Chapter 16: United Human Republic
The mission report arrived the next morning.
It was delivered as a thin stack of papers, each one asking for details I honestly did not want to remember. Mission objective. Route taken. Enemy contact. Number of Ossarians encountered. Ammunition used. Casualties. Injuries. Personal account of the events.
I sat at the small desk in my temporary room, pen in hand. Eventually, I forced myself to begin.
I had already spent part of the morning reading through the manual we had been given. From what I understood, all new cadets were granted a three-month grace period after becoming official Beacon members. During that time, we were assigned a small one-room apartment with a bathroom.
Food was also covered during the grace period, although “covered” did not mean good. The manual described it as basic survival rations, and after one breakfast, I understood exactly what that meant. Bland bread, dry vegetables, thin soup, and portions just large enough to keep a person functioning. Nothing tasted good, but food was food.
After the grace period ended, everything changed.
That was where the Lumen system came in.
Lumens were Beacon’s official currency. Some people called them lums. Others called them light. The meaning was the same either way.
The conversion was also simple enough. One Lumen was treated as equal to one dollar.
A basic meal costs around three to five Lumens. A water canteen refill could cost one or two. Cheap clothing ranged from twenty to forty. Good boots could reach eighty or even one hundred and fifty Lumens. A basic knife might cost forty to seventy.
Weapons were worse.
The rifle itself was issued to cadets, but maintaining it was our responsibility. Cleaning tools, repairs, replacement parts, and Radiance capsules all came out of our own pockets unless the mission specifically covered them. A single capsule could cost anywhere from ten to twenty-five Lumens depending on quality and availability.
That number bothered me. I had used too many capsules during the mission. Far too many.
The manual made one thing painfully clear: Beacon gave cadets enough to begin, but not enough to thrive.
Mission rewards were the main source of income for cadets on the ground.
F-rank missions paid around 50 to 150 Lumens. E-rank missions paid 150 to 400. D-rank missions could reach a 1000. Anything higher than that was no longer something beginners had any business thinking about.
There were other ways to earn money too.
People working inside Beacon earned daily wages. Cleaners, kitchen workers, mechanics, engineers, medic assistants, guards, everyone had a place in the system. Skilled workers earned more. Engineers and medics were especially valuable, which made sense. In a dying world, the people who could build, repair, or heal were worth more than those who could only carry a rifle.
Then there were Ossarian bones. Beacon bought them.
Male bone fragments were cheaper, usually around 20 to 50 Lumens depending on radiance quality and quantity. Female wing-bone fragments were worth far more, sometimes 80 to 200 Lumens because of the Radiance stored inside them. Research have found that female Ossarians store far more in an instant than male counterparts, thus they are more valuable.
That explained why Captain Sullivan had made us extract the glowing bones despite everything that had happened. And speaking of Sullivan, I suddenly understood something else.
When he paid for our meal, I had assumed it was some kind of gesture. Maybe not kindness exactly, but at least a small sign of camaraderie from a team leader to his squad after a brutal mission.
Motherfucker had taken the Ossarian bones and walked away with them.
The manual also mentioned The Market to buy goods.
Beacon had an official market where people could buy goods: food, water, clothes, medicine, tools, batteries, weapon parts, capsules, training manuals, and dorm upgrades. Prices were fixed, but access was controlled.
That was the important part.
Having Lumens did not mean you could buy whatever you wanted.
Some things required permission.
Medicine needed medical approval. Weapon capsules required rank clearance. Better armor required mission records. Restricted maps required authorization. Even private rooms depended on status.
Money mattered, but rank mattered more.
As for our mission, I doubted it would remain F-rank. There was no way.
We encountered multiple Ossarian ambushes, lost Hannah, almost lost Harper, filled the tanker, returned with water, and brought back glowing bones. At the very least, it would be marked as a high E-rank supply mission.
That meant we would earn between 300 hundred to 400 Lumens, assuming the investigation confirmed everything.
If Captain Sullivan took half as mission commander, then the remaining amount would be around 150 to 200 Lumens. If we split it between Aaron, Alexander, and me, each of us would probably receive around 50 ~ 60 Lumens.
There was also a base salary for cadets. According to the manual, every official cadet received 300 Lumens per month, as long as they completed the basic duties assigned to them. These duties were not full missions, but smaller responsibilities needed to keep Beacon running such as night guard shifts, patrol rotations, equipment checks, cleaning assigned areas and multiple other responsibilities.
It was not a large amount, but it guaranteed that cadets were not completely broke between missions. Of course, the manual made one thing very clear, the salary was not free money. If a cadet skipped duties, refused assignments, or caused disciplinary problems, their monthly pay could be reduced or suspended entirely.
