platoon Commander.”

He paused as if to make a big show of it.

Like he had done all this just to give him the platform to make such a ridiculous statement. As for the intended audience, thankfully not a soul in my platoon was buying it.

“Wisdom indeed,” I said with a shit-eating grin. “By making you Senior Commander you can now observe from a safe distance while I command on the ground. Just like you did today.”

That got a few snickers and he immediately turned beet red with anger. “Who just laughed?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” I said dismissively. “Anyway, just remember our orders, Senior Platoon Commander. Up here you’re in charge, but on the ground… it’s me.”

His face twisted into a scowl, and he opened his mouth as if to say something else, but his words were drowned out by a blaring klaxon that resounded throughout the hanger. Immediately the drill competition ended and the soldiers on the square quickly fell into their normal battalion formation.

Jei Su Long looked about dumbfounded, not knowing what to do.

I stepped in front of him and issued the commands to get us in rank and file.

“Ah… good!” Jei Su long said after he realized what I was doing. “Yes, get them in line Junior Commander.”

I let out another restrained sigh as Jei Su Long took his place to my left, heading up the platoon. Infantryman Wei then took a spot next to him as our liaison.

The ship’s Captain, Li Jeng appeared and immediately met with the general along with Jei Su Long’s uncle, Hai Su Long on the dais. After a brief conversation they all seemed to nod to one another and then Captain Li Jeng disappeared while General Gong took center stage.

“Battalion!” he shouted and the entire contingent of soldiers brought themselves to attention. “Listen clearly. Our missing of the first gate and our detour into the core worlds seems to have been guided by the fates. We have just received an imperial communication that a fringe world has been impacted by a fallen Cursed Star. We are fortunate to be the closest vessel to respond. I have given orders to Captain Li Jeng to change course for the planet El D’shar. As a fringe world, defending it from this calamity will bring our battalion much honor. Reports indicate that it is a C class event, which also falls in our favor. We have faced worse and thus this battle should be routine, but do not grow complacent.” He then turned to smile towards my platoon. “Let us show our honored guests that we can do more than simply march.”

He paused for a laugh and the battalion laughed with him.

“Time to reach El D’shar is 14 hours. The order is rest and preparation. We will make planet fall as soon as we enter orbit. Battalion dismissed!”

* * *

Being in the army was the definition of hurry up and wait.

Or so I was learning.

After rushing around like banshees for a couple of hours, grabbing gear, prepping drop skiffs and slamming down chow, the entire ship went silent for a solid eight hours of rest and recovery before the assault.

For me, I found a place where I could get some peace and quiet.

I sat in lotus position, staring out at the stars in the forward observation port, behind one of the gigantic eyes of the celestial dragon ship. That was how the cultivators referred to it, I’d learned. A celestial dragon. And to be fair, I could find no better way to describe it myself.

I let my mind drift as my body drifted through the cosmos at unimaginable speed.

I had no idea how far away El D’shar was, but to get there in only 14 hours sounded like they had to be hauling ass. As I reflected inwardly, I extended my peace and solitude by venturing onto the lakeside beach back home, tucked away in the core of my mind’s eye.

The red-hued Struggler of my secondary soul was there, greeting me with a wave.

It was still a bit odd to see him and not my usual twin selves of the Demon and the Struggler chilling around the camp fire, but it was confirmation yet again of my ascension.

I still hadn’t had time to decently reflect on that.

My increase in power was one thing, but now I needed to find a new path to progression as well. The Sacred Soul Realm wasn’t the end, in fact it was only the beginning if I wanted to face down the likes of the Princess and whoever else would stand in my way.

The question now was…how?

I summoned the shuras in my mind’s eye and considered the techniques I still had yet to master. There were the advanced manifestation techniques such as [Spectral Form] which would turn me into my red-hued doppelganger in the real world and [Furnace of the Frenzied Flame] which would turn the real world into my own personal version of hell.

Or something like that.

While the information was there, I ran into the same issue as when I first started learning from the shuras. They were written in a way that assumed you were already skilled at cultivation at a base level. For me, I had to figure out how to be a Sacred Soul Realm cultivator first.

There was only so much I could glean from the library at Du Gok Bhong.

But maybe there would be an opportunity still.

One just on the horizon.

