The Scrap Tamer - Chapter 169

Chapter 169: Alex [1]: Holes in the sky
The military base was in complete disarray for the past hour as the medics carried away the injured and bodies of the fallen.

The rift had opened directly above the base and without giving them a moment to react, primals started raining in.

Before the alarms in the base could go off and alert the higher ups, most of the unlucky lower ranked tamers were either laying dead or injured.

And among the injured and dead was two familiar faces.

Alex stood, his body covered in blood that was both his and from the primals as he looked at the bodies with shrunk and trembling pupils.

He watched in horror as the medics carried Timmy’s lifeless body on a stretcher, a white sheet pulled over his face.

On a stretcher just behind Timmy’s was Tommy’s. But unlike his twin, he was very much alive, just missing both his arms and legs.

Worst of all, this was all his fault.

———An Hour Ago————

Alex was in an open field, training like he always had been since Reid got promoted.

Ever since he had apologized, Alex had been doing his best to truly better himself—but there was still a lingering sting of envy whenever he saw how quickly Reid was growing.

It felt like the entire universe was pushing Reid’s growth while they… they were being left behind no matter how hard they trained, no matter how much effort he put in.

Reid had come so far, so fast, that it was hard for Alex to believe he had ever bullied him at all.

Screw his platinum tier potential, at this rate, before he could even think of reaching that rank Reid might’ve already achieved the Mythic rank, even if that seemed impossible.

“No need to think about that right now,” he shook his head as he dodged an attack from the training dummy.

After all that had happened, today was a free day for the cadets which allowed them to do whatever they wanted for the day.

Unlike most cadets, who decided on resting or hitting the game center, Alex chose to train.

Usually, anything other than absorbing primal cores did little to help with a tamer’s progression but he had discovered otherwise.

Although it was minimal and barely even noticable, every time he fought against anything, there was a slight increase in his soul power.

Alex had no idea what had changed since he had never observed this before but who cares.

He had been taking full advantage of this.

During training, spars or even monitored primal hunts. Heck, he had abused this newly discovered ability of his to the point that he was on the verge of breakthrough to Gold rank without the use of a single core.

Alex proceeded to dodge another punch from the dummy before throwing one of his own but the dummy blocked the attack.

The dummy was set to low gold rank since that was the highest he could face right now without risking a permanent injury or worse, death.

Across the training field, sitting on an observer’s stand was Tommy, Timmy and Alex’s flame hound.

Since they arrived at the military, Alex had stuck to his words, almost becoming a completely new person.

Well… Excluding the fact that they were still his lackeys/errand boys but at least he wasn’t a bully anymore.

These days, he preferred settling everything with a duel, especially against Cadets from influential families.

“Should we be worried about him?” Timmy asked as they continued watching him.

“Has he lost yet?” Tommy turned to his twin and asked.

“No,” Timmy answered in a whisper.

“Then there’s no reason to worry” Tommy said before adding “idiot.”

“I told you to stop calling me that” Timmy replied with a frown but Tommy just turned back to the training Alex.

“But you are right,” he said “these days, it feels like he’s been getting into too much duels.”

“Maybe this is about catching up to Reid” Timmy said causing Tommy to nod in agreement.

“Whatever it is,” Tommy started “I say it’s better than his old self.”

They continued observing silently when suddenly, a loud rumble came from directly above them.

All three snapped their heads to the skies only to see the clouds strangely gathering and swirling around themselves.

“What the hell?” Alex muttered as he looked at the swirling clouds.

Sparks started cackling between the clouds before a rift tore open between them.

The trip weren’t allowed a moment to process before the primal’s started pouring out.

“Look out!” Tommy screamed as a primal fell directly towards Alex.

Luckily, the primal was only iron tier so Alex’s forged beast made quick work of it before the primal could even get close to its tamer.

The flame hound proceeded to tear through the primals that kept dropping from the rift.

“Form a triangle!” Alex shouted, adrenaline kicking in as he joined his beast in tearing through the incoming horde. “Don’t let them surround us!”

Years of being his lackeys had trained them to quickly obey his commands and so they did.

Moving in sync, the twins hand their backs with Alex, each covering a blind spot. They then proceeded to summon their own forged beasts to fight against the primals.

That’s when the base’s alarm finally went off, signaling that backup would soon arrive, they just had to hold on.

But the few seconds it took for backup to arrive felt like the longest few seconds of their lives.

Lucky for them, the rift only released lower tier primals… That is, until they suddenly ran out of luck.

The rift suddenly started releasing primals at gold tier putting the trip in a predicament.

But unlike Tommy and Timmy, Alex was on an all time high. He could feel his soul power rising at a quicker rate.

The more primals he took down, the higher the increase in his soul power and before he knew it, he had already broken out of the formation he ordered.

“Just a bit more,” Alex muttered as he felt his soul power rising.

He could clearly feel it, all he needed was a few more primal kills and he’d break through to gold rank.

But what Alex failed to notice was how Tommy and Timmy were slowly getting overwhelmed as the primals kept attacking them.

Although they were doing quite well for tamers who had just broken through to silver rank, they could only hold out for so long.

Their only hope was to wait for reinforcements to arrive.