At first, I thought Beacon itself was the highest authority, but the next section of the manual proved me wrong.
Beacon was only one district under a much larger structure.
The United Human Republic.
The last organized human government in this world.
Beacon was only one district under the United Human Republic.
The United Human Republic (UHR) was the last organized human government in this world. Its capital was called Solace, and according to the manual, it was the center of politics, military command, research, trade, and administration.
Everything important either passed through Solace or answered to it. Laws, military orders, research approvals, major trade decisions, resource distribution, all of it came from there.
The United Human Republic was called a republic, and technically, it still was.
UHR had everything a functioning republic needs. It has a president, parliament, prime minister, ministries, courts, and district representatives. The structure was there. The titles were there. The laws were there.
But this was not a normal country living in normal times. This was a civilization trying to survive extinction.
Because of that, the government had become a mixture of both democracy and elite leadership. At first, that sounded dangerous to me. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Any country at war would become stricter. And this was not just war. This is humanity's survival.
The first major institution and the highest elite body the manual explained is the Aureate Council.
It is made up of twelve members, each chosen from among the most accomplished humans in their field. These are not ordinary politicians. They are individuals whose achievements directly contributed to humanity’s survival.
They were the kind of people humanity could not afford to lose.
The manual described them as experts whose work had directly contributed to survival. One seat could belong to the best engineer in the republic. Another to the most respected doctor. Another to a leading Radiance researcher, a military strategist, an energy specialist, a weapons developer, an agricultural scientist, a legal authority, or someone responsible for logistics …
It also went into detail about their names and achievements, but I skimmed through that part. Knowing who they were would not change my situation.
The Aureate Council was made of people who had proven their worth through results, not popularity.
They did not handle daily problems like food distribution, mission schedules, taxes, or patrols. That was the work of the ministries, parliament, and local leadership.
The Aureate Council had two main responsibilities. The first was choosing the Leader of the United Human Republic whenever a new one was needed. The second was handling decisions too large for parliament to manage alone. If an issue affected humanity as a whole, something beyond normal laws, budgets, or district politics, then the Aureate Council could step in.
These were not everyday decisions. They were matters of survival such as declaring extreme emergency measures, approving dangerous research, authorizing large-scale evacuations, deciding whether to abandon a district, or changing the republic’s long-term strategy.
When such a decision had to be made, the twelve council members held an internal vote. Whatever the majority decided became the direction humanity would follow.
Also, whenever the previous Leader died, resigned, disappeared, or became unfit to rule, the Aureate Council gathered and selected the next one. The people did not vote for the Leader directly. Parliament did not choose the Leader either.
The Leader and the President were supposed to be separate positions. The President represented the people and was meant to be elected through public voting. The Leader represented command and was chosen by the council based on competence, experience, and survival value.
But the system has been modified with experience of fallen Human citadels. Public elections had been suspended because voting itself had become dangerous. Gathering civilians at voting centers would create predictable targets. In a world where Ossarians could attack roads, districts, and supply routes, even something as simple as voting could turn into a massacre.
So, under the Emergency Unity Mandate, the Leader and the President were currently the same person.
The Leader had wide authority. They could appoint judges, replace senior military commanders, direct emergency policy, and even remove members of the Aureate Council after being chosen.
That part was complicated.
The council chose the Leader.
Then the Leader had the power to reshape the council.
It created a dangerous balance, but also a practical one. The council prevented random popularity from deciding the highest command position, while the Leader prevented the council from becoming untouchable.
Parliament still existed as the main representative body.
It had 130 members, chosen through district elections. Each district voted for its own representatives, which made sense from a security point of view. Local voting was easier to protect than sending people across dangerous territory to gather in one place.
So the people still had a voice.
Then came the ministries.
There were many of them: defense, finance, justice, public health, education, communications, energy, water, industry, agriculture, transport, culture, logistics, scientific research, and external exploration.
After that came the armed forces.
The republic had three main ones.
The United Armed Forces (UAF) handled external threats: Ossarians, outposts, supply missions, convoys, lost territory, and cadet training. I’m currently part of this force.
The Internal Security Forces (ISF) acted like police. They handled crime, riots, curfews, black-market activity, murder investigations, and public order inside districts like Beacon.
Then there were the State Security Forces (SSF). They protected the government itself, the Leader, ministers, Aureate Council members … The manual described them as smaller, more secretive, and more feared than the other forces.
This is too much information for now, also thinking more about it would not help me fill the mission report, so I threw what I have read to the back of my mind.