Jei Su Long’s uncle had mentioned forcing us into some kind of pit stop on a core world. Surely a place like that would have access to any manual you could think of. And with my status as a Graduate Legionnaire, I probably had the clout to gain that access too.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The Struggler grinned at me as he nodded slowly.

“Yeah, you know what I’m thinking, you bastard,” I said with a laugh.

At first, I was pissed off as hell about this detour delaying me from getting to the Hell Worlds and eventually back home. But maybe this was all the Flame again, guiding my path. When would I have gotten access to a core world before now?

Of course, I had no idea how I’d even navigate or go about such a thing as snagging a Sacred Soul Realm cultivation manual from somewhere. But now that it held some possibility, I had to put my mind to it.

* * *

The ride down to planet side was bumpy as hell.

I was strapped into my harness along with the rest of my platoon, but we were joined by General Gong and Governor Tai Su Long, along with several of their aides, being in the main command skiff. It was a great honor to be numbered among them, or so we were told in the final assembly before we were rushed to the launch bays of the Xing Long for deployment.

The main platoons were sardine canned inside skiffs the size of cargo planes and then thrust into space against the backdrop of a vibrant green and blue sphere that was the planet El D’shar. I had watched two of them depart via a small view port before we ourselves were ushered inside the command skiff.

As we leveled out, Infantryman Wei gave a signal for us to undo the harnesses and once we had all unstrapped, he gave a second signal for us to stay clear of the walls. We huddled around a center console in the middle of the skiff and then to my surprise, the roof and sides of the craft began to peel back in segments, turning the enclosed craft into a normal planet side skiff again.

The hurricane blast of rushing air hit me at what had to be over a hundred miles an hour, but I reacted swiftly with a cycling of my Frenzy to keep me glued to the deck. My legionnaires instinctively did the same, some stumbling a little, but the military personnel on board seemed well prepared for it, not flinching a bit.

Bright sunshine spilled from a radiant aqua blue sky, dotted with clouds. Being out in the open, the sight was freeing in more ways than one. I’d been stuck in prison cells and tin cans for months and the sky above Du Gok Bhong was nowhere near as pretty as this.

I could sense the same from my men as they basked in the sunlight looking skyward, grins on their faces. As we dropped more altitude and slowed further, we punched through another layer of clouds and a vast landscape appeared below us.

We all instinctively edged towards the railing on the skiff’s side and leaned over for a better view. There was land as far as I could see, flat and cultivated with farms and forest all cut into checkerboard squares. Lakes and rivers ran between the land and then slowly the topography changed, becoming dotted with small villages and then what appeared to be a vast city emerged, something that had to be ten times the size of Jurin province.

Huge pagoda like towers and monuments stood between thousands upon thousands of smaller buildings. For a moment I wondered if even here I could find the knowledge I sought. But the thought was scattered when smoke came into view. We dipped even closer to the surface, perhaps just a couple hundred feet up and the stillness of the landscape suddenly grew rife with chaos and turmoil as we drew closer.

At what appeared to be the perimeter of the city was a sea of demons that were breaching an outer wall and pouring into the streets. Fires were breaking out everywhere as monsters the size of buildings demolished everything in their path.

One of the battalion carriers was already on site, landed in a field just outside the city. Thousands of troops were pouring forth and attacking the demons from the rear. It all played out like a wargame as General Gong began tapping things on a Qi screen built into the center console of the skiff.

“Gold Company is addressing the major breach in this area,” one of his aides reported. “Jade and Saphire are quelling the same to the west. Ruby is defending a town further north that is completely under siege.”

“What of the strike zone?” General Gong said.

“Reports indicate it is a hundred miles North-East. No visual of it as yet.”

“Let’s get there then,” Gong said. “Bring Onyx company with us. We’ll start softening the impact zone while the rest of the battalion stabilizes the area here. Once done, give orders for Saphire to remain on defensive rotation while Ruby, Jade and Gold reinforce Onyx at the strike zone.”

“Yes sir,” the aide said and immediately began punching things into the console.

I marveled for a moment at it all and what the aide was now doing in particular.

They had to have some form of instantaneous communication to relay the commands, the same as how they received the initial distress call while in space. But it wasn’t like they were talking into a mic or anything. It was like he was tapping out Morris code or something.

“Hey,” I said to Infantryman Wei. “How is he relaying those commands?”

