The Cathedral

"Didn't our superiors say that some Romans were waiting for us on this side?" one of the fleeing recruits asked.

"They didn't say the kind we were meeting!" replied another.

The crocodile-gyle hadn't moved. It looked at its prey with contemptuous eyes. It locked on to one of the recruits. The creature moved its legs and then vanished. A second later, the targeted soldier yelled painfully. The soldier was torn in half vertically by the fist of the monster.

The other soldiers didn't dare look back; they continued with their run. The creature moved again and vanished. Kyle felt the frightening presence coming for him. He had a plasma bullet gun on his hip. He grabbed the gun and then spun around. He saw the creature appear. It was a hand away from grabbing him, and then, he squeezed the trigger. The result was an explosion that sent the monster flying metres backwards. He didn't receive any impulses from the explosion. He landed on the ground on his back. The explosion made the other soldiers stop running to have a look.

"That shouldn't have happened. It's not an RPG projectile," Kyle said to himself.

He was a few metres ahead of his comrades. His comrades were glad to see their pursuer was gone, at best dead. The soldiers approached him. They nodded at him, appreciating his effort. He was half sure that he wasn't responsible for the explosion.

Grrr! The soldiers saw the monster again, not far behind them. It stood staring at them with angry, murderous eyes.

"What the heck?" A soldier said, with a sickened face.

A flash of white light thundered in the sky, briefly illuminating the land. The monster vanished to attack the soldiers.

BOOM! Another explosion. This time, the soldiers were impacted, and they flew some metres away. A crater was formed near where they had been standing. A white light shone into the sky in the crater.

"Roman!" A soldier exclaimed.

The other soldiers got back on their feet. They saw the Roman walking towards them while dragging the charred beyond recognition body of the monster from the crater. The Roman reached the soldiers.

"Good day, Freshers," said the Roman.

The soldiers stood at attention and saluted the Roman.

The Roman was pleased and he said, "I see you all have manners. Seems like that is what proved to the universe that you guys are worthy of living."

"The body of this beast will serve as food. Its nutrients can strengthen your body and genes. It can evolve your body."

Kyle asked the Roman, "were you the one responsible for the first explosion?"

The Roman replied, "both the first one and the killing one were me."

One of the recruits asked the Roman, "It seems you mastered an element, did you?"

The Roman nodded and said, "fire".

"We were to get to the cathedral. Do you know the way there? " a soldier asked.

The Cathedral was the name of the Roman programme camp in False Heaven.

The Roman asked, "You weren't given maps?"

The Roman gestured for the soldiers to follow him. The Roman and the soldiers walked to the cathedral.

The Cathedral wasn't only the camp for the Roman programme, it was also a military base. It was the only military base and the only base the human race had in False Heaven.

Recruits for the Roman mission would come there and then receive training and instructions on how to go about False Heaven. For the enhancement of their physicality, they would be sent off from the camp for a week to hunt and eat game.

After consuming the flesh of a False Heaven animal, it provides nutrients that enhance the strength of a human being.

Orcs, werewolves, and vampires are four times stronger than normal human beings. If a normal human being was enhanced by the nutrients of a false heaven beast, the human would be ten times stronger than a normal human being. The same thing applied to vampires and werewolves; they would be ten times stronger than regular human beings.

Vampires and werewolves roamed the Earth and False Heaven freely, masquerading as ordinary people. This was because a certain technology was applied to the food they ate to prevent them from showing their characteristics.

Without the technology in the food, werewolves would have looked like humanoids but with bigger muscles and body parts; vampires would still look human, but their skin would look pale and their canine teeth would be like fangs.

The unlucky race was the Orc race. There wasn't any technology that could make them look like regular human beings. They had to walk the earth for the rest of their lives looking like green-skinned elves.

Two hours later, Kyle, the Roman, and the other soldiers arrived at the cathedral. They discovered that the base was attacked. It didn't suffer much damage. Only a few lives were lost, and the network tower was down. Soldiers were busy trying to get the tower running.

The base occupied a huge land mass. The fences were eighty metres tall, blue in colour, and made of iron, but they looked like fences made of blocks. There was a hundred-metre-tall gate at the entrance. A Roman was outside the gate when the other Roman and the recruits arrived. Most of the time, the Romans were seen in their uniforms. The Roman suits were modern head-to-toe armor, which had tiny but visible yellow lines running on different parts of the suit as decoration.

The Roman at the gate asked, "What's your name, Angel?"

The Romans had a custom of referring to themselves as angels.

The other Roman replied, "Sand. I rescued these recruits from the claws of a crocodile-gyle. And this is it's corpse." Sand pointed at the charred corpse beside him. He continued, "The corpse is my gift to them."

"Scan in your ids there," said the gatekeeper Roman to the recruits.

The recruits scanned in their ID cards, their faces, and both hands on a scanner on the gate. The scanner verified the recruits were genuine. Then, a small gate that was on the main gate revealed itself when it gave way for the recruits to go inside. The recruits went into the base with the gift from Sand and then the small gate closed, going back to be invisible.

"Level one Roman?" Sand, asked the gatekeeper Roman.

"Yes."

"Keep up the good work. I'm level six."

A jetpack formed on Sand's back. The jetpack ignited and Sand rocketed into the sky.

The Roman watched him and then scoffed, "Show off."