"I didn't expect this offer," George explained after the duo entered Khan's room and started conversing about their situation. "Apparently, the Global Army sent all the survivors in different training camps. I simply got the best due to my feats on Istrone."
Khan couldn't help but nod at those words. George could already cast spells, and his battle prowess was way above average. It wasn't surprising that his profile suited Nitis' training camp after Istrone's crisis.
"What about you?" George asked once his story ended. "I thought you would have remained on Earth to take care of your girl."
"I can't do much for her," Khan sighed while lying on his bed, "And everything was too peaceful. I was losing my mind there."
Khan gave an honest reply. George had already seen his ugliest face. He had no reason to hide his real feelings. Yet, he decided not to talk about Martha in detail since the topic was hard to explain.
"Trust me, I get you," George sighed while laying his back on the wall and stretching his legs on the floor. "I have guards at home, right? One of them approached me from behind when I was meditating inside the woods near the mansion. I almost took off his eye."
"Do all recruits have mansions?" Khan asked.
"That's just the holiday home," George explained. "Some members of the main family always live in the central districts. My father thought that a messy city wasn't ideal in my condition."
"But they still sent you here," Khan laughed.
"I flew between the training camp and the holiday home every day after I returned," George commented. "I was going crazy, and my family even wanted to hire private professors until the Global Army came up with something. I basically escaped when I heard that I could go to Nitis."
"Did they brief you already?" Khan asked. "What did they say about the Niqols?"
George revealed a shameless smile when he noticed Khan's interest. He lowered his voice before announcing something that made Khan divert his eyes. "I heard some rumors. There seems to be a newcomer who made Miss Liiza laugh."
"He must be a handsome and virtuous man," Khan suggested.
"Cora and your girl on Ylaco weren't enough," George teased him. "You also had to hit on a Niqols. Did they tell you that she is basically a princess here?"
"First of all, Martha and I are only friends," Khan eventually decided to clarify his position. "We have probably liked each other for a long time, but the packed schedule inside the training camp never left room for feelings. We had decided to talk about us right before the semestral missions, but you know how it ended."
George suddenly felt bad about his last tease. He didn't think that Khan had been so unlucky. He clearly liked Martha a lot, but Istrone had ruined their hopes of ending up together.
His lack of reactions in front of Cora's feelings also made more sense now. Khan had spent his time on Istrone waiting to understand if he had a girlfriend, but Martha's condition had put that matter on hold.
"I'm sorry to hear that," George sighed. "Luck only pretends to be on your side. You never had the chance to appreciate what you had."
Khan shrugged his shoulders. He didn't have a proper answer to that statement. The two fell silent as they remained on the bed and floor with various thoughts running inside their minds.
"What about Miss Liiza then?" George eventually asked. "Is that a misunderstanding?"
"Well," Khan exclaimed while diverting his eyes again. "We flew together twice. I don't think there's much more. I don't even know how the Niqols handle that stuff."
"Do you mean flirting?" George asked.
"I mean, they must have different customs, right?" Khan continued. "How can a few smiles prove anything?"
"The Niqols are a straightforward species, Khan," George explained. "You don't have to imagine complicated reasons to explain her behavior. The simplest answer is usually correct with these aliens."
"Did you just reveal classified information?" Khan teased George. "I didn't think recruits could share them."
"Shut up," George snorted. "Let's make a deal. You don't rat me out, and I'll pretend that you didn't smile before."
Khan's hand suddenly went on his mouth. He was really smiling, but he had needed George to point it out to notice it.
"Dammit," Khan cursed while lightly bumping the back of his head on the metal wall.
"There is nothing wrong in liking her," George commented. "I have yet to see her with my own eyes, but they showed me holograms of her during the briefing a few days ago. I would also smile if I were in your situation."
"There is no situation," Khan snorted. "She only brought me to the Aduns' nests."
"How did she even bring you there?" George asked in his teasing voice. "This is a small camp. Rumors run quickly. Everyone knows that you couldn't get an Udu, so how did you reach the nests and come back in less than a day? Did you have to ride behind her?"
"I won't answer that," Khan laughed while pushing George away with his feet. "Get out now. I have to wake up in less than six hours."
George laughed while straightening his position and walking toward the metal door. He exited the room quickly, and Khan could soon enjoy the silence again.
'Straightforward species, he says,' Khan repeated in his mind before sealing the door and reactivating the training program of his new martial art.
The summary continued and briefly described the Divine Reaper's main features. The martial art relied on quick techniques and deadly attacks that aimed to take down opponents in a single move.
However, the Divine Reaper had evident flaws. It almost completely lacked defensive stances. It was an extremely aggressive martial art that forced the user to go all-out during every battle.
Khan soon understood why the Divine Reaper couldn't get more than sixty-five points if used on its own. The user would risk suffering counterattacks half of the time since each move left large openings whenever they failed to kill an opponent.
Still, Khan also saw how his Lightning-demon style could remove those weaknesses. The fast moves of the Divine Reaper were perfect. He felt confident in bringing their value to their intended value once he fused them with his other techniques.
The training program explained a few requirements of the Divine Reaper before approaching the actual lessons. It recommended a few exercises meant to merge two martial arts faster, and it even listed a series of knives that suited the powerful moves.
