Much later when the System had arrived Hank felt almost like he was returning to his childhood when he obtained his Class Gunslinger Everyone initially was disappointed because Hank had done so well up to this point and his Class was so mundane
Yet time and time again Hank came out on top of monsters and men alike all who would threaten the Zone’s new laws One time the first time he met Ghost Hank had asked Ghost why he had given him a Tier 3 rating when his Class was clearly one of the least powerful Classes on record
Ghost’s hologram projection had laughed at him It’s because you believe in it You’ve spent your entire life dreaming of it Hank How could it not be more powerful than these shallow recently acquired toys
The third thing that Hank and Alan had learned from Rick was how and why to love a country
You can’t think of your country as a physical place that’s not the important part Rick had said waving a hand Think of the Native Americans They have one of the most powerful and iconic cultures even to this day even as that way of life is dead Think of the Greeks of the Romans Your country is the dream you are building for your children It’s the desire you instill in them to crave freedom and open sky It’s the sense of responsibility they feel when faced with moral dilemmas
To nurture your country’s soul is to build a future A flag is a map and to forget it is for an entire nation of souls to grow lost There is a certain pervasive disdain for patriotism that I’d like to inoculate you boys against personally Your country is the sum of your actions therefore if you don’t care for your country your actions have been insufficient to satisfy the implicit responsibilities of citizenship that you hold in your chest If you don’t care about your country you also don’t care about yourself or your future actions
When the murky swamp of apathy has risen above the heads of a country’s citizens they cannot be bothered to right small injustices Their skin grows numb to the innumerable ticks and pests that infest them These people become sleepwalkers in a slumber only surpassed by death in permanence
Do you think a dictator could rouse them from that unshakable grip Do you think such people will be spooked by genocide when their hearts have turned disdainful towards the plight of their fellow man
No they will be carried forward by inertia in their blindness allowing their country their true aegis of justice to decay around them That’s how America will die boys Good men will stop believing in the dream of our nation’s virtue and no one will willingly take up the mantle to make it so Without that amorphous defense we will all perish
Something precious you cannot truly describe that’s what a country is
You are describing it now Alan had pointed out He was 9 and Hank was 13 with enough sense to keep his mouth shut
Rick chuckled and Hank slowly relaxed It was one of his dad’s good days it seemed
You’re right All I’m trying to say is that when you make a decision regarding your country remember your children your future If you take an oath stick to it Fight for that oath Become the reason that other men feel emboldened to endeavor to become a hero After all do you want your children to dream of a place where words aren’t worth the air that keeps them afloat Or do you want them to dream of tenacity and responsibility of determination and destiny
The boys looked solemnly up at their father committing the words to memory as best as they could
Rick fancied himself as something of a poet Which was probably why he had taken the barrel of a revolver put it on his temple and then slowly clenched his hand into a fist The day that Hank found the body was three weeks before his 18th birthday At that moment he had a hard decision in front of him report the death now or wait the three weeks so that he would be allowed to care for Alan who was still a minor
Lost in his thoughts in the present Hank reached down and ran his fingers along the cool metal of the revolver left to him by his father in the hastily scrawled will It was not for the sake of sentimentality that Hank still used this revolver it was due to familiarity Even as a child before the weight of his father’s life hung on the trigger Hank was fascinated by its strange weight its smooth gears and motions
Although he had rejected his spoiled brother’s plea that he assist with the third expedition Hank was not a man who would easily reject an order from the President They were currently at odds over what Hank considered a meaningless torture of a child Hank knew that both were relatively defensible positions He would not let it get in the way of his duty to his tiny Zone locked nation
After all Hank had learned his lessons of virtue by staring at the profile of Eastwood silhouetted by the sunset a man protects at any cost
And Hank couldn’t deny that a threat was coming So he silently accepted the dossier from Alan and took the short train from East Providence to West Providence in order to meet the rest of the group
Like Alan had promised expedition three was a relatively small force East Providence would be supplying two individuals but the second of which had not yet been chosen as this was only recently approved Ezekiel was West Providence representation who Hank now went to pick up from the Containment Center
Grimacing Hank wondered whether he would need to put a few slugs of lead in this man before he would behave The Containment Center was essentially a place where Classers who were too powerful not to be used against monsters and hadn’t committed truly heinous crimes were kept Often placing them there did more harm than good as some of the seedier prospects spread their very negative attitude to other prisoners who had previously just had a short temper
Hopefully Ezekiel wouldn’t be too much of a blockhead According to the dossier he was an all rounder but specialized in stealth and long range Skills Hank read that and whistled
Long range Skills usually referred to things that would have been traditionally considered as spells in the world before the System Ghost made it clear that basically anything was possible within the System but he believed that Mana was much more efficiently used with the Mana Discharge Skill that people used to power their plasma weaponry
The results spoke for themselves A Level 10 Mana Bolt would stumble a creature briefly but do no lasting damage to it especially as its Levels increased A plasma bolt fired by someone who had just obtained the Mana Discharge Skill would melt the monster’s head
Of course there were diminishing returns for the Mana Discharge Skill especially over Level 50 The general populous just couldn’t get access to the guns that could utilize higher Levels of Mana Discharge the technology wasn’t to the point that they could be mass produced You needed to be at least Tier 3 before you could be considered as a useful individual to be given a prototype Hank had just one such plasma pistol
But in addition to the diminishing returns there was also much less utility given by focusing on Mana Discharge Hank’s other Mana Skills very quickly passed Mana Discharge and he was now happy to simply use his old metal slugs to kill monsters
Plus Hank had seen a man open a hole in the ground the size of a house just swallowing up 20 or so monsters Then the ground had closed back up and the screams of the monsters were cut off with a wet crunch
A real mage type huh Hank said flicking over to the other two dossiers Mordecai Heath was a big man with the brain of a chihuahua Twice in the past the two had fought and both times Hank had laid the man out But that was before Hank’s fall from grace and now Heath had a state of the art Exosuit that made him look like a Decepticon
The final member of their group was a member of the Temple on the Hill which made Hank’s frown deepen Not that he minded the people who swore allegiance first and foremost to their Zone’s Champion If anything the opposite They were usually uncannily competent which is why Hank had no choice but to be serious around them