Chapter 14: [Vol.1] Chapter 10: The D.S.O. Exam

Year: 1576 A.W.

A full year had passed since Ritzo began his training. In that time, Aurora had given him everything she could. They had wandered far, across forgotten towns and fields. They trained without pause, yet she made sure to give him something their family never could: hope. Now the rest was up to him. The two sat quietly on a patch of sunlit grass. Ritzo looked down at his blade. Its edge was chipped, each mark telling a story etched by long nights of silent frustration and small, determined victories. It was proof of his effort, proof that he wasn’t useless or a failure. All he had ever needed was a guiding hand. He glanced at Aurora beside him. She wasn’t watching him; her gaze was lost in the endless blue above. Still, a faint smile tugged at his lips, soft and warm and fragile. As long as I have her, he thought. As long as I have her, I can do anything. Aurora didn’t turn. She hadn’t noticed his smile. The wind shifted. Somewhere in the distance, a horn echoed, low and final. The exam had begun.

Stage 1 was simple. An assessment. Ritzo and Aurora walked toward a large and ancient building, a D.S.O. outpost. It was enormous, a structure that dwarfed castles. At its centre stood a metal frame, guarded by two Voidguards, each locked in place like a statue. As the siblings neared the frame, Ritzo’s eyes fixed on it. Something was strange. It wasn’t just an entrance. It seemed alive. Then the realisation hit him. It carried the presence of the Holy Veil of St. Catherine. Within its frame was an invisible wall of void energy, a condensed veil of pure destruction that allowed only humans through. Aurora shifted closer to her little brother. “You can sense it too, right?” she whispered. Ritzo nodded. “The entrance… it feels alive somehow.” She smiled. She had hoped he would notice. That mattered. The ability to read the intent behind void presence was common enough, but to read the intentions of its traces required real skill. She pointed toward the other candidates passing through the frame. A spark, brief and blue, leapt across the metal as one candidate entered. Then another. Each spark pulsed like a heartbeat, soft and predictable. Ritzo tensed. “What happens if it doesn’t spark?” he asked quietly. Aurora didn’t answer at first. They were next. She stepped forward, calm and composed, and passed through. Spark. The veil shimmered, accepting her without hesitation. Ritzo followed, every instinct screaming at him to stop. He stepped into the frame. Spark. Warmth, then nothing. The moment passed. He exhaled, and they kept walking with the weight of the gate behind them. Only then did Aurora glance sideways. Her voice was soft. “If it doesn’t spark, the world forgets you were ever here.”

The corridor was narrow, dimly lit, and strangely quiet. Ritzo and Aurora walked in step, their footsteps echoing softly against the stone beneath them. Behind them, the sound of synchronised steps followed, a steady march toward something none of them understood. Ahead, the path opened into a vast chamber. The first stage, the Assessment, began with the physical test. Each candidate was expected to meet baselines set by the Examination Board, minimums carved from decades of war. The air shifted. A low vibration rippled across the walls, followed by the sharp crack of speakers. A voice rang out, bright and theatrical, slicing through the tension. “Good morning, diamonds in the rough! Welcome to the D.S.O. Exam!” Ritzo stopped. The chamber was far larger than it had any right to be. Iron walls stretched endlessly, curved just slightly, as if they stood inside a coliseum built for gods. Above, a false sky shimmered, blue and unmoving. Its light was soft but sterile. Beneath them, the grass felt wrong, like something grown under watchful eyes, too green and too uniform. It bent without resistance, as if afraid to make a sound. There was no wind, no chirping, only the illusion of a world that no longer existed.

“Hey, you!” the voice called. Ritzo flinched. He realised how loud the room had been before the callout and how silent it was now. “You with the red hair!” Heads turned, searching. In a far corner stood a boy, no older than ten, clutching a bird to his chest. “Those are expensive, you know!” the voice barked, then muttered off to the side, “How much are those fake birds again?” Silence. “Three million what?” By the time the crowd looked back, the red-haired boy had vanished, and the bird sat alone on the floor. “For the whole batch? Tch. Fair. Anyway, here’s how the assessment works…” As the strange man detailed the physical test, Aurora glanced behind Ritzo. Crouched like a little goblin, the red-haired boy watched. Two hours later, both siblings had completed the physical and written assessments. They now stood in a waiting room while the speakers crackled. “Results will be released shortly. Please use the nearby scoreboard to check your placements. The First Stage is not over just yet.” Several candidates filed in behind them. Ritzo leaned against the wall, mimicking his sister’s posture. The atmosphere shifted again. Like before, they were being watched. He sighed. “Aurora, I think you overdid it,” he muttered.

