章節 25: Father's legacy
"Well, let's stop for today," Cleo said while lowering her saber. There were only a few drops of sweat on her forehead, indicating how used she was to this kind of exercise.
"Ugh..." Tom moaned in response, barely able to stand on his legs.
'I knew she liked to be intense, but I didn't expect her intensity to reach such degree,' Tom thought, wiping his forehead clean from the fat drops of sweat. Soon, this action proved futile, as his body desperately attempted to cool itself down, filling his face with a fresh delivery of sweat.
"I need to get going now," Cleo announced after taking a peek at her clock.
"Thanks for all the help." Tom managed to gather just enough strenght to utter his thanks.
"Oh, come on! It wasn't that hard!" Cleo moaned in displeasure when noticing Tom's exhausted state. "How do you expect ever to become someone if all your strenght is only virtual?" she asked with a displeased grin.
"I guess I need to get back in shape," Tom muttered after crawling towards a bench by the side of the farm's door. As tired as he was, Tom refused to just lay down on the ground.
'I guess if I did that, there would be no end to her scolding and lecturing,' he thought, casting a short glance at the girl's half-shaved head.
"You absolutely need to." Cleo looked at Tom meaningfully before releasing a short sigh. "But I really need to go now. I will call you once I get the tools you asked for," she claimed before following her own words and taking a leave.
She didn't wait for Tom to bid her farewells. In fact, given his sweaty state, it would be strange for her to wish to get close to him right now. So rather than allowing Tom's sweat to sully her clothes, Cleo got on her bike, revved her engine, and took off.
"I guess I can't slack on this training, can I?" Tom asked himself as he took some rest on the simple, wooden bench. In terms of comfort, it had no comfort. Right now, though, Tom was too tired to even think about changing the location for something comfier.
"Well, back to work, I guess." roughly five minutes later, Tom was already back on his feet. He moved back to the farmhouse to wipe his body clean of the sweat before heading to the basement.
"As if I needed her to procure anything for me," Tom muttered as he closed the hatch above. In reality, the basement was already filled to the brim with literally any kind of weapon or tool Tom would ever want to use.
The weapons took the central place in the basement. The guns hung from designated stands lining up across the entire site. Roughly a meter away from every single stand, a small shelf stood, filled to the last centimeter with ammunition, attachments, and maintenance kits.
"It would be easy to declare a war with just the content of this basement," Tom sighed before moving his eyes to one of the corners of the basement. As much as his man's soul wished to just play around with the guns for all day long, he didn't come here for such silly sake.
Tom moved to the corner that caught his attention before. Contrary to the rest of the place, it was pretty messy, with all sorts of tools haphazardly resting all over the area. After a closer look, Tom realized that some of them have yet to be cleaned up!
"I shouldn't use the power tools, so it doesn't matter if they are not maintained," Tom thought aloud while kneeling over the messy area, "but just where the heck did all this dirt came from?" Tom thought for a moment before he suddenly looked to the back.
"Ah, figures..." he said while releasing all the all from his lungs, overwhelmed by his own stupidity. "I guess it would be futile to look for this basement on the plan of the farm," Tom smiled at his reasoning before picking up the simplest tools he could find.
A shovel, a pickaxe, and a basket. Those three things were all Tom needed. That and a shitload of time to dig up the tunnel from his basement to the government's dome shielding the portal from the civilian eyes.
"I wonder just how long it will take me," Tom thought, leaving the tools right below the hatch before climbing it up. A few moments later, he returned to the hidden basement with a small stack of papers and drawing tools.
"Okay then, let's work the shit out of it!" Tom encouraged himself before placing all his haul directly on the floor and starting to analyze it.
The papers that be brought consisted of the architectural plans of the farm, its location in the greater area, and any other map that could prove helpful for his project.
"From this basement, it should go somewhere..." Tom muttered while raising his head towards the same corner where he took his tools from. According to the plans and drawings of the farm and its local area, that corner was just the right spot to start digging.
"Could it be?" Tom muttered, unwilling to believe in such a convenience. He left all the papers where they were before making his way over to the corner. And surely enough, after pushing the pile of the tools aside, another hatch appeared before Tom's eyes.
"That guy," he smiled, thinking about his father. 'Only he could do something like that,' Tom thought before pulling the hatch open and crawling inside.
Tom crawled for about a minute before the tunnel turned wide enough for him to stand up. At the same place where it suddenly widened, Tom could finally see just how much effort his father put into creating this place.
"Lights, rails, tools... He was so earnest when it came to this part of the plan..." Something warm spread through Tom's abdomen.
For the last few years, Tom believed his father abandoned him. Whether it was a lover, career, or just general boredom, Tom never bothered to think about it. The fact that he was left all alone was the only thing that mattered.
'I guess I'm finally starting to learn the truth,' he thought, placing his palm on the even walls of the tunnel, reinforced with the same concrete powder that Tom could see sprinkled all over the place.
The amount of effort required to create this kind of tunnel was insane. And Tom didn't even begin to explore it, basing his judgment on just the first few meters of the structure.
"I guess it won't hurt to see how far did he go," Tom said to himself before flipping the switch embedded into the stone wall of the tunnel.
A long line of lights suddenly turned the dark insides of the tunnel bright, allowing Tom to see just how far it went.
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