'A normal knife would break during every failed execution with mana,' Khan read on the holograms, 'It's better to use magic weapons with enhanced resilience. Sharpness isn't mandatory as a feature since the Divine Reaper will handle that part.'
Khan closed the training program at that point. It was late, and he even felt a bit disappointed. He didn't consider the issue of a suitable weapon. George had made it appear so easy on Istrone that he had ended up underestimating the difficulty of the martial art.
'Weapons require a completely different set of skills,' Khan sighed in his mind. 'That's so obvious. I shouldn't even try to fuse my martial arts until my proficiency with the Lightning-demon style reaches the competent level.'
It was clear that Khan had to spend a long time in his training. Obtaining a new martial art didn't immediately make him stronger. He needed to invest sweat and blood before that resource could give results.
.
.
.
Khan didn't sleep much and reached the building meant for the briefing in no time by following the instructions on his phone. He even managed to have breakfast in a simple canteen that mostly served some of Nitis' iconic worms and insects.
The strange food didn't faze Khan, so he reached the briefing hall five minutes before the appointment. The room was empty, so he sat on one of the small desks that filled the area and meditated as he waited for someone to arrive.
A relatively young solider soon entered the hall and showed a surprised expression when he noticed Khan meditating on one of the desks in the front lines. His eyebrows even arched when Khan opened his eyes and jumped on the floor to perform a military salute.
"At ease," The man quickly announced while walking toward the end of the hall. "I'm Lieutenant Glenn Kintea. I will now share classified information that you aren't allowed to spread with anyone under the grade of Captain. Am I clear?"
"Yes, sir!" Khan promptly shouted while inspecting the soldier.
The Lieutenant was relatively short, but he had a severe face that his square head enhanced. He had short black hair, dark eyes, a short beard, and his uniform featured two stars on each shoulder.
The soldier didn't waste time. He went right to the point of the briefing as he activated some of the alien menus on the black walls and let them scan his eyes and genetic signature before unlocking more options.
Lieutenant Kintea threw a storm of information toward Khan and used holograms to make the process smoother. The soldier started from Nitis' general layout, fauna, and flora until he arrived at the Niqols' hierarchy, customs, and relationship with the humans.
Nitis' environment didn't have much to say. Its often uneven surface made ground vehicles hard to use, and relying on the Udu showed the Niqols that the Global Army was willing to compromise to improve the relationship between the two species.
The flora didn't thrive much on the planet due to the absence of suitable nutrients. Sunlight didn't shine on the surface, and the ground wasn't as rich in mana as Istrone.
Instead, the fauna thrived in every corner of Nitis. The planet didn't need the Nak to obtain the mana, so the animals had evolved with that energy throughout countless years. Every creature in that world was a Tainted beast.
The Niqols had a tight relationship with Nitis' fauna due to their excellent understanding of the mana. They relied on those creatures for different purposes, which often allowed the aliens to replace technology with them.
The Niqols had never needed to develop vehicles, but Lieutenant Kintea confirmed that the Niqols had gone to space. The aliens had yet to reveal how a species that had founded its growth on mana could fly past Nitis' orbit, but the Global Army guessed that most of that technology came from the Nak.
The aliens' hierarchy was quite simple. They had organizations that resembled tribes created according to the connections among each family. The Niqols would belong to the same group even if they shared a single drop of blood.
The elders of the species could join the organizations in charge of the entire population, but they mostly handled borders and specific resources. Those groups became vital only in front of a global crisis.
Smaller organizations handled different quadrants of the planet and various tasks. The Global Army didn't know many details, but it didn't care about them either. Its only focus was on the alien ambassadors that managed the relationship between the two species since they were the ones in charge of accepting eventual permits.
Liiza's mother turned out to be one of the ambassadors who managed the relationship between the two species. She wasn't alone in the task, but she was in charge of her team, which made her the most important alien on Nitis in the eyes of the Global Army.
Liiza and others had to take care of helping the humans on the field. The task seemed beneath her, but she had offered herself for that role, which inevitably caused her mother's anger.
Nitis didn't have many humans on its surface. Only one captain, two lieutenants, four gradeless soldiers, a few professors, and four classes of recruits lived on the alien world.
Khan's current training camp featured only two classes. The others were near a different city on the other side of the mountain chain. The tasks of each group mainly consisted in continuing their studies, but the army forced them to help the Niqols with various tasks to reinforce their relationship.
"Nitis contains priceless knowledge," Lieutenant Kintea explained as the briefing reached its end. "Imagine having a society that has evolved around mana for thousands of years. We can accelerate our development by entire centuries with each discovery that the Niqols are willing to share. Our job here is vital for the Global Army and the entirety of humankind."
Lieutenant Kintea cleared his throat at that point before opening a menu and confirming that he had sealed the door. Khan didn't miss that action, and a tinge of interest filled his mind and made him straighten his sitting position.
"Great job with the Aduns, Khan," The Lieutenant exclaimed. "We have tried to gain access to those birds for years already. We didn't think that the solution to our problems could be with the new generations of Niqols."
A strange feeling spread through Khan. He didn't know why, but he had started to feel dirty after inspecting the soldier's keen eyes.
"I know that the Captain wants to play it safe," Lieutenant Kintea continued, "But I believe that establishing a tight relationship with Miss Liiza could bring incredible benefits in the next years. These aren't official orders, but I hope you realize how great it would be if you brought Liiza on our side."
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