“Huh?” he said, looking at me confused.

“How is he getting the general’s commands to the other companies?”

He frowned a little. “Have you no concept of Qi stone pairing?”

I shook my head. “I’m from a real backwater world. We don’t even have an Omni Gate.”

I still wasn’t sure what an Omni Gate even was, but I knew we didn’t have one.

“When combined with aetherite, Qi stone pairs can resonate across vast distances near instantaneously,” he said pointing to the console. “There are identical consoles on each command vessel with matching pair sets. They mimic what we do and see here.”

“Ah!” I said. “So it is sort of like Morris code then.”

“Like what?”

“Never mind.”

But it made me wonder why they still made us send physical letters and shit. Maybe it was just less expensive, or more likely, it was just another way to keep the elite the elite while us commoners remained the scum of the universe and had to rely on snail mail.

The thought sparked my Flame and I went back to viewing the conflict below to quell my ire. Gold Company was making a good push into the demon horde from behind. From our height, I couldn’t tell what kind of demons they were, but obviously they weren’t the Cursed Star born variety.

But clearly, they weren’t from a Bloodmoon gate either.

“Hey Wei, one more question,” I said calling him over again. “What are these Cursed Star falls exactly? Do they come from the Cursed Stars themselves?”

“In a way,” he said. “They are comets caused by the remnants of Bloodmoons that explode.”

I did a double take. “Bloodmoons explode?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes. These are the results.”

Shit, I thought.

I’xol’ukz had all kinds of jacked up ways to spread his ilk.

But it made sense in a way.

I looked at the conflicts more closely and saw what had to be your everyday cultivators defending themselves in the streets. I then realized that something was missing.

“These places don’t have barriers like on Bloodmoon worlds, do they?”

Wei shook his head. “It’s our job to protect them.” He then pointed down into the fray, where barricades were set up in the middle of the streets and defended by soldiers and martial sect cultivators alike. “It appears we came just in time. The local regiments are taxed and about to fall.”

He was right.

The civilians and local military personnel were overwhelmed.

And without a barrier to retreat into, everyone down there was fair game.

The thought brought an unsettling to my soul that stirred my Flame, my twin Dao kicking in. I had to defend these people too. And as much as I hated the imperial system, if I didn’t defeat the Cursed Stars on their home turf, more meteors or cursed comets like this would fall.

We finally headed away from the city towards where the strike zone was. The ground below us was dotted with wandering demons and it made me wonder if there wasn’t some minor effect from the meteor that mirrored that of the Bloodmoon.

“Do these Bloodmoon comets caused people to mutate into demons?” I asked Wei.

He raised a brow at me, almost as if surprised I would ask such a thing. “For those unlucky enough to be caught in the initial blast, yes. But that phenomenon is not well known. The meteor becomes dormant after that. Did you study such things at the academy?”

I wobbled my head. “Sort of. Demon hunting is sort of a hobby of mine.”

He chortled. “Interesting. It was lucky this fallen star only landed close to a small town. If it had landed within the city, this would have easily been an A class event. The demons would have been in millions.”

Poor bastards

, I thought as I looked down at the demons with new eyes.

They were likely all just victims too.

The topography changed yet again as we neared what had to be the strike zone. The earth was scorched and barren, like it had been ravaged by a wildfire. Wandering through were even thicker hordes of demons and then finally I saw the Cursed Fallen Star for myself.

Nestled in a crater that had to be five miles wide was a reddish-brown hunk of space rock that was smoldering with heat. It was as big as an office building and filled with cracks that spewed new demons from within.

From the size of it, there was no question now that over half the demons we’d seen had to have come from people being mutated. I couldn’t sense any Dark Frenzy coming from it from where I was, but the subtle stench of it was in the air.

The drop skiff of the Onyx battalion was already on the ground and the soldiers from it were spilling from the gangway to engage the demons head on. As we got closer, I could see they operated much like the phalanx crews back at Du Gok Bhong, working in formations that leveraged their numbers over their individual strengths.

They made good headway taking out large numbers at a time, but their assault on the meteorite wasn’t without incident. As the demons retaliated from the surprise attack, they slammed into Onyx Company’s formations brutally. Bodies of soldiers went flying into the air, landing within the hordes to be torn apart.

It was maddening and sickening to watch.