An hour earlier, a line had formed in the chamber. Each candidate had to strike a Void-infused replica of a demon. Ritzo waited patiently. Ahead, a woman braced herself and punched. A heavy thud echoed. Score: 60 out of 100. Respectable. She left with a smug smile. Ritzo stepped to the mark. “Punch as hard as you can,” the inspector said. “Void energy is prohibited. The dummy detects even a trace.” Ritzo inhaled. He had grown used to relying on the void for strength, speed, and perception. It moved through him like instinct. But he had come too far to slip. He remembered Aurora’s warning before the test. “Don’t use your full strength. Hold back or you’ll break the dummy.” He wound his arm only slightly past his ribcage and struck. A slow, deliberate swing. I should get a decent score, he thought. Silence. The inspector didn’t speak. Ritzo’s confidence wavered. Then, finally, “Incredible. Seventy-five.” A child with that much raw power. He had nearly matched the all-time record. Even the Tenshiro name did not usually reach seventy-five without being called prodigies among prodigies. Ritzo glanced toward Aurora. She gave him a soft smile and a small nod. He turned to leave, then looked back to watch her. Her movement was slow, almost unnaturally so. Inspectors watched, narrow-eyed. “What is she doing?” one whispered. Ritzo understood. Her raw strength dwarfed his. If she slipped, the dummy wouldn’t just break. The field would erupt. Her fist touched the target. Score: 80. Whispers broke the quiet. The Tenshiro siblings had made themselves known.

Back in the corridor, Aurora sighed. “I have always converted excess force into Void energy,” she said. “I need to learn to control my strength without relying on the void.”

Codex Note - D.S.O. Field Training Manual: Bio-Integration Protocols

V₁ Muscle Integration - Class C Clearance

“Under prolonged Void exposure, muscle fibres may adapt to V₁ presence, forming pseudo-organic fusions such as VX-Myosin. These alterations enhance strength and reflexes, though subjects may not notice the change.”

* REDACTED

Part 2 — Stage 2

The candidates now stood at the threshold of Stage Two. The third stage, they were told, would take place in a week. Ritzo stepped forward, passing through another towering metal frame whose edges hummed as if alive. On the other side, the silence broke into gasps. This was not like the last chamber. There was no grass, no training dummies, no soft edges. Instead, a shattered city spread out before them. Ruined buildings stood like forgotten monuments. Roads split and cracked. Dust drifted in sheets. Windows shattered. Vehicles rusted in place. It was not a simulation. It was a memory of war. The candidates, now designated as temporary F-Rank Void Initiates, were dropped into the battlefield with no instructions. “Alright, diamonds in the rough, off you go!” The voice did not come from speakers this time. A tall, thin man in a pristine black suit lounged on the arena wall, legs crossed, cigarette idling between long fingers. Before anyone could react, the floor folded open. Silent. Mechanical. Merciless. Then they fell. Some screamed. Others dropped wordlessly. A few fell with grace. The Tenshiro siblings were among them. Arms crossed, feet aligned, controlled. Aurora turned mid-fall, found Ritzo, and tilted her head, a silent command. He nodded, and they vanished. A flicker of presence, then nothing. To the others, it seemed as if the siblings had never been there at all.

Stolen novel; please report.

No one noticed except one. Perched in the frame of a collapsed tower, half-veiled in shadow and ivy, a figure watched. Hair tied back in a neat knot with a white blindfold wrapped across his eyes. A gloved hand rested on a small bird. It chirped once, soft and melodic. The figure said nothing. His head tilted, and a quiet hum like a wandering note slipped into the rubble. It did not belong to any throat. It belonged to the Void.

A few hundred meters away, the siblings landed in silence after bounding across rooftops, branches, and dead power lines. Aurora pointed toward an old shed tucked beneath a leaning tree. “We will stay here for a while,” she whispered. Ritzo studied the shed. Cracks webbed its wooden frame. Weather-worn and forgotten, it sat on a small rise, exposed to the eye yet perfect for quiet observation. Aurora’s voice broke the stillness, soft and controlled, carrying the same distant cadence Judy used. “Even if they come here, they will not notice us.” Ritzo’s eyes drifted to the fractured city below. Cars lay in stillness, buildings slumped as if they had collapsed from the inside, toys lay scattered in empty homes, frozen mid-moment. Each ruin whispered a story. “What happened here,” he murmured, more thought than sound. She heard him and, as always, remained silent.

