RECRUITMENT PLAN

Cillian looked disappointedly at the hole that his attack had put through the dummy, piercing the wall behind him. Even though the attack was so small, he had put a lot of energy into it. But what he didn't know was that the one-foot-thick walls of the room were rated to withstand a nuclear explosion, and he had drilled through a tenth of it. This was partially due to the concentrated nature of the attack, but it was an incredible feat for a fresh D-grade. Technically, Cillian wasn't a newly minted D-grade; he had advanced almost three months ago. He went from an E to D in less than two years, which is considered very fast progress. This was achieved by a combination of absorbing a lot of energy daily and hunting down and absorbing higher-dimensional energy from a few E-grade gangsters and thugs in the streets, which was much better for improvement than plain energies. But this method also hit a roadblock when he advanced to grade D, as the boost he gained from absorbing dimensional energy from E-grades dropped to a fraction of what it was when he was still a grade E, and the boost from absorbing normal energy also took a hit. It was obvious that he couldn't depend entirely on this ability to advance to higher ranks.

But advancing to Grade D also came with its benefits, the most important being his new law ability:

<RESONANCE TUNING>[E+]

This allowed him to fine-tune his abilities to some extent with some drawbacks. This included the ability to lock his resonance to a particular type of energy, giving a slight boost to absorption and emission of that type of energy at the cost of losing the ability to absorb and emit other energies. The narrower the scope of the energy, the greater the boost to his resonance laws. This helped Cillian permanently maintain his appearance and hide his energy absorption by limiting it strictly to radiations. But this had an unexpected caveat on his improved

<ENERGY MANIFESTATION>[D]

which was now limited to manifesting radiation energies, mostly boosting his speed attribute. But the upside was he could now shoot lasers from his eyes and pretty much any part of his body, which Cillian considered a big win. Who doesn't consider lasers cool? Cillian always wanted to fly and blast things with lasers like the heros in movies since childhoodand now he has achieved a part of it

. Also with his tuning ability, he could set up a preset for an attack beforehand so he wouldn't have to bother with it during a fight. This wasn't something unique to Cillian; almost all resonance users could partially automate their powers due to laws or their incredible mental calculation power. The only condition was that the host must be capable of performing a similar feat with their own control over the resonance. There was no way to fine-control a resonance beyond what the resonance user was already capable of; it was just streamlined to occur automatically at will rather than the user overseeing each action.

His

<ETERNAL ENERGY BEING>

law also upgraded to [D+] during this time. For some reason, this ability improved the fastest of all of Cillian's abilities, which he had no problems with. Every time this ability improved, his overall absorption, storage, and output also increased, which in turn helped him absorb more energy, further improving the ability, creating a positive feedback loop.

While Cillian was reminiscing, the whole observation room was in chaos.

In an isolation chamber in the observatory:

"Are you sure about this information?"

"I personally met with him before the test and confirmed his resonance ability. This test is only to get a second opinion from you."

"Why me? The director should be handling matters like this."

"The director has already been informed, as well as HQ. It was their decision to let you be the final verdict."

"That doesn't answer my question. If his resonance is what we think it is, then a specialist from HQ should be handling this. Unless..."

Elena fell into thought for a moment and came to a sudden realization. "Unless HQ doesn't want the information to spread involving more people they are trying to keep this info under the table! They want him to join the DPMC ! "

Deputy Director Eren started clapping, and his smile grew even wider. "The rumor that you have only muscles and no brain is slander after all!"

Elena didn't react to his jab at her intelligence; she was more serious than ever. "This is no joking matter, Deputy Director! If the Empire finds out that we tried to poach one of their future S-grades from under their noses, there will be terrible consequences. Our deal with the states clearly mentions that for enlisting people with A and S-grade resonances, both the DPMC and the pioneer's home state should be given an opportunity to present an offer to the pioneer, and the decision will rest solely on the pioneer. If you try to rope him in, our already unstable position among the states will deteriorate even more."

Eren stopped smiling and assumed a serious expression himself. "We know about the rules, Elena. But this is too important for the DPMC to pass up. The DPMC has been on the decline for more than decade now. Most of our fighting strength depends on the states and we are losing what little power we have for ourselves. The states are not letting a single good pioneer slip through their net. We can't compete with the states in terms of offering wealth, power, or resources. There is a war coming, Elena, and we are not prepared for it. It may not come tomorrow or a year later, but it will come, and at that time, we need all the power we can get. We can't stand still and hope that a prodigies like you will emerge within our own ranks . So, we can't pass up such an opportunity. Besides, the brass has already come up with a solution to solve the issue of his joining."

Elena was curious. "What solution?"

"This." Eren handed her a card, which she took. "This is just his ID. What will we do with this? And his name is really Z? I thought it was code name he choose when i read his data; What sort of name is this ? "

"That right there is a migrant ID card that is issued in Beggars Reef, and his one-letter name is a mark of his 4th-class citizen status within the Empire," Eren explained.

"4th-class citizen? What does that mean? I only know of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-class citizens, but I've never heard of a 4th," Elena asked in confusion.

"It's not surprising that you don't know about it. In fact, most of the citizens of the Empire don't know of it either. That's because the ID only exists to validate their existence within the Empire. People with these IDs are barely considered above slaves. Their rights are next to nonexistent; in that regard, slaves get better rights than them. They are discriminated against throughout the Empire. most inner systems even go as far as to ban them from entering the system itself. The gist of the matter is, he is only barely considered a citizen of the Empire, and his home state is most likely not the Empire, so the Empire doesn't have much claim over him."

Elena was taken aback by this. She had spent most of her life in the inner systems and didn't know much about the Frontier lands. This was the first time she had come into contact with such a dark part of society. But she didn't dwell on this much longer.

"Even then, he is still part of the Empire; they will not overlook this and claim him for the Empire," Elena asserted.

Eren smiled once more and took something out of his pocket, presenting it to Elena. Elena's eyes almost popped out of her head when she realized what she was holding.