*clink* *clink*
The dangling sounds of a keychain rattled in front of the door to the Lang residence.
*clack*
"I'm home!" The door quickly opened and shut with Irvine coming through the entranceway carrying a bag of snacks and beverages.
After coming out of that meeting, Irvine hadn't directly returned back to his house.
He'd spent the afternoon getting some lunch in the nearby cafe before returning to the gym to do some weight training until early evening.
Since he had already been given the permission to utilize the facility, he would make full use of his remaining time before the exam to train to the best of his ability.
He was only finished when the sky had started to get a little dark.
After leaving the gym, he'd made a quick stop at a convenience store to buy some snacks and drinks for his family before finally returning home via the same monorail route.
.
*step*
"You're back? Have you eaten dinner yet?" Passing by the hallway entrance of his house, he heard the voice of his mother shouting from back in the kitchen.
"Nope! take your time mom, I'm eating home tonight."
"Great, go wait in the living room, I'll be done soon!"
"Okay." Irvine obediently heeded his mother's words and made his way towards the open living room.
*buzz* *buzz*
As he got closer to the area, he started to slowly hear the increasing volume of television from within the interior of the room.
He turned towards the source of the sounds to quickly find his little sister sitting quietly, watching the relatively large TV screen from the center couch.
"Hey."
"Hey..." Althea replied in a soft voice without turning her head, "You're back."
"Yep, I'll be working out in that gym you recommended starting tomorrow." Irvine replied as he casually took a seat beside her on the couch and handed the snack-filled plastic bag towards her.
"...Is it expensive?"
"No, it's just some snacks and drinks."
"I meant the gym!" A vein threatened to pop from Althea's forehead when she heard her brother's reply.
"Haha. Not really, it's kinda free for now, sort of." Irvine grinned after he had successfully teased his little sister.
"What do you mean free?"
"Eh, long story, don't worry about it. What're you watching?"
"..."
"Just... Some sports program." Althea felt kind of embarassed with her answer, she usually wouldn't watch this kinds of things out here in the living room.
But after Irvine's little talks with her yesterday, and a very long session of self-contemplation, she had decided to just brace herself and watched the sports channel here while waiting for Irvine to return.
Her brother seemed to have forgotten, but the whole reason she'd started feeling shy and hid her passion for Arena had everything to do with his comments from back when they were younger.
It had been a casually made remark by a growing teenager, but it had left a bad memory for her.
But yesterday, the same Irvine had suddenly come home with a completely changed attitude towards her. He even suggested for her to join the school's Arena team and invited her to watch games together.
All of that had helped Althea to find some courage to try and become more open about her hobby once again.
However it hadn't been as easy as it sounds. Even now, she was still rather nervous as to what her brother's response would be to her openly watching Arena here in the living room.
'Will he tell me the same thing again? But he doesn't seem to remember it himself...' She pondered silently within that split second of awkwardness.
.
Then,
As if on cue, after Althea had answered his question, the strings of commercials that had been on the TV all this while suddenly ended.
Following which, a programme showing a background of Battle Arena teams' logos and a panel of commentators out front returned to the screen, with the channel name 'OPL Network' also turning up in the corner.
'Aah.' Irvine finally knew what Althea was trying to do,
Without showing his reaction too much, he simply smiled it off and put the matter aside, not wanting to put more pressure on the fact that her sister was trying to change.
He continued to speak without minding the topic for much longer,
"We have just entered the off-season though right? Hm? This program is..."
"..."
*phew*
An inaudible sigh of relief was released from Althea's side as she observed her brother's nonchalant reaction. Afterwards, she too continued with her pokerface as if nothing had happened.
"It's a new one called 'OPL Reshuffle', it's a program that tries to predict any sort of player transfers and team changes that may happen this year by reviewing the statistics and rumours in the past season." She calmly introduced the show to Irvine.
'Ah, I remember this one, it becomes very popular through its high ratings after the first year. It was always aired during the off-season of OPL. Otherwise known as the transfer season.'
"I see... Oh look, it's the Sigma Conquerors starting Fielder, Adrian Crowe." Irvine noted.
On the screen, the figure of a tall slender man with long blonde hair and a handsome angular face was shown through some kind of slow motion replay of him exiting an Arena field.
Although the man had a long hair, his face didn't have the slightest bit of femininity. On the contrary, he had the appearance and demeanor of a working adult man and a young father.
"They said that he's considering an offer from the Zeta Androids. He might be moving here." By now, Althea was no longer acting like she didn't know anything about the sport.
"No, I don't think he'll leave the Conquerors." But Irvine shook his head and rejected the idea.
"How do you know?"
"The man's got a great combination play going with his Main Solver right now, and the Androids don't have the kind of Solver that matched his traits on their roster." He explained.
'...Also, he never did leave Sigma Conquerors until his retirement.' Irvine silently added this point in his mind. Of course, this piece of information was not something he would share with others.
Actually, Irvine himself had not been caught up with the most recent development of OPL. It was only yesterday morning that he had found himself back in the past after all.
His commentary just then was simply based on what he roughly remembered of the pro scenes during his high school years.
"Hmm." Althea considered Irvine's words seriously and tried to recall the Fielder's past season's matches.
However,
"Dinner's ready!" Before she could get very far, her mother's voice from the kitchen swiftly ended their casual discussion.
"Coming!" Irvine also replied straight away while turning off the TV with the remote, "Let's go, we'll continue later."
Althea nodded obediently without saying anything. The both of them reached the dining room not long after, with her following closely behind Irvine.
"Sweetie, can you call your father down?"
"Sure."
That evening, the Lang family's dinner went on uneventfully.
.
.
