Endless Horde: Through the Eyes of a Godking

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[Welcome to DAO 101, also known as Defense Against Outsiders. I am a system AI named March, and I will serve as your mentor for this class.]

'Well, I guess that answers my question as to why the class schedules were flexible. It turns out that they left the teaching to the AI.'

Cedric was in Site Delta right now; more specifically, he's in one of the training rooms available. Even though he's taking a class, he's not required to be in a classroom. Even more so with this subject, considering that it will teach all he needs to know in order to deal with outsiders.

But of course, he can't expect to be taught techniques right away. It's his first official day of training to be a security officer, and just like everybody else who came before him, he has to start with the basics.

[We will first begin by learning what Outsiders are.]

[Outsiders are creatures that have been theorized to predate the establishment of the Scarlet Dust Alliance. Some even say that they are older than the primordial chaos, the very creation itself.]

[Either way, the existence of outsiders poses a threat to living beings like you.]

[Outsiders are creatures of the Void. They are mindless, only moving through sheer instinct. And that instinct is to extinguish all life they come across. They represent the antithesis of life; they have the ability to reduce life to nihility, removing any possibilities of rebirth or reincarnation.]

[They are relentless, indifferent, have no concept of exhaustion, and there's possibly no end to them.]

[Even with the long and extensive research of the alliance, we only know a few key information about their existence. It is difficult to know more because that requires venturing deep into the Void, a place that swallows all life.]

[The Void is like a black hole in the form of a fog that's isolated outside of the Primeval Scarlet Dust Realm. It is unaccepting of any living beings from the primordial chaos. It just reduces anything from here into nothingness without any hopes of retrieval.]

[To make things worse, the Void consistently erodes the borders of the realm. It constantly gnaws at creation itself, slowly but surely chipping away at it, making it smaller and smaller each time. [What hastens this pace is the invasion of the outsiders at places close to the barriers that isolate us from them.]

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[Our realm has a natural resistance against the Void and its creatures. But that resistance only goes so far. It almost becomes useless when the void takes on an active role against it.]

[It's thanks to the efforts of 'The Six' that keeps the realm safe to this day. Through their combined efforts, a wall known as the Eternal Division Wall was created to protect the realm.]

[The Eternal Division Wall is by no means invincible. It could prevent the Fog of Void from enchroaching any further into the realm, but it can't prevent the invasion of the Void Creatures because we lack understanding of them.]

[That said, it doesn't mean that the wall is useless against them. Because while it couldn't stop them from invading, it could severely weaken them, enough to slow them down and for our people to eliminate them.]

The premise was simple enough, all within Cedric's expectations. Actually, this reminds him somehow of how humanity's civilization was before his rise. The concept of a civilization hiding inside a bubble due to the hostile environment was all too familiar for him that it almost gives him a sense of deja vu.

Then, a hard light projection appeared before Cedric, causing his eyes to gleam with interest.

[The Void Creatures, or most commonly known as the Outsiders, 'generally' look and behave like this.]

Weird. That's the simplest way to describe what Cedric was seeing right now. It's like he's looking at a badly rendered enemy model from a game. The Outsider model looked like it's glitching in and out of existence. There is no sense of order in the way it behaves, making it look erratic. Sometimes it twitches so fast that it's startling, and on other times, it just stands still like it's a manequin.

It's shape doesn't make sense either. It doesn't take on any 'natural' form. The shape was all over the place. It has spikes here and there that would flicker in and out of existence. Cedric couldn't see any head, face, limbs, or anything that makes sense to him. The only visible clue that set it apart was the foul, dark, and unnatural air shrouding its body.

'The system emphasized the word 'generally' in its descriptions. That means that I shouldn't focus on its shape or appearance. I suppose it's this dark air that I should be paying attention to, because even in this image projection, I could sense an innate gust towards it even though this is my first time seeing it.'

It's quite strange, actually, because Cedric could still vividly remember what the corpse of an outsider looked like. The Demon God wielded a pseudo-living weapon out of the Outsider's remains, and he knew how to use it in a way that would provoke a reaction from the corpse, making it release a foul substance that withers all life it touches.

That corpse looked like a charred person embedded on a pole, twisted into an unnatural way purposefully to torment it even after its death. Yet even so, that corpse didn't look anywhere near close to the strange appearance of the Outsider Model he's seeing now, making him wonder if it's actually one.

'But the tower's system AI did say that it was an outsider, so I guess there is more to learn here.'

All of his contempelations happened in a split second and were concluded just in time before the system continued its explanation.

[I urge you to not focus on its shape or appearance because its form would never make sense to us. Void creatures change forms as easily as breathing. The only time that it forms into something permanent is when it dies. Whatever the shape it took before it drew its last breath would be its final form.]

'Ah, I guess that answers my question.'

[Instead, please pay attention to the dark, foul air surrounding its body.]

[You have probably sensed it by now. If you did, good. You're perceptive enough for this work. If not, then you really need to train your senses more.

[Anyway, that dark, foul air is the fog of Void. It serves as their lifeline and the key to their abstruse strength. Outsiders cannot survive without it, and it doesn't belong anywhere within our realm. So, if you saw it, then you're safe to assume that there's an outsider nearby.]

'It's like demon corruption all over again...'

[To deal with an outsider, you must cleanse this Fog of Void.]

[There are plenty of ways to do this. Most of which I will be teaching you in this class, and you are expected to perform all of them to a certain degree of mastery if you want to pass this subject.]

[There are tons of simple means to do so and a few advanced techniques as well. Since this is just the beginning of your training here, we will focus more on the fundamentals and the simple ways to clear the fog of Void.]

[If you successfully clear the fog of Void, the Void Creature will lose most of its fighting capabilities. It will then act and behave like a cornered beast, so you can't drop your guard just yet.]

[You must know that you only have an hour at best to kill the Outsider before the Fog of Void reappears in its body. It must be killed in a single go because if it was given a chance to escape, it will become more alert and far more dangerous than the first time you encountered it.]

[Void creatures can and will evolve. They do so by simply existing, and it expedited as it devoured or withered life around it. In our research so far, we do not know if it has a ceiling on how strong it could get. We only know that the longer it has the chance to exist within this realm, the stronger it gets. And that is an accident that must be prevented by all means necessary, so as a security officer, you must be alert and ready.]

'Yeah, no pressure at all.' Cedric sarcastically muttered in his mind while rolling his eyes.

As expected, Cedric was right to not expect any practical learning on his first day. The system AI was focused on explaining the basic information of what he's about to deal with. It described the Void Creatures, their environment, behaviors, and other details about them to give him a complete understanding of the threat this realm was facing.

Hell, it even gave him a quiz afterwards, which certainly took him back to his academic days.

Of course he perfected that quiz. He had a sharp memory after all. He just didn't expect that the lesson for today concluded after that because it hasn't been long since the class started.

'Oh well, I'd be a hypocrite to complain.'