Chapter 178: news from the frontier

In the extremely luxurious and militaristic styled presidential villa of the Spartan republic, the rarely seen President Leonidas of the republic sat on his personal outdoors gold chair to sunbathe.

As he was topless with only a nice pair of beach shorts with his name branded on it using gold, his buff muscles, and enormous hulk-like chest was in full display.

His strong leg muscles and well-developed veins stood out conspicuously from his outstretched legs that rested lazily on his pool water. This was his leisure sunbathing time, after his daily routine training.

Even as the strongest individual of the Spartan republic, he still needed to train as he was not the strongest in the world yet. The world was just too big and enormous, housing and hiding frightening talents.

There were some secrets that he and some few knew in the whole Spartan republic, which prompted him to train more. He was never complacent; his training hours were gold to him.

Despite him being completely exposed like that, if viewed by any satellite or any other viewing device, his face would be transmitted to the other side as blurry. His real facial features cannot be easily captured by foreign satellites.

Not many people knew his face in the republic, only the worthy get the privilege of seeing him. Only his exploits and legend are circulated around the republic.

As he rested, the door at the corner of the passage leading to the pool suddenly opened, as his pot-bellied butler came to meet him.

His eyes narrowed on seeing this, as unlike the usual smiling expression that was always on his butler’s face, his expression was now gloomy and reflected immense anxiety and worry.

“What happened?” As soon as the butler got close, he asked immediately as it was evident that there was trouble.

“There’s troubling news from the frontier”. The butler answered with the gloomy expression still on his face.

“Which frontier? Space or the special earth locations?”

“The special earth locations. Specifically, Mountain Everest. Rashford contacted me just now”.

“Tell me”. Leonidas sat up straighter, on hearing that his right-hand man was the one who called. From this, he already knew that this was not the regular trouble calls.

“He is still on the line. He said he wants to speak to you directly”.

“Ok, give me”. After taking the virtually reinforced defense military connection device, he quickly placed it on his ears and waited.

Buzz!!

“Hello, is this Mr. President?” A deep voice quickly echoed over the line from the other end.

“Yes, it’s me. Rashford speak, what happened?”

“Ok, it’s like this”.

“When I woke up this morning, I received a ping of an extremely high-grade rescue mission. I’m currently at the peripheral regions of the mutated Mountain Everest, I came here to save our spies and researchers that are stationed here all year round”.

“During one of their search expeditions, they discovered a very important ruin that was thought to be lost during the great battle”. He paused a little after saying this, to let his President comprehend what he just said.

“Which ruin?” Leonidas asked in a deeper tone.

“The breaking human limits long lost research lab of Araga”.

Hearing this, Leonidas was shocked and moved for the first time in years, as his eyes immediately narrowed again, prompting him to go deep in thought.

This research lab was a name that he was extremely familiar with. Every soldier from his generation knew of it.

Though no one but Araga knew the real details of this research lab, it was still infamously known across the world as one of the main reasons why they became the strongest power currently in the world.

Leonidas was not sure, but according to rumors that circulated back then during the great battle, the research results helped the Aragan warriors to become the first who broke through the bottleneck elite-grade soldier limit.

Though the research lab was lost after being found and attacked by multiple countries and organizations in a joint assault, Araga was still reaping the results of the few knowledge that they could retain.

As all these quickly flashed past his eyes like a movie, Leonidas calmed down again before speaking back into the communication device.

“Did our main spies and researchers who made the discovery survive?” He asked with a slight expectation on his tone.

“No, they all died before I was able to arrive there. I saved only their subordinates that were not initially prioritized in the retaliation assault by the lab’s defense mechanism”.

“Ok. How many powers discovered the information also?”

“I’m not sure, but according to the imprecise speculation of the researchers that I saved, about a dozen countries are already in the know. The number of organizations who discovered it is not known”.

“Hmm, that’s lower than I expected. Ok, fill me in on the details that you managed to secure and retain”.

“It seems that the world is going to get chaotic again, or maybe just some parts”. He soliloquized, as Commander Rashford quickly started telling him the details that he learned from the researchers.

…

Hours after Clark left General Vincent’s mansion, he finally arrived back at his mansion. He went to some places on his way back to get some much-needed fresh air, which made his journey of minutes turn to hours.

On getting back, not knowing the veil of darkness and chaos that was slowly rolling in again from the news gotten from the frontier, he went directly to his room to rest.

He picked his mask from the safe where he kept it before jumping into his king-sized bed, making a plop drop sound. He admired the finely designed mask, as his imaginative mind slowly started coming into play.

Today, before he slept to rest, he wanted to update his blueprint of missions again to include the ideas and new missions that just came.

After doing missions for some months, he finally learned the attribute of planning ahead for all his situations. This saved a lot of his time, as one session of brainstorming could help him draw a schedule of how his next 6 months would look like.

Ding!! After a short mental order, his implant responded with a notification sound as his blueprint was quickly projected into his enormous military-grade television.