For the next couple of days after that, Irvine continued his training and routine exercises diligently.
He had spent the whole of Sunday being cooped up inside the Orthos Gym for training.
During that time, he sparred with Medea after every exercise session to keep his combat instinct sharp.
But because the spars were always using close quarter combat, Irvine had won them a majority of the time. Which in turn, had earned him an even stronger glare from her for the rest of the day.
He had also done a private combat training session similar to shadowboxing and target hitting practice where he would estimate the limit of his present physique in handling more advanced maneuvers.
He had gone all-out in trying out various moves, be it the ones possible to be executed and the ones that weren't. In such a session, his muscles would be torn and joints dislocated for most of the times.
After each injury, he would directly go towards the restoration pods for a rapid healing procedures.
.
As its name suggested, a restoration pod was a sort of capsule-shaped chamber filled with a certain chemical compound which had been aptly named as 'Elixir'.
The liquid, coupled with the pod, served as an accelerant that increased the performance of cells regeneration in a human body.
One dip inside the pod would regenerate any damaged skins and muscles tissues and help close up any types of external wounds within one or two hours at the most.
This was one of the most advanced medical technology available today in Olympus. And it was also the technology that had made Battle Arena becoming a public sport possible for the masses.
With how rough the sport was and how often players got hurt. Without the Elixir compound and the restoration pod, a player's body wouldn't be able to keep up with the demanding activities and tight schedules for a long time.
Irvine made use of the availability of such a technology to get a bit more reckless with his training without concerning himself with injuries that might occur in the process.
.
On Monday and Tuesday, Irvine had had no choice but to reduce the time he'd spent inside the gym because of his responsibility as a student.
He took some time after school to inform Grant that he would be abstaining from any extracurricular activities at least until he finished his license exam at the end of April.
He had also informed his parents that for the next 2 weeks, he wouldn't be able to come home in time for dinner on regular weekdays because he would have to compensate the time lost on classes with his after-school training at the gym.
It was during this period of time that he'd found out that unlike him, Medea had had no trouble in managing her schedules.
She had already received several athletic scholarship offers from both Tier-1 and Tier-2 colleges through her achievement of winning the championship in the first place.
As long as she graduated properly, she would have had no trouble enrolling into any one of them.
With the highest hurdle being out of the way, her transfer to the school here in Zeta City at the end of the semester had also not been much of a problem.
The teacher and principal had both allowed her to pass with minimum attendance as long as she properly showed up for the final exams.
Hearing her convenient situation, this time it was Irvine's turn to feel frustrated at the difference in their living condition.
.
In the past few days,
Irvine had spent 5 to 6 hours of his after-school time inside Orthos Gym following the exact same strict physical training regimen he'd set for himself.
He had continued to tear most of the muscles in his body through extreme exercise procedures before laying down inside the restoration pod at the end of the day to accelerate the regeneration process.
What he had been doing was based on the training menu of a certain athlete in the future that had successfully come out of his four-season break just in time to win the next season's championship trophy with his team.
His training menu was focused on regaining the peak state of his body in the shortest time possible. But the current Irvine had been using it to force the speed of his growth in that same amount of time.
And because his personal training had not been observed by anyone, nobody in the gym, not even the owner or Medea, had realized the intensity and amount of stress he'd been putting on his body everyday.
.
.
Friday, April 20th, 218.
Late evening.
Irvine was standing alone inside a relatively small training room with a sandbag and a variety of dumbbells and weights on the side.
The entire room was closed-off with full-body mirrors plastered on the walls in 3 out of the 4 directions.
Irvine gently pushed the only sandbag in front of him until it was hanging horizontally parallel to the roof of the training room.
He then released the hanging sandbag to let it swing widely like a large pendulum before taking several steps away from it until he was standing right in front of the sandbag's swinging direction.
*phew*
'Here goes...'
And then,
Folowing the timing of the sandbag falling and swinging for the second time. He charged full-speed ahead in the opposite direction of its swings as if trying to crash towards it!
*WHOOSH*
The shadows of two speeding figures flew against one another, almost reaching the point of collision in less than a second.
But unexpectedly,
*swish*
The sound of collision that should have been resounding loudly across the small training room didn't occur.
Moreover, the swinging of the sandbag had suddenly stopped in its track as if an invisible force killed its momentum right at the point of collision.
Irvine could be seen standing right behind the stopped sandbag, facing the opposite direction of his previous charging with one hand grabbing the body of the bag.
A cold sweat was slowly dripping down his chin and onto the floor.
Curiously enough, the stopped momentum of the sandbag's swing and Irvine's sudden appearance behind it had not triggered any sounds at all throughout the whole process.
Except for the sound of splitting wind, everything in the room had remained silent without a single echo to be heard.
.
"...Success!!"
Irvine celebrated by pumping his hand through the air.
Throughout the whole week of practice, this had been his one and only successful attempt of this technique.
His previous attempts of the move had usually ended with him either getting slammed by the bag, or getting his ankles and wrists broken in multiple occasions by his own movements.
'Hoooo...' Irvine let out a full breath of air, "With this I've recovered an advanced grapple technique."
He relaxed his tension and left the room feeling satisfied with the progress.
*blam*
On one side of the training room walls that was not covered by mirrors, a small monitor and a scanning device that looked hugely similar to the one used by Greenwood High to take data from stat chips was present side-by-side of one another.
When Irvine had left, the monitor was still showing the last scan results that had been taken by the device.
[
Name: Irvine Lang
Age: 18
Gender: Male
Muscle Strength: 16.2
Physical State: Stage-1 Human
Genetic Enhancement: x1
-Stamina
Genetic Modification: -
Statistics:
...
]