Long Shen looked around in confusion. He felt as though he was out of place as he made his way through the academy's grounds. The base looked more like a university than a military base and the men and women in the officer training program wore the white dress uniform instead of the usual green fatigues of the regular soldiers. He walked around looking for the main office not quite sure where he should go. A pretty, short blond girl in the white dress uniform walked up to him and asked, "Hello Corporal, did you need help with something?"
Long Shen saluted her and said briskly, "Yes ma'am, I am looking for the main office to report for training."
She returned his salute and said, "At ease, you just head up to the main square over by the statue and turn right. If you walk straight from there you'll see the office. Welcome to OTS Corporal." She giggled flirtatiously at him and gave him a goofy salute and walked away. Long Shen found himself staring at her as she walked away. He realized he still had his mouth open at some point.
He followed her directions and easily found the office. Once there an older Latino woman in civilian clothes greeted him, "Oh, Mr. Long, welcome to OTS. My name is Cora, I am the class counselor for year one. I just need you to give us a retinal scan and then I'll send you to your dorm room. You'll be sharing it with another officer candidate. You will find all of your books and class itinerary has been loaded into your account. Did you have any questions, Mr. Long?"
Long Shen thought for a moment and then asked, "Yes ma'am, the uniform, where do I find my own?"
She smiled and said, "Once you were accepted to OTS, your dorm was equipped with all you'll need. You can recycle your current uniform as of now, you are no longer Corporal Long, you will be known as Mr. Long until you are promoted to Lieutenant and assigned to lead your own platoon."
Long Shen thought for a moment and asked, "Does every officer candidate pass then?"
She shook her head no, "Unfortunately there are some officer candidates that take too long to reach the energy gathering stage. Those people who fail to breakthrough after ten years are decommissioned or get transferred to a role as a Sergeant Major depending on their skillset and attitude. There are sadly some individuals who purposely avoid cultivation in order to avoid the responsibility of becoming leaders. The group who simply fail to break through even with years of intense hard work are relegated to NCO positions."
He nodded and then asked, "Are there any rules or etiquette I should be following that differ from those of basic training?"
She nodded and said, "I sent you a copy of the student handbook along with your other class materials. There are no officers here so you don't need to worry about saluting or any of that. It's basically just a regular university until you graduate. Your teachers are all civilians here which might seem odd at first. Every officer candidate is someone who has seen a battlefield and been through basic training already. This school is here to teach you the things you might not know like psychology, history, tactics, strategy, math, the star common language and martial science. The teachers are all top minds in their individual fields. They just lacked the talent for cultivation and didn't reach the third level of the foundation stage."
He smiled back and then said, "Thank you, ma'am, then I just need my assigned dorm room then?"
She smiled and then said, "You are in the Patton wing on floor three, room 1408. I'll send the nav to your account which will guide you to your assigned room." Long Shen saw a yellow arrow at the top of his vision which pointed the direction for hin as well as identified the name of each building. As he started to leave she said, "Oh, Mr. Long, there is something else you should know here. Unlike basic training, OTS is a co-educational academy. While we do not discourage relationships, we do ask that you try to avoid accidental pregnancies as it will put a fellow officer candidate out of service for a year."
Long Shen blushed hard and nodded. He quickly escaped from the office and followed the yellow arrow to his dorm room. As a professional gamer, he had never been in a relationship with a girl. He was always living on the edge just making enough to survive. The only woman he had ever really spent any time with was Captain Hanaka Rei and that was in the middle of a battle zone. In the back of his mind, he thought he heard the voice from the lake laughing at him.
He made his way through the campus and finally found the Patton wing. It was most likely the oldest building on the Campus and looked to be in poor repair. He wondered why the officer candidates hadn't taken the time to do the basic maintenance on it. He walked through the main entrance which was a centuries-old design. A rotating glass door lined with gold trim. The building was made with marble on the interior along the walls were paintings of historic leaders from all over the Earth. A giant hologram of the Lord at the center of the Lobby smiled down and clapped for him in welcome. At the end of the lobby were two old fashioned elevators that looked to be centuries-old themselves.
Long Shen felt nervous as he stepped into the ancient elevator and had to press a button for the floor he wanted. The elevator was so old that it actually had a digital display to tell him which floor he was on. It also took an agonizing two entire minutes just to reach the third floor. He shook his head as the ancient doors slowly opened and allowed him to finally reach his floor. Thankfully the third floor had Nanopet the nanofiber carpeting found in most modern homes and offices. He made his way down the hall and found his room. He knocked three times waited for an answer and then entered the room. Inside he found that the dorm was nothing like he imagined. It had a common living room and kitchen and then rooms to the right and to the left. The door faced out to the very large floor to ceiling windows that were popular in ancient times. The dorm room was furnished tastefully and was very clean. He wondered if he still didn't have a roommate yet, so he decided to check the rooms out.
