During the following days Lee became certain that the so called competition was nothing but a scam. In fact, if it was his choice, he would've done it the same way the higher-ups did.
The kids trained harder than ever and showed off their limited abilities despite the poor odds most of them had. Unfortunately the three squads, or – the eighteen people, who were about to receive the fire sparks were already decided.
The idea to let the trainees to have an illusion of competition was a solid one, though. It forced them to work harder and become stronger quicker.
Of course, they were only children and were easily hoodwinked. First of all there wasn't an organized event where the squads were supposed to compete with each other in a direct confrontation.
Everyone's performance was judged by the instructors, and no one apart from them had a clue what the criteria for winning was supposed to be. Obviously, the naive trainees never even had a thought in this direction, not that anyone would ask for their opinion.
After returning to the fortress, the next morning, Potato came over and reminded Lee to not let his squad win. The usually haughty guy did get upset when Lee pointed at the obvious scheme, but quickly realized he had to change tactics himself. Potato's squad was one of the strongest and he had to make sure they never won.
Judging from his green eyes, Lee already guessed that Potato had ignited a wind spark, and faking absorption of a fire spark was impossible. Nevertheless, he tried to provoke his new acquaintance to reveal more about the subject, but this time didn't get much out of him.
The only thing Potato said was, "Even if I hadn't ignited my own, I had to be a complete retard to absorb a beast's spark, much less two. Not only it'll ruin my current life, I'll fuck up the following reincarnations no matter how many times I'll try starting over again."
The new information was upsetting, but there was nothing Lee could do about his current condition. More importantly, he was long used to not take anything anyone said as a rule set in stone.
A year ago he thought people couldn't have their own sparks, and few lifetimes ago, according to his understanding, the superhumans existed only in books and movies. There were too many things he didn't know yet and could verify what the others said only with time.
***
As expected, Lee's squad members had to deal with disappointment several days later. Potato also didn't win in the end, but after the last conversation with Lee, he decided to take more drastic measures and got injured during a friendly spar.
From what Lee heard, the guy got hit on the head and lied comatose for several days. Needless to say, even if his squad was in consideration earlier, they didn't get the grand prize.
Unfortunately neither Lee nor Potato were out of the water yet. Someone spread the rumor, that soon another conquest was about to begin with a following competition after that.
Lee had suspicions that this someone was one of the instructors and the rumor was spread on purpose, but it didn't matter. His relatively peaceful days in the fortress were over, and he had to train as madly as the rest of his squad.
But the rumor turned out to be true. A month and a half later the young generation once again took part in a recruitment conquest. Similarly to the last one Lee didn't have to directly kill any natives, but the fact that he technically assisted in kidnapping of over a thousand children from another race didn't make him feel particularly good.
The following competition went well, though, and his squad didn't win simply because there were at least half a dozen stronger teams of six.
Potato, on the other hand, had much harder time loosing. Lee didn't know and didn't want to know how and where one of the Potato's squad members disappeared, but it resulted in their loss nevertheless.
When around fifty days later another recruitment conquest was announced, the trainees cheered as always, but to Lee and Potato it was obvious Lunax was going all out to replenish the lost blood.
Neither cared about the elemental lord's hardships, though. Lee's problem was that this time his squad had high chances to earn the fire sparks, and Potato was basically guaranteed to get one.
The conquest was to a world inhabited by scaled people, thus neither had a wish to remain there, and the only option left was to escape from the fortress.
Lee's first impulse was to hide somewhere on the way back, but Potato somehow managed to persuade him that they wouldn't stand a chance. It was impossible to get to the Ashland's center to mix in the crowd, and it was similarly futile to try to hide in one of the blob farms on the way back.
Maybe they could've attempted one plan or another after the first conquest, but the excited squad members made sure that on the road everyone stuck together at all times.
***
Back in the day Lee had broken in quite a few places, but this was his first time of trying to get out from somewhere. But this endeavor seemed to be rather challenging to say the least.
While the atmosphere in the fortress was rather relaxed and the guards and instructors were friendly, all of them were elemental warriors with superhuman abilities. The issue was – he had no clue what those abilities were, thus didn't know what to look out for.
And that was only the first problem.
To scan the surroundings for opportunities and analyze the movement of the guards became Lee's habit since the day he arrived here.
He clearly knew there were not that many ways out – the always opened gate was impossible to directly go through, that left him with two options – escape by getting over the wall or hide in something that was brought out of the fortress.
The first one seemed to be ridiculously hard.
The fortress was located seemingly in the middle of nowhere and was surrounded by endless gray territories without larger rocks, to not speak of hills, cliffs or mountains. The guards on the fortress walls weren't all from the big-eyed race, but their sight was good enough to notice someone running away – that is if one managed to get down the wall unseen.
It was unlikely anyone could escape in this fashion directly, even Potato using the powers of his wind spark.
The option to hide in a wagon that was going to be taken away was even riskier.
The only regular supplies that were brought to the fortress were the blobs from a nearby farm, but the wagons they used were primitive, with no barrels or boxes to hide in after the cargo was unloaded.
The provisions, in the form of meat, vegetables and fruits of questionable quality and origin, arrived too irregularly to be planned around, and even then the wagons had similar problems to the ones that the blob farm used.
"Kind of seems we are fucked." Lee put his verdict out, and Potato had no other choice, but to agree.
"Mhm." He nodded with a grave expression, "But if we don't try, we'll go down at most half a month later. And that's basically a guaranteed death. I'm not willing to test how many the master's seal can hold, you know? I'd suggest we take the option and try to get down the wall, on the opposite sides – to increase the chance at least one of us makes it."
"You mean – you make it?" Lee snorted, "You think I'm an idiot? You obviously have the ability to achieve the speed over ten times faster than mine. While everyone will be after me, a decoy, it's likely no one will even notice you disappearing in the distance!"
In the underground pyramid Lee once witnessed the speed of the owner of a wind spark. It was the last one standing against the four armed guy and his speed was incredible.
Lee didn't know whether he guy lost because of a mistake or the four armed surpassed his own limits, but it was clear that if the owner of the wind spark wanted to get away, the opponent had no choice but to let him go.
"It's not like you have another option." Potato said with a shrug, "But don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to set you up. I'm leaving anyway – with you choosing to go or not. Only because you're also a follower of our master I can lend you a hand. After we get away, we'll have much easier time to survive if we stick together. Of course, you can always die and start over. Up to you, really."
Except for the master part, Lee knew Potato was right, but he couldn't shrug the feeling there was something off about the situation. He did have the plan b and could reincarnate again, and even see Lisa between the two lives, but Potato's unwillingness to choose this option made him weary.
***
Both Lee and Potato had been thinking about the potential escape for a long time, and it only took them three days to finish preparations. During these days they didn't exert themselves, ate to their fullest and rested as well as they could.
Of course, Lee still felt the escape was rushed, but Potato was right – he had no choice.
Nevertheless, there was something off about the whole thing, but no matter how hard Lee thought, he couldn't put his finger on it. He managed to create a somewhat questionable back-up plan for himself, though, a lifeline, just in case.