The Idealist

(2024.09.24):

Tang Yexingzhi was born in the Ravine District in the southern part of the Underground City, an ordinary person with no special abilities.

Unwilling to keep living from one meal to the next, he volunteered for the academy entrance exam when Rige Academy opened recruitment. He was admitted as one of the ordinary-track candidates and became a trainee guard.

On his third day at the academy, a few idle troublemakers in his class picked on him and made him their target.

Following the rule of not bothering anyone who didn't bother him, Xingzhi gripped the small knife hidden in his sleeve. The moment they made a move, he would strike, making sure they would never dare to bother him again.

But before he could draw his knife, the other party was injured first.

Xingzhi looked at the Dawn Executive Director, who was a head taller than him, and silently put his knife away. He put on an innocent, pitiful expression, silently telling the director that the three over there were the ones causing trouble.

He darkly cursed them in his heart, hoping the director would expel all three, while lowering his eyes and keeping quiet as he waited for the director's next decision.

The good news: He was punished.

The bad news: Xingzhi was included in the punishment, too.

But he had only run a few meters in obedience to the director's order when he was slammed to the ground again.

Pain jolted through his nerves. Before he could figure out why the other person had done this, he heard the director, who was pinning him down, speak in a stern and solemn voice:

"According to Article 26 of the Behemoth Volunteer Code: All volunteers who do not hold a guard license must wear a Rule Bracelet to prevent them from wantonly using 'wishes' to harm others. Volunteers found without a Rule Bracelet shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of no less than two years and no more than five years. Those whose actions are particularly egregious shall be sentenced to a term of no less than five years and no more than twenty years."

"Executor, Supreme Executive Director of Dawn, Senjia Lorent."

Xingzhi: ???

Hello??? Wasn't he a non-volunteer???

* The setting is probably a post-apocalyptic society. Anyway, it's complicated, and I can't explain it.

* This shares the same world as my other novel, Dark Tide, and is set afterward.

Theme: No particular theme