[BLUEPRINT- CLARK PENDRAGON’S.]

1. Find a way to break through to the next rank- Pending.

2. Complete 50 mercenary missions- Completed.

3. Complete 50 Spartan army missions- Pending [38/50]

4. Invest money and resources to look for trails left by Sonia- Pending.

5. Revolutionize and develop Vatican City- Pending [18/100]

…

Of his blueprint plans for the last 6 months, he only succeeded in completing one of them, but he was satisfied.

When he made the blueprint, he knew that he could not meet up and complete them all, but he made it because he wanted to continually challenge himself to repeatedly break his limits.

Though he was not able to complete them all in the end, the results of his perseverance, determination and hard work were evident.

After completing so many missions, he was now a proud millionaire with tens of millions of Spartan credits in his virtual bank account.

And through his influence, for the past few months since his inauguration, Vatican City was already experiencing quantum leaps of expansion in terms of development, economic and technological progress.

This was why he was given a rating of 18 for his revolutionize and develop Vatican City blueprint mission.

Among the missions, the one that was giving him a slight headache was the find a way to break through to the next rank mission.

Despite the hindrance from the bottleneck that he was currently experiencing, he was still optimistic as he still progressed at a steady but slow pace for the past 6 months.

The only problem was the crucial breakthrough which seemed to be elusive from him. He could not still see it getting nearer, despite the efforts that he put in every day.

This was a slight setback, but he was not depressed as this slow grind gave him the opportunity to thoroughly round up his skills and make himself more versatile.

After so many months of relentless practice, he was now a maestro for a soldier of his rank, when it came to handling the spear and his gun. Though he was slightly behind in the use of swords and other weapons, he was still extremely good with them.

“Uther, show me my attribute list”. He quickly gave a command to his implant, after brainstorming for a moment.

After doing a lot of missions, which his implant helped a lot in his high success rate, he decided to give it an official name. As his surname was Pendragon, he just decided to call it Uther, which he adopted from the ancient Merlin movie.

[Ding!! Initiating Master’s request immediately.]

Name: Clark Pendragon

Country of allegiance: Spartan republic

Soldier rank: 2nd rank high-grade soldier

Military rank: Major

Weapon mastery: Spear- 92%, Sword- 78%, Gun- 96%, Daggers- 69%

[Any weapon mastery with proficiency below 50% cannot be displayed directly on master’s status. You can ask specifically about any weapon, and its mastery will be displayed separately.]

[Ding!! Master’s Attributes] Attack power: 99% Attack speed: 94%

Endurance: 91% Decision making: 97% Stamina: 100/100

Health: 100%

[Master’s abilities]

Battle arts: The bullet encyclopedia & The frenzied maneuver

Self-created technique: Dragon breaks the ranks

Minor technique: Maelstrom counter-attack

[Evaluation: Master is a unique soldier that has broken through the limiting threshold of his rank. Your strength is at the absolute pinnacle, when placed with all the soldiers of your rank.]

…

Seeing the results of his hard work for the past few months, his face could not help but develop into a smirk again.

“Hard work pays man, anyone who says otherwise is a frog trapped in a well”.

Of all the missions that he made in his blueprint, at least most of them had some progress. The only one that depressed him because of its lack of progress, was the one that entailed him searching for Sonia’s trail.

For the past 6 months, despite the money that he constantly pumped into the endeavor, he did not find any heads or tail of the situation yet. It was like she suddenly disappeared from the earth.

“Did the teleport device that her father presented for her and her brother take them to outside earth?” He could not help but mutter frustratedly.

He already brought up and thought of the idea of going to meet her parents, to ask and know about their search results. But in the end, he could not find the courage to suddenly go and meet such an influential person.

Despite his recent decline, when compared with the great Calibri, he was just an ignorant, insignificant frog who thought the well was the end of the world.

“How can I go and just tell such an influential man that his missing daughter is supposed to be my girlfriend? F*ck, that’s shameless”.

After cursing himself repeatedly for not being there for his girl, he finally tried to put it to the back of his mind for the time being, which was an endeavor that he found difficult.

Cursing again softly under his breath, he quickly gave a new mission for his implant to record and document.

Despite his depression at his girlfriend’s unknown situation, he still had a significant place on his mind that occupied his breakthrough problem.

After repeatedly thinking about it, he decided that going to an exobeast training base was the solution to it. Going back to the originator and training with exobeasts would probably do the magic.

[Ding!! New mission added to blueprint missions.]

6. Find an exobeast training base to train, using the beasts as a catalyst to try inducing a breakthrough.

After hearing the confirmation notification of his implant, he could finally close his eyes, as he let sleep take over and transport him to wonderland.

[Thank you for reading this chapter, I really appreciate it. If you love this book, please leave your power stones behind to support it. Purchase privilege for The Conspiracy Of The Elites and read a varying amount of chapters ahead of regular readers.]