Shadow Slave

While the intense and arduous training slowly taught the members of the cohort how to fight together, Sunny had several other time-sensitive tasks to complete. Keeping up with all these concurrent responsibilities really tested his mental capacity, but there was no other choice than to simply grit his teeth and do it.

Probably the most important of the tasks facing him was to allocate his contribution points and acquire various assets to strengthen the cohort. However, that was not a straightforward issue. After several days of studying how his subordinates fought and getting acquainted with their Memory arsenals, he was finally ready to make some decisions.

To do so, he chose a moment when the three members of the melee vanguard — Belle, Dorn, and Quentin — were busy in the Dreamscape pods, and called his other three subordinates over.

After all, all three of them were specialists in various support fields that had to do with the cohort's equipment. Kim was a technician, Samara was a capable spelltech engineer, while Luster…

Well, Luster was supposed to be an ace pilot. That wasn't really useful in this situation, but what was Sunny supposed to do, leave the poor guy to sulk all alone in a corner?

After consulting with Kim and Samara, he gained a lot of insight into what would be the best way to spend the contribution points.

The Rhino might have seemed like a simple transport vehicle, but it was really so much more. Sunny did not know a lot about war and strategy, but he knew that mobility was one of the most important factors when determining the impact a combat unit could make.

That was especially so for the cohorts of the First Irregular Company, which were supposed to be elite rapid-response units that had to constantly travel between various flashpoints to provide support to the ground troops.

upgrading their APC

of the Rhino had to

pick before consulting with the pair of tech specialists. Instead of adding more armor to the Rhino's hull or incorporating a powerful

reactor with a much more potent alternative, which in turn demanded the whole energy transmission

new spelltech reactor did not need mundane fuel and

out to be useful for something,

second major upgrade, unexpectedly, centered entirely around the command and communication suite situated in the rear of the vehicle. Sunny had not paid it much attention before, but after receiving input from Kim, he understood how important it

opening in Antarctica, communicating with other units and the command HQ of the Evacuation Army was going to quickly turn into hell. Being able to maintain a stable

advanced and powerful system that, hopefully, would have no problem punching through the mass of interference. The added external antennas, both

upgrade was the most esoteric and abstruse. It involved extremely advanced spelltech applications which Sunny did not really understand, so

the detrimental effects that the Nightmare Gates produced. Everyone knew that Gates messed with technology

Nightmares, Sunny had to make sure that the Rhino would not simply stall and die in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. So, even though it cost him a painful amount of contribution points, he chose to acquire the most expensive set

not shed a tear

the specialists go, he made

right armament, he decided to enhance her combat performance by getting his hand on the most powerful mundane weapon available to the members

result, the cohort became entitled to receive an incredibly powerful —