Nascent Soul Rebirth: Starting as a Wizard

Six months and three days later.

Ash Corridor Seventh Forward Base, Third Alien Auxiliary Regiment Maintenance Area.

Time here loses its gentle meaning and is forged into a heavy poison.

The air was so thick it could almost be sliced ​​open with a knife, mixed with a nauseating, bone-deep stench from the thick soup:

The pungent, fishy smell of secretions from the glands of some lizardman slaves; the sweet, putrid stench of death emanating from the inner tissues of Zerg units after their carapaces have been pierced by stray bullets or acid; and the smoky, burnt smell of large amounts of charred chitin, keratin, and strange feathers that cannot be completely burned away.

The cheap alchemical disinfectant, with its masking yet more pungent false cleanliness, and the ever-present astral dust from unstable spatial rifts and dimensional debris, possess a strange texture like cold metal scraping against each other, drilling straight into the brain.

These flavors are tightly bound together and lingering, and with each breath, it feels like coarse sand, stained with all the filth, is being forcibly ground and pressed deep into the lungs.

The massive, filthy maintenance tent, resembling the entrails of some festering behemoth, undulated slightly under the dim artificial magical light.

The anti-magic canvas was soaked with layers of suspicious, sticky, dark stains, making it impossible to tell whether they were dried blood, alien bodily fluids, rotting tissue fluid, or some inexplicable residue of leaked energy.

Solo had just straightened up, his movements steady and without a single unnecessary movement.

Before him stood a "unit"—the Rockback Clan—dragged in by two vacant-eyed, mechanically-moving kobold overseers.

These humanoid creatures are known for their thick, rock-like cuticle covering their bodies and their tenacious vitality, making them excellent laborers and low-level meat shields.

But at this moment, most of its stone shoulder blade, along with the grayish-white, slowly wriggling, wet muscle tissue below, was neatly sheared away by the aftershocks of a chaotic spatial rift.

The cross-section wasn't a bloody mess; instead, it flickered with tiny, yet dangerous, sparks of unstable energy—a type of damage requiring "high-priority handling."

If it is not stabilized as soon as possible, its core bioenergy will rapidly leak out along this energy wound, eventually turning it into waste with no recycling value.

His face was expressionless, without even the slightest tremor in his eyelids.

Six months of "study" at the academy and the repetitive labor since arriving at this meat grinder a month ago had forged a deeper indifference into his bones.

With the index and middle fingers of the right hand joined together, a steady, almost cold, pale green fluorescent light shone from the fingertips.

This is not a healing technique based on any life empathy, but rather a "Temporary Adhesion Technique for Alien Tissues" clearly recorded in Chapter 3, Section 7 of the "Battlefield Alien Unit Emergency Maintenance and Value Recovery Operation Manual (Seventh Revised Edition)," a magic-level technique, numbered T-743.

The magic was guided precisely and sparingly, like the stingiest accountant moving the beads on an abacus.

The pale green glow did not cover the entire gruesome wound, but rather precisely located at several barely perceptible energy vortex nodes on the cross-section—those were the weak points and leaks in the Rockback Clan's energy cycle.

The "Energy Cycle Node Diagram of Common Alien Slave Units," forcibly instilled into the mind like a branding iron, has now transformed into a cold and thoughtless operational guide.

The faint magic acted like a cheap but fast-acting adhesive, forcibly plugging the few "leaks" where energy was losing the most.

Without the slightest pause, almost simultaneously, the fingers of the other hand slightly spread, and an almost silent and invisible universal analgesic wave covered the target area.

The goal is by no means to eliminate pain—it is still questionable whether the Rockback Tribe even has the perception of "pain".

Rather, it is to suppress the stress-induced struggles or energy outbursts that the organisms might experience due to energy disorder, which would disrupt the transport line order and increase the trouble of subsequent processing.

Finally, a thin, almost transparent, barely formed secondary anti-infection force field was applied to the wound surface, not to save the life of this individual.

Rather, it is to prevent it from decaying or becoming diseased prematurely during its transport to the "material recycling and decomposition station," thereby affecting the extraction value and conversion rate of its "usable components" such as scales and glands.

The entire process took 21 seconds.

Magic consumption: as low as the apprentice's theoretical value, just enough to keep the spell effective; any more would be a waste.

Efficiency assessment: Meets the standards.

Two kobold overseers immediately stepped forward, their movements clumsy yet efficient, dragging the Rockback unit, which wouldn't be completely destroyed immediately, towards the "disposal area" at the edge of the tent, where broken bodies were constantly writhing and emitting low, inhuman noises.

Its fate will be decided from the rear:

The question is whether to dismantle the still usable petrified armor plates and core energy glands to supplement the slave manufacturing sequence, or to determine that their value is too low and send them directly into the decomposition pool to be turned into the most basic energy waste and organic fertilizer raw materials.

Solo's movements were precise, swift, and without any redundancy. In the past month of mechanical shifts, he had repeated this process, which was carried out according to a thick, cold manual, tens of thousands of times.

The standard maintenance procedure, encompassing twenty-eight targeted techniques including hemostasis, analgesia, antiseptic, temporary energy replenishment, and neutralization of specific toxins, has never deviated from its core logic:

Using the lowest possible cost of its own magical energy, ideally close to zero, it aims to achieve maximum, temporary functional recovery or residual value preservation of the target "unit" in order to maintain the minimum smooth operation of the entire "biological consumables production line".

Outside the tent, the true roar of war was muffled and distant, like the panting of a giant beast deep in the clouds.

That was the domain where formal wizards, war golems, contracted behemoths clashed with high-ranking enemy units. Every violent tremor of the ground and every destructive flash of light across the sky proclaimed a terrifying clash of power.

