Sam exits the hallway where he’s greeted with many officials standing around. He can spot the mayor, city leader, local army leader and various smaller militias. There are various business leaders and there are also some heroes that he has seen on TV yet…

“Welcome, stay and chat with everyone. We have lots of goodies to give away, you might even gain important sponsorship.” an important-looking person wearing a suit announces surrounded by many attendants.

“No thanks, I need to return home. Where can I do that?”

“No problem, the ceremony takes its toll on everyone in its own way. You will be sent a package in the mail in the morning, for now please take this special bag for the egg. It will keep it secure and warm until you return home.”

Sam takes a small bag and places his egg inside it. Many people seem to pay close attention to his egg as he puts it away causing him to frown disliking the attention from all the people he does not know.

“Haha, don’t worry. You’re safe in the town, no one would dare do anything…”

“Uh thanks…” Sam says while going towards the exit being led by one of the attendants. His body feels refreshed yet exhausted, he needs to have a long sleep after getting back but first, transportation.

Sam pauses his steps for a moment and looks at the crowd of people, they’re all mingling about themselves with no one paying attention to him yet he cannot help but feel odd.

‘Must be my imagination…’ he mutters inwardly before continuing his steps. They approach the street side that seems almost desolate of people compared to prior to the ceremony.

The attendant with him pushes several buttons on a device standing by the road causing a strange looking craft to appear. The government has provided individual shuttles that bypass all infrastructure to directly deliver participants to their home. It’s an extravagance yet an option they provide sometimes.

Sam steps into his own shuttle, a single person pod that will follow special VIP routes above the traffic.

An electric engine whirls to life as the machine lifts off the ground without the young man doing anything. He glances down at the ground and spots a few shadows moving about.

“Did someone throw something at this shuttle?” Sam mutters to himself as it travels at high speed above all the traffic, taking only minutes to arrive at his home.

It leaves without giving him a chance to inspect if there was something on the shuttle, the futuristic thing that seems like modern humans could never replicate.

Sam walks towards his house feeling strange, everything was meant to be different yet everything is still the same except for a strange feeling of tiredness this egg is giving him as it siphons away parts of his energy.

His footsteps are heavy walking up the steps to his house, he knocks on the door but there’s no answer. He doesn’t want to disturb anything going on inside the house. He tries a few more times, there’s still no answer causing him to try the doorknob.

“Oh it’s open?”

Sam turns the knob causing the door to slowly swing open. His heart being to race for some strange reason as the door opens to a silent house.

He steps inside the door, “Hello?” he yells down the hallway.

There’s no response.

He closes the door loudly, “Hello?” he yells again.

There’s again no response.

He nervously walks in to the rest of the house where he spots something strange set up in the living room, it’s a large contraption that looks like a large heater, in the middle there’s several crystals that look very valuable while the rest of it is made of various wires and metals.

Sam walks up to it before leaving it along and walking towards the kitchen. This proves to be a good idea as he comes across a note sitting on the table.

‘We have been called up suddenly, just place your egg in the middle and take out the crystal that is the same colour. We should be back in the morning.’

It’s his mother’s handwriting, it’s in a rush indicating that something serious came up. There’ are very few situations where they’d just run off like this, yet it’s not completely unheard of.

Sam walks back over to the thing in the living room, there're various colours of crystals sitting on the incubator like solar oven thing. He takes the egg from the bag taking his first close look at it, it’s a small egg the size of his fist yet the connection he feels to it is huge.

The egg itself has a smooth surface on parts, and incredibly rough on the other with 5 different colours bands going around it, the patterns are alternating but it’s primarily yellow, brown and dark red.

Sam places his egg inside the incubator taking out the yellow crystal, it’s the primary shell colour so that should be it.

A glow comes from all the other crystals that are sitting there as the machine hums to life, the energy buzzes about shrouding the egg in a strange cloak of electricity. It doesn’t feel warm, yet the display in the corner shows it at 839c and climbing quickly.

The egg seems perfectly fine at that temperature, even the link feels fine as it sucks energy from him slowly and constantly.

Sam waits several minutes before he feels himself falling asleep. He looks around for his phone but cannot spot it laying around anywhere. The egg seems safe so far giving Sam the option to leave it alone for a few minutes to look for his phone and something to wake himself up.