He decided to check the right room first. He walked over and opened the door only to find a man with a woman passionately having sex. They both looked shocked as he stared. The man coughed and said, "Could you give us two more minutes, bro?" Long Shen nodded, his eyes fell on the girl who smiled at him and winked. It was the same pretty blond girl he had met when he first arrived. He decided to go check the other room because his roommate was obviously using the other room. He opened the door and felt that something was wrong. The bed was a mess and there were women's clothes all over the floor. The walls had been colored in a light pink and the bedspread was covered in pink strawberry cupcakes.
Long Shen walked out and sat down on the couch. Had he entered the wrong dorm? A few minutes later the male student came out of the room smoothing out his uniform and then guiltily slipped out the door without saying a word. Long Shen was speechless. Just what was going on?
The blond came out of the room wrapped in a sheet and plopped down on the couch next to him and said, "Hi! Sorry, we didn't exchange names before, I'm Sarah James. Um, sorry about your room. I didn't know they were assigning someone here yet."
"Are you... My roommate?" Long Shen tried not to stare at her barely covered body.
She nodded and then asked, "What's your name, you're from Huaxia right?"
He nodded and then managed to get out, "Long Shen."
She looked him over and the asked, "I heard the men in Huaxia have small dicks, is that true?" She looked down at his lap and then laughed, "Guess not! Alright, let me go take a shower and get dressed then we can come up with some house rules." As she stood up he couldn't help see a bit of her body as the sheet wasn't secured. He swallowed hard and just tried to remain calm. He was afraid to go to his room. He knew that he would find a mess on his bed and the scent of recent sex. For someone like him with almost no female contact, it was complete overload. He was tempted to go back and ask Cora for a different room assignment.
A few minutes later she came back into the room wearing a bra and panties with a towel wrapped around her head and plopped back down on the couch with him. She turned her head and stared back at him, "So. House rules. I like it clean, I like it quiet and I like having company over once in a while. What about you?"
Long Shen felt completely embarrassed he swallowed and then said, "I mostly cultivate in private when I am not training."
Sarah nodded and then asked, "Have you ever tried dual cultivation? That's what I have been using to make my breakthrough. If you need a partner just knock on my door."
Long Shen hadn't heard the term before so he innocently asked, "What's dual cultivation?"
She got up from the couch and gave him a wink, "I'm sure the guys will clue you in. Alright, I need to get to work, I have a physics exam this week so I need to study. Don't knock unless the building is on fire or something." Long Shen couldn't help watching her behind as she walked away.
He thought he should say something about what happened in his room, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything. He got up and walked into his room. The bed was a disaster just as he feared. He ended up pulling all the bedding off and flipping the mattress. He quickly made his bed and then went through the process of setting up his virtual work area. He found his new uniform and changed out of his fatigues dropping them right in the recycler.
He checked his itinerary and found that he had ample free time each day, unlike his previous training. Monday through Friday he was scheduled to be in classrooms from nine in the morning until seventeen hundred in the evening. His physical training and cultivation were to be done in his off-hours along with extra study and sleep. Most cultivators chose to cultivate rather than sleep as it gave the same results. Some chose to sleep after cultivation as they just enjoyed sleep. Thanks to his arrival on a Friday, he ended up having two off days until his first day of classes. For the first time since he had been forced into the military, he finally had a chance to do some gaming.
Each student at the OTS had their own VR pod so they could play in their offtime. The military encouraged their officer candidates to play the VR games because they were designed as training simulators in the first place. Unlike a civilian VR pod, the military pod also tracked their officer candidates play and evaluated their talents in order to best use them in the field. As the game booted up Long Shen felt a wave of calm wash over him. It was like coming home after a grueling trip. All of the anxiety and stress of his military life flushed away.
He smiled as he selected his fleet and then picked out the mission he wanted. He wasn't sure if he still had the skill to try his usual small fleet against large fleet tactics so he started off lightly by taking a large well-balanced fleet against a similar fleet. The battled happened quickly, the two fleets came together in a blaze of exchanged laser and missile strikes. The massive railguns on the heavy battleships sent room-sized kinetic shells hurtling at the enemy ships that tore through them like they were made of aluminum foil. As the fleets came within distance the grappling lines shot out from each side pulling ships together. If a smaller ship was unlucky they found themselves tethered to a massive ship with a seemingly unending stream of soldiers. If a player was good enough they would easily create perfect mismatches and be able to capture numerous ships in an enemy fleet. If you captured or destroyed the enemy flagship the game would give you a victory.
