The road to camp was long, dusty, and full of regrets.
I walked with the other levy boys in total silence.
Nobody wanted to talk.
Everybody knew.
Poor kids go first.
Bastards go faster.
I tried the system again.
"Status."
Nothing.
"Open panel."
Nothing.
"Skills."
Nothing.
"Inventory."
Nothing.
"System, blink twice if you hate me."
Nothing.
After like twenty tries, I finally got one response:
[Route: Survival]
That was it.
No stats.
No quest.
No help.
No love.
"Bro," I whispered, "this is not a system. This is an away message."
No reply.
Great.
By sunset we reached camp.
It was ugly.
Wood walls.
Mud yard.
Shouting everywhere.
The sign at the gate said:
BORDER AUXILIARY TRAINING CAMP 7
Under that, someone had scratched:
WELCOME, FUTURE CORPSES
Nice. Very motivating.
A sergeant with a broken nose yelled at us for breathing wrong.
"Line up! Eyes front! If I see brains, I'll beat them out of you!"
I stood straight.
He walked past me, paused, then smacked me in the chest with a stick.
"Too slow."
I hadn't even moved.
Training started next morning.
It was hell.
Run with logs.
Fall in mud.
Get up.
Run again.
Shield drills.
Spear drills.
More running.
I was terrible at all of it.
Like aggressively bad.
I held the spear wrong.
I tripped on flat ground.
I put my shield arm on the wrong side once and almost knocked myself out.
The sergeant stared at me and said, "How are you alive?"
Honestly? Good question.
By day three my hands were torn up.
By day four my shoulders felt like fire.
By day five I learned that pain can have layers.
Then came lash drill.
"Discipline correction," they called it.
If you failed formation, spoke out of turn, dropped gear, moved late, looked tired, existed incorrectly—
lash.
I got lashed for:
moving late
moving early
speaking
not speaking
and one time "looking sarcastic"
I counted to stay sane.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty.
By fifty I forgot my own name.
By eighty I was seeing stars in daylight.
By one hundred I was face down in mud, tasting blood and dirt and bad life choices.
Then I heard it.
A soft chime.
White text.
[Resilience +1]
I blinked.
That's it???
One hundred lashes for ONE point???
I coughed and laughed into the mud.
"Best game design ever."
No response.
Of course.
That night I found out the official lord's son had arrived.
Not in our barracks.
In the upper camp.
Clean quarters.
Private tutor.
Officer track.
Fast-tracked into commander route.
People whispered it like it was normal.
"Good blood should lead."
I lay on my straw mat staring at the ceiling.
Back on Titan, my older brother got the elite path.
Here, the official son gets the elite path.
Different world.
Same script.
I turned my head and spat blood into the dirt.
Then I whispered into the dark:
"Fine."
"If I'm on survival route…"
"I'll survive longer than all of you."
A beat of silence.
Then one line appeared.
[Condition acknowledged.]