1 Chapter 1: Planet Kraus

Life was the same for poor seventeen-year-old Drew Li. He would wake up at around six, being greeted by the two suns that rose to the east of Planet Kraus in his old room residing on the sixth floor of Star Military Academy Training Base Dormitories. For a poor orphan like himself, a salary of around 3800 Kalas a month was sufficient as it could cover a majority of his expenses with sometimes ten or twenty Kalas left over, which were invested into gene-enhancing medicines or put into savings. Of course, that only happens sometimes due to inflation.

The room Drew stayed in was part of Star Military Academy's Dorms, one of the many Academies part of the Galactic Alliance. It was a metal bunker of about 27 sq meters consisting of a large glass window that opened up to a small balcony encircled with an old wire fence, with enough space for a person to take three or four paces, where Drew placed his outdated hoverboard and a couple of cheap house plants he bought from the nursery below. On the balcony was the perfect view of the capital city of Planet Kraus, Ozwarth, with its towering glass skyscrapers and vivid holograms projecting the news, weather, latest celebrity scandals, and even the current rankings of Intergalactic Warriors, beings who've enhanced their genes and abilities to the max, military heroes in short. The interior of the room was simple: a bed, more of a futon though, with one pillow and a thick plaid blanket, a kitchen equipped with a double burner, a closet, a small wooden coffee table with a desk lamp, and a small door leading to a wet bath.

After having a simple breakfast consisting of watered-down congee, Drew grabbed his hoverboard, slipped on a navy green windbreaker, and left the dorm. Since the dorm was constructed during humanity's settlement on Planet Kraus five hundred years ago, it didn't have an electronic lock but a physical lock and key mechanism that was seemingly getting rustier by the day. With a jerk and a hard twist, Drew shut the door, placing the half-rusted keys in his breast pocket, and left the dormitory, ready to begin another day. His workplace, the military base's soup kitchen, was a ten-minute walk away from the dorms, but once a week, if he were earlier, the old cook, Uncle Winter, would occasionally give him a lift.

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Uncle Winter was a mysterious man. Everyone at the base knew he was the head chef at the cafeteria and that he was single, but other than that, no one knew anything about him. His name, age, origin, previous occupation, and all that information was classified, and that's what made him mysterious. He was also the man who offered Drew a position in the kitchen as a cook after Drew finished his Compulsory Education, the essential requirement for education by Interstellar Law to be completed half a year prior. The man even begged the head of the base to provide him with complimentary lodging at the dorms. To Drew, Uncle Winter was like a father to him.

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Drew rode his outdated hoverboard and set off to his new, tedious work day. Weaving through the crowds of people, Drew would often find others his age with carefree smiles on their faces, wearing their spotless blue and gold uniforms representing Star Military Academy's next generation. He was envious that they could live their lives in such a carefree manner while he, on the other hand, had to work a minimum-wage job to get by. If only he had the resources, he could be like them. He could have awoken his first Subsidiary Ability.

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In the Interstellar Era, your Genetic Ability, the ability you are born with, dictates your status, and with a Genetic Ability, one could be considered a Genetic Warrior. Genetic Abilities are classified by letter ranks: F, E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS, and L, with F being the lowest and L being the highest. These rankings also apply to Warriors. Those who possess Genetic Abilities are guaranteed to awaken Subsidiary Abilities. These additional characteristics can enhance an existing Genetic Ability, such as increased power or defense when they rank up. Besides Subsidiary Abilities, which are classified under a single more considerable Ability, there is a chance for a Genetic Warrior to awaken a Secondary Ability, which will have its own Subsidiary Abilities, or even more rare, a Tertiary or even a Quaternary Ability. The first Genetic Warriors, who've all ascended to become gods, possessed Quaternary Abilities. Of course, those without a genetic ability are called Untouchables, a class deriving from human society on planet Earth. Drew was lucky as he possessed a genetic ability; unfortunately, it was classified as one of the most useless. It was called Aegis five hundred years ago, the ultimate shield. However, as the years progressed, new abilities appeared, rendering this ultimate shield useless; an S-rank ability was now an F-rank ability.

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Drew ignored these people and continued on his way to the cafeteria. The city streets and towering skyscrapers soon faded into dusty dirt paths where military vehicles and soldiers armed with deadly plasma weapons passed with no attention to anything else, crushing the small genome beasts below their feet. A frail guy, no taller nor older than Drew, with long pointy ears and tattered clothes, trailed behind the soldiers. With a leather pouch at his waist, he bent down to the corpse of a small white cat-like genome beast who had been crushed by the armored foot of a soldier. With his sharp fingernails, he pierces the fresh corpse, crimson blood splattering over his pale, human-like face. A moment later, the guy yanks out a small blue orb the size of a bead and smiles. Opening his pouch, he tucks the blue orb away and shuffles to the next corpse, leaving the previous one with its innards spilling out. That guy is from Kraus's native race, Llelfs, a mix between what humans would call an elf and a wolf, and from the looks of it, he seemed to be a Cleaner, a sort of janitor that picks up the cores, such as the blue bead, from dead beasts corpses.

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Cores are condensed orbs of natural energy that all organisms possess, whether it be a human or genetic beast, called Otrio, measured in units called Krasos. These cores can be refined into genetic medicines, used to enhance one's genetic ability temporarily or permanently, or embedded in artifacts, weapons more powerful than plasma weapons that utilize the Otrio in cores. The darker the color of the core, the more Krasos of Otrio are contained in it. Besides Krasos being the measurement for Artifacts, it is also used to assign ranks to Intergalactic Warriors, with each rank requiring more Krasos of Otrio to advance. To qualify as an Intergalactic Warrior, one must possess at least 100 Krasos of Otrio. The more Otrio one has, the more powerful they are; a person can only contain so much Otrio in their body before they explode. As such, genetic medicines were created utilizing ancient human cultivation methods to refine cores and herbs on each planet to expand a person's Otrio capacity. Simultaneously, the medication can also evolve a genetic ability or, in rare cases, induce the development of another Ability.

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Drew would have rather been a Cleaner than a Cook since Cleaners are compensated in cores in which each one was worth about half his monthly salary, but it would require him to be an F-rank Warrior. Unfortunately, Drew only possessed a meager fifty Krasos of Otrio, making him slightly better than an Untouchable. However, he would be nothing more than a bug to an Intergalactic Warrior. Furthermore, for an orphan who could not afford to even go to a low-ranking military academy, his only options were to slave away at a minimum-wage job like this or die on the streets. If only he had better circumstances, maybe he could have become a full-fledged student at a Military Academy like Star.

Sighing to himself, knowing this was merely a pipe dream, Drew accelerated to the cafeteria. Little did he know today was the day that his fate would completely change.