037 FORTRESS MYRONE
Before long, more buses pulled in, unloading wave after wave of students.
This was no ordinary school excursion—nearly every Meta high school and military academy had sent their recruits. What loomed ahead was clearly a major operation.
The escort soldiers moved with practiced precision, corralling the students in groups toward the massive mining escalator.
One by one, they boarded under the watchful eyes of armed guards. At the controls, the captain entered a coded sequence, and with a heavy shudder, the lift roared to life, carrying its passengers down into the depths.
Damen's eyes narrowed. He had taken this lift before, but it always stopped at Level Two—the miners' limit.
This time, the platform sank lower. To Level Three.
"That's impossible," he thought.
The miners often whispered about a lower level, but Damen had never seen it himself. To them, Level Three was forbidden ground. Now he understood why—this was where the space rift lay.
The lift shuddered to a halt, revealing a cavern of staggering size.
At its center pulsed the rift, a radiant vortex casting sharp, shifting shadows against the rock.
From its glowing heart, streams of jade-like stalagmites erupted, solidifying into crystalline veins. They were the very ore that Damen once mined. Once they were refined, they became Aur cards, the meta energy of the world.
Captain Green's voice boomed across the chamber. "Listen carefully. You will follow every instruction to the letter. If you get lost—or die inside—it's your problem, not ours."
One by one, the students lined up and stepped toward the light. A few hesitated at the threshold, fear overcoming their courage.
They were escorted back to the buses, and their expedition failed.
When Damen's turn came, he lingered, his palm brushing the glowing surface. The energy radiating from it dwarfed even the Meta Amplifying Theater—it throbbed with raw, alien power.
"Move it, boy! Don't block the line!" Captain Green barked.
Heart pounding, Damen drew a breath and plunged through.
The world on the other side stole it from him. He emerged not into stone tunnels but onto a rocky jadeite ridge overlooking an endless desert plain, heat waves shimmering in the distance.
"What the hell…? We're nowhere near a desert before," a student gasped.
Mr. Stamyre, the Theory instructor, stepped forward. "The rift is a gateway to another world. Another universe, perhaps or space dimension. Many theories exist, but none are certain."
"How could a world like this even exist…? It's beyond the realm of known physics," Damen argued.
Mr. Stamyre smiled faintly. "Our meta-research has long surpassed our previous understanding of science and physics."
"When did this alien world intrude into ours?" someone else asked.
"A very long time ago," Mr. Stamyre replied. "Thousands of years ago, beings from that world came to our planet and ruled over humanity. They built enormous pyramids in the deserts and educated an entire generation, gifting them advanced knowledge." He paused to take a drink from his bottle.
"Eventually, they were driven out," he continued. "The world forgot them. But thousands of years later, with the opening of the space rifts… they returned."
Damen recalled the old legends and forbidden histories.
"So, the ancient aliens in human history have come back to haunt us," Damen said.
"Yes," Mr. Stamyre replied calmly. "You could see it that way."
"Where are we now?"
"This is the planet of Anu, and its inhabitants- the Annunakians, or what we call 'Blue Blood'," Stamyre explained.
"Blue Blood?" the students wondered.
At the base of the ridge, a military convoy waited.
There were armored transports idling on a dirt road. Soldiers waved the students aboard. Engines roared as the vehicles rumbled and rolled across the sands.
"Where are they taking us?" Damen asked under his breath.
Zairgid, sitting beside him, smirked. "Fortress Myrone. Our stronghold on this side of the rift."
Damen frowned, then turned to Stamyre. "Sir… if the rift leads to another universe, and we build fortresses here… doesn't that make us the invaders into their alien world?"
The teacher hesitated, then spoke gravely. "The rift is not a door we alone can cross. If we weren't here, the 'aliens' would be there—on our side. Fortress Myrone is the wall that keeps our world safe."
The students fell silent, the weight of his words settling over them. Their safe, ordinary world existed only because this fortress stood unbroken in an alien world.
If Fortress Myrone ever fell, an alien invasion would begin.
-----
The students were quickly assigned bunks within the barracks of Fortress Myrone.
Damen was restless. So, he slipped outside to explore.
"Holy Crap, double suns?" Damen exclaimed.
The desert landscape felt oddly familiar, but the sky stole his breath. Above, two suns blazed in tandem, their dance across the heavens, was a mesmerizing defiance of physics.
Fortress Myrone was a mega structure.
It sprawled across the desert like a colossal five-pointed star, each arm engineered for war. Between the jutting points lay deep cauldron-shaped trenches—death traps designed to lure enemy infantry into narrow kill zones where defenders could strike from both flanks in crushing pincers.
Overhead, a shimmering dome of force fields stretched across the entire structure, its surface glimmering like a starfish clinging to the sands.
At the tip of each star-point bristled a massive meta cannon, Fortress Myrone's main offensive weapons, their barrels glowing faintly with restrained power.
Above, the sky churned with machinery.
Thousands of helicopters rested on docking pads across the fortress's upper decks—sleek transports and gunships ready to unleash troops or rain destruction on command.
Fortress Myrone wasn't just a stronghold. It was a war machine built to hold back another universe.
"This fortress looks indestructible," Damen said, his eyes tracing the massive cannons and shimmering force fields. "What kind of enemy could possibly warrant something this colossal?"
"Don't fool yourself," Zairgid replied. "The aliens… Annunakians aren't weak. They're deadly—far deadlier than most of these noobs realize."
Around them, students laughed and joked, treating the place like a field trip instead of a warfront.
"Why bring so many students here?" Damen pressed. "If this is just research, there is no need for so many students from the entire city coming. It doesn't make sense."
Zairgid smirked. "Research? No way. Look at the size of this fortress. They're always short on manpower. Students are free labor. Whenever they are short of men, the students rotate in—it keeps the defenses running."
Damen's thoughts raced.
Something must have crippled Fortress Myrone—some massive battle that left its ranks gutted. That was why the city needed students here: to fill gaps where soldiers had fallen.
"Do you think we're just cannon fodder for the army?" he asked.
Zairgid shrugged. "If you're not careful enough, yeah."
Before Damen could reply, a siren wailed through the fortress. Red warning lights flared across every wall.
"What the hell? There's a drill now?" Damen asked, his heart pounding.
Zairgid's expression hardened. "No. Fortress Myrone doesn't run drills like this. We're under attack… a real attack."
"Annunakians" "Blue Blood"
Panic rippled among the students.
"What do we do? We've never been trained for an actual war!" Damen shouted.
"We hide." Zairgid darted for the shadows, his body rippling into the environment until he vanished completely due to his Camouflage ability.
"Damn it, you're quick to hide," Damen cursed, scrambling to a corner. He tried to activate the same skill, forcing his body to blur into the shadows.
But there was nothing.
"Come on, Camouflage… activate," he hissed.