Winter Is Coming

Of course, Arnold wouldn't just reveal the information he had gained about the meteorite fragments from Minerva. First, that's illegal and Minerva would immediately censure his speech the second it recognizes the problem, instantly turning Arnold's voice into a long beeping sound instead. Second, there was no reason to tell Eric, even in person, since he did not want the latter to meddle in his affairs. Third, he himself still didn't have information about the entire situation behind the celestial event to warrant the need for the involvement for others. It's best to keep the knowledge to himself, since knowledge is power after all.

Though, if Daniel were to know that both Minerva, General Arnold and Tobias were onto him, he would have freaked out by now and directly tried to leave for the Moon and apply for political asylum. That being said, it was impossible for Daniel to outsmart an artificial intelligence, so by the time he noticed something wrong, it would have been already too late to escape.

***

Even though Tobias had been scheming against Eric for quite a long time now without the latter's knowledge, he himself was smart enough to know that a Brigadier-General like him wouldn't just have been relinquished from his commanding position for a petty guarding duty even with the excuse that it was 'peacetime' and he had 'nothing better to do'. One has to know, even though the political situation within the Solar System seemed stable on the surface, there had been multiple minor skirmishes along the Earth-Mars border for quite awhile now. Anyone with common sense would have known that it would be much better for Eric to be commanding his own regiment somewhere in deep space than staying on Earth for such a lackluster duty.

Therefore, Eric already felt suspicious when something as impactful as a miniature explosion of a WMD had happened under his watch only to instantly be classified by the higher-ups and 'forgotten', preventing Eric from investigating further. Now that a second incident had happened, only an idiot would be stupid enough to think that these were simply coincidences.

Though, from the way he had probed General Arnold, his direct superior officer, earlier that morning the day after the B*tsuit incident, he still wasn't able to gain any useful information at all. In the end, he could only suppress his frustrations and bide his time, hoping for an opportunity to dig out the ones responsible for placing the blame of all these failures to him.

In the meantime, the commander tried his best to expedite the procedures for Daniel's transfer. Since he had 'coincidentally' been within the vicinity of a bombing and a kidnapping victim within a little less than two months, Eric did not think that this teenager under his care would be safe under his watch anymore. Therefore, the next best alternative was for him to directly enter the EU Military Academy, which is one of the best protected places of education on Earth due to the sensitive information hidden inside.

With the massive amount of mechs and security protecting him, Eric will only feel somewhat reassured the second his adopted son entered the dorm of his new school.

***

"Although I didn't have the chance to practice fighting with my B*tsuit, the results actually wasn't that bad." Daniel commented as he watched a replay of everything that had happened back then that he had recorded previously with Minerva's camera function. Since Minerva is connected to his brain, it was able to analyze and recreate everything that happened through recording the nerve reactions within my eyeballs at the time.

After replaying a few times just to see how cool he was (with the excuse that it was simply mental practice), Daniel finally got off from his bed a little after noon on a pleasant Saturday morning, more than a week after his so-called 'kidnapping'.

"System, with all the adamantine that you have absorbed these past few days, do I still have to complete another mission next month?" Daniel asked in a somewhat irritated tone, obviously not liking the fact that he was constantly being bossed around by the system inside his head with the threat of death once he even tried to retaliate.

[I'm afaid that's not how it works, Master.] The system said with a cheeky voice that made Daniel wanted to smash his head against a wall hoping that the impact would somehow impact his soul and make the system tremble.

[The Assassin System have set the one month limite before not only because it was the maximum amount of time before I would run out of energy in a normal situation, but also because it wants to grant you more EXP so you can increase your strength as quickly as possible.]

"You sound like the system is acting in my best interest, but you actually just want to prevent me from forgetting the task of getting the fragments for you, right?" Daniel sneered, directly seeing through the system's lies. "You added that one-month deadline as a threat so I would be forced to work for you whether I like it or not. Do you think I'm not familiar with the carrot and stick method?"

[But that being said, you really do get stronger after completing a mission and leveling up though! I mean, look at your stat menu now, Master! You clearly got more base points to allocate again!]

"If the price of me getting stronger is the possiblity that I might need to kill an innocent person in the future, I would definitely have chosen to stay weak instead!" Daniel retorted. "But now that my life is on the line, there's no choice is there?"

While bickering with the system inside his head, Daniel moved towards the wardrobe by his bedroom and changed to a rather comfy and loose grey robe, which was given to every student once they have graduated primary school. Since the robe itself is quite breathable, Daniel often wear it when he go exercising in the gym or go jogging outside.

Though, instead of doing the previously mentioned activities, Daniel instead took a bus to a rather magnificent looking government building located right at the center of the capital city.

After walking by the drones that were similar to the ones seen back in the tunnel inside the cave of the quarantine zone, albeit more docile, Daniel went through the automatic sliding glass doors and went through security check before directly entering an elevator on one side of the building as though he had been there a hundred times before.

When he reached inside, he placed his right eye by the iris scanner located on the top right corner of the elevator, right next to the door, while also placing his thumb on the thumbprint scanner located below.

<Iris and thumbprint identified. Welcome back, Daniel. You have made an appointment to use the mech simulation room from 1400 to 1800 hours. Now sending you to Floor 5.>

Without needing to press a button, the elevator directly closed by itself and took Daniel to the fifth floor. When he walked out of the elevator and down the corridor, he found a familiar teenager waving at him gleefully by a large entrance with a plaque that said 'Simulation Room 5' on the door.

"Daniel! Took you long enough!" Jake shouted at him, complaining about Daniel's tardiness.

"There's still 5 minutes until 2pm." Daniel replied nonchalantly. "There's no need to come here that early, is there?"

"Still, it's better to come as early as possible!" Jake retorted. "Aren't you excited that we're going to go through an actual 4D simulation game? I couldn't even get one even after begging my father for an entire week right before my birthday!"

"With the dangers of such a machine, your father must have thought that it wouldn't be safe to buy one for you, since if you had one you would directly spend your whole life within the game, never coming out!" Daniel sneered in reply.

"Come on now! A man have gotta have his fantasies!" Jake complained. "Don't you want a harem of lovers with the population that can fill the whole Moon to choose from every single day while living your life like a wastrel? This simulation machine can do that and actually make it feel real, not like those 3D VR machines where you actually don't even feel an ounce of pain even when riddled with bullets in an FPS game."

"If you like to get penetrated so bad, why don't you just lower the pain meter on your VR pod. No need to get an entire simulation room just so you could be a masochist." Daniel spoke with the same disdain within his tone.

"That's it!" Jake shouted, pointing at Daniel arrogantly. "I'm going to be your enemy for your simulated war game for the entire session! Don't come crying to me later on when you get killed over and over again by this master!"