Long Shen smiled as the victory message popped up. Once the game ended the other player's voice called out, "Fuck, did you cheat? None of my ships got better than 35% accuracy on their hits. That was bullshit. Best two out of three, asshole!" His eyelid twitched. The voice sounded a lot like his new roommate. He hit ok for the next battle and once again the same scenario started to play out. The two fleets moved together and started to fire. He would send commands to his ships moving them slightly giving them better shots while giving his opponent a smaller target. Once again the ships came together and started boarding each other's ships. The victory came to him just as quickly.
The voice cried out again, "What. The. Fuck? How are you doing this, you scored 90% accuracy and I dropped down to 29% accuracy? Are you hacking? Play me again, only this time we both use a fleet of just battleships."
He chuckled and picked out a fleet of ten heavy battleships. Once again the two fleets matched up. He noticed that she had chosen not just the battleships but also a dozen cruisers. Her fleet had his outgunned and outmanned. He chuckled at her deception. She clearly wanted revenge for her losses and was willing to cheat to get it.
He watched as she had her fleet prepare for a full broadside all guns pointed at his fleet. She intended to slaughter his fleet before they could even get in range for boarding. She didn't just want to win, she wanted to kill him completely. He laughed out loud and then quickly adjusted his fleet he decided to teach her a lesson about space combat, he ordered his ships to drop on the Y-axis and the reorient to have her fleet no longer in a broadside but rather underneath the range of her main batteries while his fleet had their batteries in perfect firing position to hit her fleet almost without taking a single shot.
She didn't clue in on the tactic until the ships started to fire. The AI that represented the individual ship captains had her formation crumbling into chaos causing her to panic and send conflicting orders. The ship captains desperately tried to reorient their ships to bring their guns to firing position.
Long Shen's fleet simply stayed under hers constantly battering her fleet until the much larger force was completely annihilated. Once the victory condition was met he was back into the lobby again and her voice spoke up, "I am so pissed right now. Fuck. I hope you are happy you fucking hacker."
Long Shen chuckled and then sent a text reply, "GG."
"GG yourself you fucking... Argh! Bullshit!" She angrily disconnected.
He thought about playing a few more games but then he remembered that he still needed to cultivate. The games were a nice refreshing blast of nostalgia but the cultivation was his only way to survive on the battlefield. After seeing the power of experts he knew that he had to train harder or he would be one of the many people swept away by an expert's wave of the hand. He also logged out. As he opened the VR pod he was greeted to the sight of his new roommate lying on his bed looking at his tablet. He cleared his throat, "Miss James?"
She offhandedly said, "You need to password protect this, anyone can just grab it and start browsing your history. Like this, you looked at young blond girl porn. Ell oh ell."
"What are you doing in my room?" He started to get annoyed with her.
"Some asshole hacker just crushed me in Fleet Sim. I needed some real-life company. I thought about inviting someone over, but why bother when you are here too." She looked over at him and said, "What game were you playing?"
He coughed and then asked, "Can't you just respect my privacy a little bit?"
She pouted cutely at him and said, "But I'm your only friend here, how can you be like that?"
He wanted to refute her but then he asked instead, "What level are you now? How much longer will you be here at the academy?"
She laughed and then said, "Me? I'm at the ninth level like everyone else. I have been studying here now for hmm, maybe six months? Most people are here at least four to five years. So you are stuck with me for a while." She laughed, "I guess it'll be like you're my husband."
He frowned and then said, "I'm only at the seventh level."
She made a face, "And they sent you here? Are you someone famous or something? You are pretty hot, but you don't look like the usual rich young master type. Did you even see any action on the front lines?"
"I was rushed through basic and sent to a battle zone. We lost most of our battalion but my squad made it out with only a couple of us lost. They said I earned enough merits to deserve OTS. I am not sure why they sent me here if everyone is at the ninth level." He shrugged helplessly.
She nodded and then said, "I am here because my family pulled strings and got me some Alterian ginseng which helped me advance from the fifth level to the ninth in a year. I served in a cushy rear guard squad. We periodically went on security detail but I never even saw a demon. We fought some of their human soldiers though. It was more like bullying civilians than fighting a war. Did you get a few confirmed kills?"
He nodded not saying much about it.
She looked at him and then said, "You're kind of boring."