He stands up yawning leaving the living room; he swings by the kitchen to get a drink of water before heading to his bedroom where it has been cleaned up from the mess earlier in the day.

“Ah there it is.”

Sam walks to his phone on the bedside table when he feels a strange sensation on his neck. He swats it and pulls back his hand, thinking it’s a bug and wanting to inspect it.

“What…” he says lightly as he looks at his hand, his hand covered in red.

Sam collapses on the ground suddenly, his neck covered in blood yet it does not leak onto the floor.

An unknown amount of time passes as Sam is left laying on the ground.

His breathing is very shallow as his body filled with indescribable amounts of pain including a pain in his soul. It feels like someone is forcefully ripping something from his body, not just something but almost part of his very being.

A feeling of pain that no one could tolerate for longer than moments, yet Sam has been able to tolerate hours of it.

He would have gone crazy from the pain if it weren’t from that simple melody that comes to mind, his mind was able to endure it by entering a place where nothing matters but comprehension and a melody.

His mind entered a state where everything happening to him was it learning to adapt, how it could use this experience to perform better next time. It allowed him insights into the very nature behind the acts and how it affected not just him but everything.

This moment lasts what feels like eternity or it could last only an actual moment, Sam cannot tell as he lays there waiting for his body to recover itself, unable to do anything but comprehend what’s going on with his body.

Sam wakes up after some time, his body struggling to move properly as he makes his way towards the healing powder that is stored in the kitchen. It takes hours for this to happen. The sun is lowering in the sky as he reaches the cupboard.

It’s with great difficulty he opens the cupboard and places his head in the healing powder.

A wave of refreshing feelings come over his body, his entire body feels like its being rewritten as the powder travels all over his body as if by itself. His muscles feel much better, allowing him to stand up and breathe properly.

He coughs a few times, “Fuck that hurt…”

Sam looks down at the puddle on the ground, it’s… a rather large dark red puddle giving him pause for a moment but pushes it out of his mind.

“Out of mind, out of sight… mum will… not enjoy that haha” Sam says to himself with a sarcastic laugh walking towards the living room.

“What the hell was that” Sam makes his way to the living room to ensure it hasn’t been burnt down and is shocked, furious, saddened and more at what he sees.

The living room has been destroyed, most of the house has been destroyed as it looks like people broke in and ransacked the place destroying everything they couldn’t take, leaving the bedroom part of the house alone.

The egg is gone, all the furniture is destroyed and all the memories are shredded.

Sam walks into the living room when he hears a shout, “Hello!”

“Hello?” he responds.

“Are you Sam Tanok?”

“Yes.”

“Well I have a delivery here for you but you should really report the condition of your house. It’s not very good… though I guess it doesn’t matter for you since you’re getting this.”

Sam walks to the delivery person, he’s holding a small package of paper. The delivery person quickly leaves afterwards without a word, Sam looks at the envelope.

It’s an official government envelope. They said that there would be a delivery so perhaps this is that…

Sam opens it up, he frowns immediately upon reading the top line.

‘Orders for Immediate Deployment - Obligation for Duty - 12 Hours starting delivery time or, 20:00 at latest.’

Sam sighs as he reads the penalty for not reporting, “20 years forced labour or 10 years’ frontline duty.”

“Hello?”

Sam is standing in the destroyed doorway when another delivery person shows up, this one is a government postal service worker holding a large box. He is carting several of them around. He looks at Sam with a careful gaze.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“I don’t know, what’s going on… I just woke up to my house like this then I got this letter.”

Sam holds up the letter, the post carrier comes toward and reads the top line.

“Sorry to read that, you aren’t the first I’ve seen with that either. You won’t be the last either, we’re here to give you gifts for your egg. It was a special type, so you get the special package…”

“Ah, someone stole it…”

“That’s serious…” the postal carrier sets down the box and looks at Sam in the eyes.

“Can I get another one?”

“You need to report it... I have heard there are ways to transplant them, especially soon after the ceremony. The authorities might be able to organise it… maybe. Do you need me to phone them up?”

“No, I’m ok thank you for your concern.”

“Take care, I’ll check on you later.”

“Bye.”

Sam feels like slumping down on the ground, he’s exhausted and his body feels like it’s missing something yet he pushes on walking to his room where nothing is destroyed. His phone and computer are sitting there.

He pulls out his phone that has several missed messages and a single call, nothing from his parents, which he finds strange. He immediately tries them and gets their voice mail, no response from texts either.