Solo and his men were immersed in the filthy, noisy, and never-ending "biological consumables delivery and maintenance belt" right behind the main battle line.

There is no glory, no epic here, only the coldest efficiency mathematics and a constant cycle of consumption and replenishment.

As far as the eye could see, there was a surging torrent of creatures, enough to drive any newcomer to the brink of madness:

Swamp slaves whose skin is covered in slippery mucus and who float silently like ghosts in the special low-gravity maintenance zone of the base.

With their flagella-like tentacles wrapped around boxes of delicate, easily disturbed energy cores, they slid along the ground strewn with crystal cluster debris and scorched energy marks.

Hundreds upon hundreds of Ironhide units, their carapaces covered in enslavement runes and shimmering with a dim red light, were using their shovel-like forelimbs and mouthparts that secreted strong acid.

Like living construction machinery, they frantically dug and widened trenches and fortifications. Every now and then, Zerg would collapse from overwork, their shells would crack, or they would be indifferently dragged to the roadside and piled up by their own kind or the overseers.

Several meters tall, with muscles as defined as granite and heavy restraint collars around their necks, the one-eyed troll slaves silently carry large, heavy energy transmission pipes or prefabricated defensive components.

With steps that made the ground groan, their thick skin was covered with old and new scars, some so deep that the bone was visible, revealing the dark red, slowly pulsating inhuman flesh inside. Yet they continued to move forward numbly, propelled by the faint electric disc drive of the punitive runes on their collars that flickered intermittently.

Further away, astral transporters resembling multi-legged metal sea urchins rolled slowly, carrying heavy alloy plates on their backs. Their gelatinous slaves, capable of secreting rapidly congealing mucus, were being driven to fill the gaps in the fortifications that had just been blasted by enemy stray bullets or energy splashes...

Casualties on this never-ending biological conveyor belt are not accidents or tragedies, but rather part of the precisely calculated, ever-present "natural attrition rate."

A lingering ripple of arcane energy, a tiny spatial fold, a stampede caused by a clash of habits between slave races, excessive whipping by the overseer, or even just a systemic collapse caused by continuous labor beyond their physical limits...

All of these can cause a "stutter" in some part of this complex production line.

Any "lag" could affect the efficiency of resupplying, rotating, or repairing fortifications of the units that are truly valuable in combat.

Therefore, Solo and his companions, who had just barely entered the ranks of low-level apprentices after four months of cramming and forced indoctrination, were "magical illiterate" who could barely perform a few tricks.

They were then inserted into the various biological joints of this massive war machine, like the cheapest screws and lubricants.

They are the "emergency repair agents" and "wear delay agents" in this consumption system, using their own faint magic of rapid recovery, which is almost considered a free resource.

To combat the constant biological attrition and maintain this assembly line, forged from flesh and steel, so that it can continue to operate at the lowest cost and highest efficiency.

"B7 Passage! The Bonebreaker Troll Squad has encountered intermittent spatial energy backlash! Fifteen units have suffered extensive burns and necrosis of their outer skin, and the passage is blocked! Maintenance team, proceed immediately to clear it!"

An apprentice with sunken cheeks, heavy eye bags, and a voice hoarse from years of shouting in noisy environments burst into the tent and roared into the air.

He didn't even look at anyone inside the tent, but simply shouted out the preset command code like a malfunction alarm.

Solo silently rose. The hem of his dusty, unrecognizable apprentice robe was stained with a dark blue slime of some unknown creature, which had hardened and solidified.

Several colleagues around him, equally ashen-faced and with blank stares, reacted almost simultaneously, like puppets pulled by the same invisible string.

Stop what you're doing, whether you've finished or not, turn your head to confirm the direction of the instructions, and instinctively turn towards the tent exit.

There was no communication, no questions, and not even the slightest bit of extra emotion directed at the so-called "wounded." Those were merely "units," asset numbers.

These are the numbers waiting to be filled in on the "Frontline Loss Daily Report," and they are the points of failure that could affect their already meager "mission evaluation points."

In this endless, mechanical repetition, they themselves seem to be gradually assimilated and worn down, becoming another type of tool in this vast system, slightly more "precise," limited to performing a few dozen standard tricks, but essentially still consumables.

Solo's heart was frozen in a calm.

After four months of forced "learning," he saw through the essence of things earlier than anyone else.

Those crammed "battlefield medical magic" are nothing more than technical training that quickly turns ordinary people into qualified "biological maintenance workers".

He deliberately suppressed his "progress," keeping his magic power and the spells he mastered firmly at the minimum standard for a low-level apprentice.

At best, a low-level apprentice can only cast a minor fireball spell; the vast majority of their knowledge consists of trick-level support and maintenance magic.

The Emerald Duke and this War Academy clearly didn't expect these hastily produced soldiers to fight on the front lines—it would have been more efficient to give them a cheap, enchanted crossbow.

The higher one's cultivation level, the more destructive spells one masters, and the greater the probability of being thrown into the real meat grinder.

Unless he can recover his Nascent Soul cultivation overnight and twist off the Jadeite Duke's head and throw it into the toilet.

Otherwise, under these cruel rules, maintaining the "low-value" identity of a "maintenance worker" is actually the most rational survival strategy.

This is their war.

There were no bugle calls to charge, only the roar of maintenance orders; no gleaming medals, only the meager contribution points that ticked in the account after completing the mission.

There were no enemy faces, only the flesh and blood of alien races constantly flowing past, needing to be "repaired" or "marked as abandoned".

He took a step and followed the numb flow of people toward the B7 passage, toward yet another standard "loss handling" procedure.

The ground beneath my feet was sticky and damp, a mixture of bodily fluids and filth. The distant explosions and the constant "brainwashing wavelengths" echoing in the corridor formed the unchanging and cruel background music of the whole affair.