25. The base

The base was situated next to a large cliff, in front of the cliff was a large rock overhang, the commander of the base probably wanted to use the cliff as a natural wall.

Continuing on to his destination, this base had quite solid defences, it had two walls: the inner wall and the outer one, the inner one was about 50% thicker than the outer one and inside housed a small intimidating fortress.

All three structures had turrets at various intervals, with soldiers in armoured suits patrolling the walls. As he continued to look around, the guide responsible for bringing Gareth to the camping grounds noticed his curiosity and explained : "although what you see seems impressive this military base is only considered a level 1 base, it only has a few defence turrets and light vehicles factories. We don't have any aircraft, or hovercraft factories built, in fact there are only about 10, 000 soldiers in this base. With our most recent structure being the large cannons scattered throughout the 3 defence positions."

After passing a few more buildings they finally reached the camping grounds, as nearly all the military residences were occupied by the upper class, everyone else had to camp on the ground. No one really complained as everyone was tired but happy to finally not have to travel anymore.

The guide departed and Gareth found a good spot to set up his camp, he was also weary from the journey so after he had some food, he took a short nap.

After his nap Gareth decided to explore the base, first he decided where the medical centre was. Wondering around he passed a few buildings before he came across a white and pink building, there he saw many injured personnel and refugees being escorted into the building, he also saw some individuals exit the building heading towards the camp site. These individuals seemed to have been healed albeit not fully as those people were still tired and couldn't control their movements too well.

He then set off for the food canteen, even though it wasn't dinner he still wanted to find out where it was. Soon enough he saw one of the buildings that supplied food, it was a multi-storey building with the underground floors used for processing food and ingredient storage and the floors above ground to supply food of different qualities. Some soldiers would require special meals such as high energy meals, detoxification food or medical meals, they were offered on the upper floor.

Afterwards he went to explore the rest of the base, there were 3 gates in the outer wall that lead to the outside, one main gate no two auxiliary. Periodically he would see some vehicles entering and exiting the auxiliary gates, some carrying various supplies with them.

Next he went to the training grounds, he could see the numerous soldiers practicing drills and shooting on the grounds. He watched them train for a while before he returned to his camping site, he imprinted those drills into his mind so he might use them if he got bored later.

Mikage was hiding in his collar and was watching everything with curiosity, it became restless when Gareth visited the canteen it probably smelt food. Gareth let Mikage out once he was back into his portable residence. Seeing the familiar surroundings it happily jumped out of his collar and began running in circles around the residence.

Currently the base was still processing the over 1 million refugees and Gareth had a feeling that more groups would come later.

An announcement indicating dinner was ready, Gareth was busy resting when he heard the announcement and Mikage who was playing also recognised the word dinner and began jumping eagerly pulling at Gareth's clothes.

Gareth noticed that he was feeling hungry again and got up, the announcement mentioned food would be distributed at the canteen so he decided to head to the nearest one. He wasn't the first there as he noticed some refugees were receiving their portions after getting a scan on their body. The person serving the meals was a pink haired female who was decently clean and dressed in expensive attire, one look was more than enough to tell she came from a noble background. He was quite surprised that this lofty upper society was assisting with the distribution of meals.

He didn't have to wait long and soon his turn was up, a soldier came and scanned his body and soon some information was displayed there was a look of intrigue in the man's eyes as he whispered to a nearby officer who nodded.

The soldier asked Gareth to follow him to the second floor, and when he reached there the soldier asked Gareth to step through a scanner which identified him before a chef came out giving Gareth a big jelly, and some special vegetables.

With meal in hand Gareth and sited the canteen and saw the pink haired lady staring at him curiously, putting it out of his mind he headed back to his residence and ate. He noticed that the food was rich in energy and nutrition. He also gave Mikage a small piece and it's fur straightened turning it into a Pom Pom, it seemed that the food caused a small reaction to Mikage who although was enjoying it was struggling to eat with its straightened fur.