"The Everlasting Church contains mainly, two fully combat oriented orders; The Crimson Crucible, and the Wilted Seraph Orders. The candidates that desire to enter into the ranks of the Crimson Crucible will undergo seven trials commonly known as the Seven Circles of Hell, each one designed to break, destroy and devour their weakness and inhibitions, until they become fully murderous, terrifying beasts of steel and death..."

Nero stared at the bowl of porridge in front of him.

The day was still young, the first lights not even out yet and the sun nowhere to be seen as it rose over the distant hills.

The mess hall was giant so he was sure there would have been more people... Templars around.

Despite that, he had not seen a single one when he had arrived. And that was because most of them were already done with breakfast and had begun training on the courtyard before he even woke up.

Although his meals were not extravagant, they were by far, much better than anything he would have found out in the wild. A bowl of porridge made from black wheat sat in front of him. The porridge had a slight nutty aroma with a pleasant milky taste. It was also a bit hearty from the speckles of meat with in it, unlike anything he had ever tasted.

Still, for some reason, he couldn't stomach it...

About ten days had passed since the start of his seventy days of conditioning.

Hell.

It was Hell.

Nero had severely underestimated what Lyon had meant by placing his life in their hands.

On the first day, he had been completely and fully awake as they cut his chest open and began inspecting his internal organs.

Surprisingly, he had felt no pain. However, he had fainted twice due to the shock of seeing his ripcages spread open like the legs of a loose woman.

The second time he had fainted was due to the amount of blood he had lost, but it was nothing a few pumps of elixir couldn't fix.

After that, things had only gotten worse for him.

On the second day, he had had all his blood drained out, so much so, Vineheart had reacted incredibly violent to it and had almost crushed his actual heart. The Doctors had been stumped on why it had happened, but he had been put in a stable enough condition for the blood to be transfused back into his body.

The next day, his body had been pumped full with even more elixirs and potions that made him extremely sick. He was still suffering the consequences of this up until now, the tenth day.

He had been put into several terrifying machines that turned his body either freezing cold until he was almost solid, or until all the hairs on his body had nearly been burned to a crisp.

However, according to Lyon, the real trial was just about to start.

Nero let out a sigh. Then he shoveled in a spoonful of porridge and it off a piece of bread from his other hand.

In this place, he was immeasurably lonely.

He couldn't speak to any of the Templars since most of them simply walked around with their enormous, bulking armors in silence.

Still, that didn't mean his days were not occupied.

Unlike what Lyon had originally told him, he had let him "sneak" into the library to get a few books. The first time he had snuck into the library, he had expected it to be an enormous towering building filled with endless rows of books and ancient knowledge.

However, he had been grossly mistaken.

For one, the "library" had been no bugger than a shed.

There was only about a hundred or so books within, and most of them were simply random ledgers filled with a bunch of numbers on unimportant things he had no interest in.

When he asked Lyon, the older man had shrugged and replied to him,

"What did you expect? Did you really think you'd get access to the secrets of this world inside a backwater garrison like this one?"

Hearing such words, Nero only had himself to blame for thinking big.

Still, that didn't mean the library was entirely useless.

The rune on the back of his hand flashed.

He glanced around secretively then flipped through the book that had suddenly and magically appeared in his hands following a flash of crimson light,

"The Warriors of the Crucible are divided into seven ranks, each gaining a star for their level of contributions to the empire; the Infantry, the Apostles, the Captains, the Commanders, the Warlords, the Generals, and the Blood Father..."

The Crimson Crucible was one of the two main combatant orders within the Church. They formed an overwhelming fifty percent total of the Church's entire combat power. Without them, the enforcement of light within a world being devoured by darkness would fail to hold.

They were numerous types of Warriors within the army, and they could be identified based on the type of armor they had. However, since Nero had only ever seen one, the Bulwark Ascent Armor, or the Blizters for short. They were the enormous, chunky armored Templars he saw everywhere.

According to what Lyon had told him, they were also the most common. And since the operation of an armor type was directly linked to stamina and energy expenditure, this truly was what most could manage.

When he had been told this, Nero had been curious about the other types of combat Templars. However, he had been told he was not ready for such information.

Since that as the case, he was operating in the dark and usually his imagination to sustain the blank spots.

However, he had been given the opportunity to learn quite a lot about the Blizters. Only when he did, did he realize just how incredible the scope of the empire truly was when compared to the little he knew of.

For starters, the entirety of the Empire was located in a small corner of the world...

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.