Jei Su Long and his uncle however seemed oblivious to it all, clapping and cheering like they were still watching the damn drill competition. I grimaced, feeling my Flame churning within like a caged beast.

“General Gong,” I said as I approached him with a small bow. “Would you allow my legionnaires to assist? I feel awkward standing here and doing nothing while men die.”

“Nonsense!” Tai Su Long said, apparently overhearing me. “These soldiers are meant to die. Let them claim their honor. You would cause them to lose face by bailing them out of trouble now.”

General Gong merely smiled. “The Governor speaks wisely. I appreciate your offer of assistance, but attending to something like this is far below your station, Platoon Commander.”

“Or perhaps not,” Jei Su Long said, joining in the conversation. “This One is from a lowly colony world after all.” He then laughed. “For that reason, I will forgive your impudence of a request to the General outside of my command, Iron Bull. Recall your own words. On the ground you are in charge, but up here… it is I.”

I stifled my anger with [Indifference]. “So it seems.”

Jei Su Long and his uncle shared a laugh together and resumed their viewing of the battlefield. General Gong clapped me on the shoulder with a smile.

“Do not mind them,” he whispered. “They are core-worlders. It is their way. And I do indeed appreciate your offer of supp—”

His words cut short as a deafening clap of thunder belted the air with a tremendous BOOM!

Everyone on the skiff ducked instinctively at the sound, but it took us a second more to realize where it had come from. Below a huge crack had formed in the meteorite, splitting it nearly wide open. Whatever shock wave had caused the thunder had slammed into half the platoons within Onyx company, killing the men instantly.

Holy shit…I thought.

But then I saw something even worse.

An enormous, scaled leg stepped through the crack in the meteor, followed by a pair of clawed hands that gripped the crack at its side and tore it further apart. A monster that had to be six stories tall emerged and bellowed a roar from below. Even from our distance it caused my ears to hurt. Its body was bestial in form, like a gorilla with red hued scales, but its head was like that of a lion with a flowing mane. On its back were a pair of wings that looked far too small for its size. The closest thing I could describe it to was perhaps a manticore.

I looked to General Gong and his face had gone pale.

“Send emergency communicate to all companies!” he shouted. “The fallen star was concealing a Thrantor! This is no longer a C class event! Escalation is now at S class. Order all companies to fall back to our position to engage!”

“But General!” his aide said. “All companies are deeply engaged already. It they withdraw now we will lose the city.”

“To hell with the city!” Gong said. “If that monster has time to develop its wings, it will become airborne and wipe out this entire planet!”

My Flame stirred. “My offer still stands, general. Let me and my men deal with that monster down there while your other companies defend the city.”

He paused a moment and then looked to Jei Su Long and his uncle for ascent. “I would indeed take that offer of help now, Senior Commander.”

Jei Su Long glared at me, his anger palpable. He then glanced up at his uncle. Tai Su Long merely shrugged offering the decision back to him.

Long seconds passed as all eyes fell on Jei Su Long.

He looked to the ground, his eyes shifting, calculating.

“No,” he said finally, and everyone’s jaws dropped. “I will not have the junior platoon commander’s errant directive to assist be qualified by myself. This is a duty below that of a legionnaire. We are trained to fight upon the Hell Worlds. Let these here earn their honor and glory for the empire upon their own merit. Your decision is overruled…Junior platoon commander.”

General Gong was speechless.

Governor Tai Su Long however nodded in approval. “Well said. I believe the Senior Platoon Commander has given his decision, general. Your men are on their own.”

Jei Su Long then smirked at me, as if he had just won some kind of battle. That he had one upped me in front of everyone, but at the cost of perhaps millions of lives. I couldn’t believe it. My Flame erupted with the outrage of my twin Dao.

“Are you frigging serious, man?” I shouted at him. “This is about more than just your damn ego!”

Tai Su Long reeled back in shock. “H-how dare you speak out of turn!”

“You are to be reprimanded!” Jei Su Long said. “You cannot speak to me like that! You are but the Junior Platoon Commander!”

“The hell I am!” I said as I grabbed my Axe and Glaive. “I am the Platoon Commander and by order of President Tzu Lu Zen himself, I hold command over the platoon when on the ground.”

I then hopped onto the railing of the skiff.

“And when I hit the ground, my order is this.” I flew into the air with [Lightning Walk]. “Follow me.”