Sam pulls up the number for the authorities before stopping on the number of his friend, he calls him.

It only rings once before his friend picks up, “Hey bro.”

“Hey, you free to talk?”

“Sure what’s up?”

“Well, I’ve run in to a situation where…”

Sam spends a few minutes describing the situation including the conversation with the postal carrier, he tells him how he felt something on his neck and saw blood then woke up to a destroyed house, the short conversation with the postal carrier was particularly interesting.

“You shouldn’t worry about that stuff, we need to hit up a store, I know. They sell monsters, decent ones too. I can hook you up.”

“What about my door?”

“I’ll send my cousin around to patch it up and tell your parents what’s going on.”

“Fine, what store?”

“I’ll pick you up, I’ll be there in 3 minutes, bro.”

“Ok.”

Sam walks to the kitchen for a drink but looks at the destroyed remains. He shrugs his shoulders in defeat before walking out the front door. There’s nothing left to steal, so he’s not too worried about it. The walk is short and strange as he heads to the road.

Quite a few people stop and look at him when they spot him, Sam doesn’t pay attention to them as he stands by the side of the road. His friend shows up quickly in a sporty car. He swings the gull door open near smacks Sam’s head.

“Oh bro, did I actually hit your head?”

“No… why?”

“Why the hell is your head covered in blood then?”

“I hit my head, I guess.”

“Well, it’s fine, just uhh, wear this.”

Sam’s friend passes him some napkins, he uses them as a headrest sitting on the passenger seat.

“You ok, bro?”

“Yes.”

“Ok bro, whatever you say.”

Sam’s friend speeds away from the housing block as more people have noticed Sam’s presence, opting to check out his house and perhaps noticing the state is in. This is the last thing on his mind as he sends messages to his parents getting increasingly worried about where they are.

The trip is without incident, Sam sent many messages to his parents and people that might know them. He even sent messages to his relatives in other cities, they were of no help with one of them suggesting that he should just report in right away.

‘It is your duty’ is all the message boiled down to essentially, Sam sighs putting his phone away unsure about what’s going on.

The only thing that he’s sure about is that he can no longer feel the presence of the egg, its awareness is gone from him. The changes it brought remain though, as Sam can feel the presence of a large cloud of energy within him.

The energy cloud is the total amount of energy his body has available at one time, it replenishes and grows with time among other things, but the most important part is that the monster serves as a point of refinement for this energy cloud.

People are not even aware of this energy cloud inside them until the monster is bonded them then through the ceremony, the monsters will feed on the impure energy somehow and return purified energy that is used to upgrade to the next stage.

If you do not have the monster for any reason, you are essentially stuck at the stage you are at.

There are other options out there but they’re not available for the common person, they’re legendary ingredients or procedures from the time of the ancients.

Sam is basically in a rush against time now, he needs to bond with another monster before the exterior of his energy cloud solidifies.

He peers inside of him and looks at the exterior, it’s still as unstable as it was when it first appeared so that’s a factor in his benefit which is sorely needed at this time. Sam looks at the traffic that is going slowly and turns to his friend.

“Where are we going?“

“We are going to my bro’s monster warehouse, he has a business that finds wild eggs and will try to hatch them. He’s crazy, you’ll love him.”

“Takings eggs from the wild? That’s still possible?”

“Only the craziest of crazy people will even try it, this is your only hope… unless”

“What?”

“You enter one of those experiments done by the central government, the one that thinks they’re the remnants of the galactic command. They have all sorts of weird techno creatures they need testers for, you’d get a big bonus.”

“Oh that program… I’ve heard about it, isn’t that the program the Techno-driver was founded through?”

“Yeah that’s the one, he’s pretty cool I think. I’ve been trying to get my project car like his techno-driver mk3, some crazy ideas involved in that.”

“Doesn’t that program also have something like 80% causality rate after the first year?”

“That’s just rumours bro,” the friend quietens his voice, “it’s more like 98%,” he speeds up his words so that it doesn’t linger, “they accept everyone, even ones that never underwent the ceremony. That’s why it doesn’t look great, for some people its their only hope.”

“Ah well, it’s not my only hope yet, I don’t wanna risk it like that just yet.”

Sam’s friend nods and refocuses on the road, Sam also closes his eyes trying to not stress too much about the situation.