Chapter 225 - Candidate 00126 The Rising Star "EXPLOSION IS NOW BEING CONTAINED!" The voices of different AIs reverberated across the place as sirens rang out. Gustav was starting to regain his senses, so he heard bits of the announcements. [-520 HP] ’It’s been a while since I last bled. I wonder what caused this explosion?’ Gustav said internally as he cleaned his blood-stained sleeves while sitting up and leaning his back against the wall. He stared at the front, where he could see the explosion being covered by a blue energy field as it shrunk in size. ’At the very least, I got something from it,’ Gustav thought while reaching out to grab something in mid-air. He grabbed onto something only he could see because right before the shockwave slammed into him, he activated Energy Installment. Energy installment absorbed part of the energy from the blast into a spherical orb that was currently invisible to everyone’s eyes except Gustav. ’Hmm? The system just reacted to it...’ Gustav noticed, but before he could confirm, he noticed the explosion had almost shrunk completely. Officials could now be seen moving about the place with panic expressions displayed on their faces. -"Who knew the upgraded reactor would go haywire because of the experiment and cause such a disaster?!"- -"The third layer explosion barrier had to be implemented because it overwhelmed the first and second,"- -"The power was too much for the installments to contain," Gustav could hear the voices of the officers from his position. None of them looked injured in the slightest. However, the surrounding was in shambles. -"Are the kids alright," One of the officers in blue asked. -"Yes, captain Mitch, the protective suits functioned well enough to keep them safe from the explosion," Upon hearing that Gustav understood that other participants were also on this floor. He noticed that the injuries he received from getting blasted backwards by the shockwaves were almost fully healed. Gustav decided to stand, but before he could, one of the officers ahead stared in the direction of the entrance and noticed Gustav. "Captain, there’s a kid over there. I think he’s injured!" The MBO officer voiced out and hurriedly started moving towards Gustav’s location. The other officers also noticed Gustav seated on the ground far behind with his back against the cracked wall. -"A kid without a protective suit? Get the medic over here immediately!" The captain commanded as he also approached Gustav. Gustav stood up before anyone could get to him. "I’m fine," He stated while cleaning the blood at the sides of his lips. "Kid! you’re going to be... wait, how can you stand?" The officer that noticed him voiced out while scrutinizing Gustav from head to toe. He could see blood on Gustav’s sleeves and a little dirt on his cloth, which came from slamming into the wall, but aside from that, there was nothing else. -"Wasn’t he caught in the blast? Why does he look only slightly injured," -"This isn’t a force a kid like this should be able to handle?" -"He should be half dead by now. What’s up with this kid?" The other officers that had arrived couldn’t believe their eyes seeing Gustav standing and talking like he was unaffected. They wouldn’t have believed he got caught up in the blast if not for the cracked wall behind and burned parts of Gustav’s clothes as well as some others things, which clearly proved that he was caught up in the explosion. "Are you alright, kid?’ The captain asked while approaching Gustav. He stood opposite Gustav and observed him. "I’m fi...." Gustav was about to repeat himself when one of the officers on the left interrupted. "This face looks quite familiar... oh my, aren’t you Candidate 00126, the rising star!" He voiced out. When he mentioned that, the rest of the officers’ eyes also widened slightly. -"He is the one," -"Being on the receiving end of one percent of that shockwave would leave a Zulu rank on the brink of death.’ -"Oh, looks like he truly is more powerful than the rest," -"Truly a promising young lad this one," Upon hearing them speak about him this way, Gustav was nearly half cringed to death. ’The rising star... pfft what’s that, more like a falling star since that’s what made me what I am,’ Gustav said internally. Although he felt like this on the inside, he didn’t let it show in his expression. Instead, he just kept a blank face. The captain proceeded to apologize to Gustav and explain what had caused the disaster. The explosion, of course, was caused by an experiment gone wrong. A new power source meant for backing up a spacecraft’s weapon system was being tested. The original power source and the substitute didn’t sync well, causing the explosion a few minutes back. Both of them exploded together and overwhelmed the first and second-layer security protocols put in place. Originally, incidents that involved explosions occurred a lot since they experimented with spacecraft engines. However, they hadn’t expected it to be this bad. Luckily, Gustav was very far away from the core of the explosion, which was why he was only hit by a little bit of the shockwave. If he had been to the explosion’s core, his injury would have been way worse than this. It still surprised the officers around that Gustav was okay. However, since they knew he had a unique transformation bloodline, they guessed that the beast he could transform into had regenerative abilities. In order to make it up to Gustav, they decided to give him a tour of the place exclusively even though there wasn’t much to see because the explosion had incinerated half of the equipment and gadgets. Gustav was only able to see a few uninteresting things that were left at the far corners of the test area. After a few more minutes, Gustav left the test area since it was about to go through some kind of rejuvenation. The only thing he saw that piqued his interest was the half-destroyed spacecraft that was half the size of the spacecraft in test site #47. Gustav had always wanted to enter a functioning spacecraft. Unfortunately, this spacecraft, just like the first one he ever came into contact with, lacked functionality.