Elsewhere in the city, Kyle Latroo, age seventeen, walked down a fractured street. Now an F-Rank trainee like the others, he had received no instructions. No brief. No objective. Only silence. “Everything feels so old here,” he muttered. He looked down at faded markings barely visible beneath a film of moss. Even in this manufactured place, everything felt real. Rubble shifted. He turned. Movement. Two figures flickered at the edge of his vision. He spun to catch them, but they were gone. A gust of wind cut through an alley, too sharp and too sudden. The cars were still and hollow. Wind slipped through broken glass. Shadows stretched under shattered balconies. They were not empty. They were watching. Kyle quickened his pace. Silhouettes hovered across the field, shapeless and distant. He swallowed. “The others,” he whispered, too afraid to raise his voice. Eyes stared from the edges, present without form, weight without movement. A chill crept up his spine. He turned. Nothing. The shadows beside him deepened, and the ruins seemed to lean closer. “Show yourself!” His voice cracked. Fear surged like static through wire. His heart hammered. Something was wrong. He looked at his hands. Sweat dripped from his fingertips. “Th-this doesn’t ma-make any s-sense.” He dropped to his knees. The air loomed. Buildings bowed inward. Walls swayed without wind. Every corner stared back. He could not move, not from fear but from something deeper. A silence that swallowed thought, a pressure that emptied meaning. He was not afraid. He was petrified. Worst of all, he did not know why.

Several meters behind him, footsteps broke the dark. Lighter and smaller. Another trainee. He paused when he saw the boy curled up and shaking against the concrete. The newcomer could not have been older than fourteen. Pale skin. A silver streak dyed through his fringe. Clothes clean and pressed. His unreadable eyes shifted to disgust. A subtle twist of the mouth. A quick exhale through the nose. He looked at Kyle as if at a creature unworthy of saving. His head dipped. Up until now he had restrained his presence, that quiet, relentless need to assert his will. The disgust uncoiled something inside him. They did not deserve to exist in his presence. The world is cruel. Nature is cruel. Weakness was only failure. It was betrayal. Of progress. Of survival. Of truth. Those who failed to understand, like the boy seeking warmth in a world that felt nothing, were a stain. A burden on humanity’s ascent. An insult to its coming war. The true war.

Kyle stirred and looked up, not toward the shadows that stalked him, but toward something real. It did not hide. It did not chase. It did not need to. It stood there and invaded him with judgment so sharp it carved without moving. The certainty of suffering settled on him. A burden, crushing and surgical, like chains coiling around his ribs and tightening with every breath. He tried to speak, to call for help, but no voice came. His eyes trembled. His breath slowed. The world blurred at the edges. Shadows stretched. Then a voice fell from above, cold and absolute. “Candidate 023, Kyle Latroon, has been disqualified...” No warning. No ceremony. No second chances. Only silence, and the faint hiss of a presence withdrawing.

An hour had passed since Kyle’s disqualification. Across the ruined cityscape, scattered F-Rank candidates began to converge, drawn not by instruction but by instinct. On the far edge of the artificial field, a structure had emerged. A metal frame, tall and cold, hummed softly, standing like a threshold between war and salvation. It marked the end of the Second Stage.

Murmurs drifted through the air, low and uneven. Some carried exhaustion, others disbelief, but all were soaked in the same quiet relief. It was over. At least, this part was. On the other side of the frame, up a steep set of stairs, stood three figures draped in black uniforms. Invigilators. These were not the same as those from the First Stage; each bore medals of honour, and unlike the vast halls before, this chamber was compact, its walls painted deep red with the D.S.O. badge etched on every side. Before the Second Stage, there had been over three hundred candidates. Now only fifteen remained. Among them stood the Tenshiro siblings.

The middle invigilator spoke. “Congratulations.” His voice carried authority. “Many of you are probably confused. You wandered this city for nearly two hours, yet nothing happened. No instructions. No enemies. Just silence.” He paused, then his tone sharpened. “But some of you felt it… didn’t you? The weight. That sense of being watched, of something crawling beneath your skin.”

Eyes shifted. Uncertainty rippled through the group. Most had felt it; that gnawing pressure, the certainty they were never truly alone. They had walked with it pressing on their backs, endured it, survived it, pushed beyond what they thought possible. Yet a handful among them stood untouched, unmoved. They hadn’t felt it at all.

The invigilator to the left stepped forward. His voice was colder. “The entire stage was enclosed within a bubble.”

A mechanical hiss filled the room as the wall behind them descended, slow and deliberate. Light spilled through the widening gap, molten gold clinging to the red walls. The three figures, reduced to silhouettes, stood before the ruined city. Yet something about it was wrong. The air shimmered faintly. A violet tint rippled across space like oil over water. A purple hue, unnatural. Watching. The invigilators raised their hands in unison, firm and deliberate, commanding the candidates to step back. The room fell still. Then the central figure spoke again.

“What you are seeing is called Void Pressure. It is a construct of engineered fear, created to unravel the very thing we call a soul. Your soul.”

He let the silence settle like ash before continuing. “This Second Stage was never about your survival. It was judgment, from him.”

The words hung heavy. Eyes shifted nervously.

“You endured what most can’t even name. For that, you are now officially E-Rank Initiates. Congratulations. You are dismissed.”

All three invigilators raised their right hands, fists pressed to their hearts. The D.S.O. salute. A gesture of unity. Of recognition. And a silent reminder that they had survived…because he allowed it.