Sunday, April 22nd, 218.
Early morning.
As the days for the Arena Athelete License Exam drew closer, some people were also starting to get busier than others.
This was particularly true for Reginald Hudson, the Head of Regional Office for Zeta City's OPL branch.
Although the Arena License Exams were overseen by the government, the responsibilities of hosting the events had always fallen into the hands of the Olympus Pro League.
The OPL had offices located in almost every city in all Sectors of Olympus. And because the License Exam was an event that was held once every 2 months, these branch offices were exactly the ones in charge of setting up all the necessary procedures for them.
.
.
Inside the OPL branch office in Zeta City.
Reginald was busily strutting back-and-forth between phone calls trying to respond to every request that needed to be signed by him before the event.
Matters such as event venues, invited scouts, and staff accomodations for the event were all included in that category.
His assistant and personal secretary, Sandy, could be seen handing him each document diligently as her boss revised and confirmed the necessary contents of each request with various callers.
*BEEP*
The sound of his mobile device's 'end call' button being pushed was like a sweet release in the middle of the office's hectic atmosphere.
*SIGH*
An exhaustion-filled sigh came out of his tired facade following the ending of that last call.
"Good work sir, everything's almost done." Sandy comforted him with a timely cup of coffee slid towards the side of his desk.
"Phew, thanks Sandy, you're a true lifesaver." Reginald complimented her work while sipping-in his first coffee of the day,
"Mmh, by the way, have we finalized the scout attendees list for the exam."
"Yes sir, most of the local Tier-1 and Tier-2 colleges had requested to send someone in to watch the exam. And just like last year, there's also a few college scouts coming in from out-of-town. The list should've already been sent to your email."
"Good, good... Every year this mid-year exams just get busier and busier."
Although Arena License Exams were held on a bimonthly basis, the April and June exams were by far the largest ones with the biggest number of applicants and audience (scouts) attending.
It was mostly because these two months represented the last two batches of applicants before a new academic year started in late August.
It was the culmination points of a year-long preparations done by each examinees; whether they're high school students going for the Starseed title, or the hopeful next generation players that had been their college's freshmen members in the past year.
No matter the reasons, end of academic year exams had always been the most preferred time by athletes to receive their license and properly get their Gene Mods after.
It was small wonder that college Arena scouts would attend to such an event.
Not only could they anticipate earlier their rival schools' new prospective players, if they're lucky, they might even hit the jackpot in finding a Starseed player to recruit.
.
"What about pro teams representatives?" Reginald asked another question.
"As always, the Zeta Androids is the only one that has agreed to send someone in."
"Well figures, pro teams don't care much about players who haven't even gotten their genes modified. The Androids sending someone in is more like a courtesy call for their home city."
"Really? But what about possible Starseeds?" Sandy inquired with a curious look on her face.
"Becoming a Starseed is a great achievement for sure, but it's not like the pro teams can do anything with them." Reginald shrugged it off as he explained further,
"There's a minimum age requirement to play for pros, they still need to wait another 3-4 years before the pro teams can even consider them for the draft. By then, their performances in this exam would've been way too obsolete to be considered as valid data."
"I see."
"Yep, All those pro scouts need to do are just to jot down the notable names for future considerations without actually watching the exam." He concluded,
"Well, most of them still ends up getting drafted right after college though, those Starseeds are little monsters in their own right after all."
"It would be great if one actually does come out from our city huh... Do you remember the last time a high school athlete from Zeta City managed to pass the exam sir?" Sandy had a mix of excitement and hope in her face as she asked.
"I believe it was four... Five years ago? I forgot." Contrastingly, Reginald's answer had seemed rather nonchalant in comparison.
"It's good to be optimistic though, maybe you can try looking through the applicants list. Who knows, one of them might just make it through." He said non-commitally.
In every mid-year exams like this, there would always be an excess of high school applicants who would try their hands in getting a license before graduation.
They would make up to almost 20% of the whole April and June's examinees. But history had shown that the majority of the time, almost all of them would fail the test midway through while the rest would get eliminated in the final phase of the exam.
Arena Athlete License Exam had an average success rate of 50%.
Meaning that around half of the examinees attending would have their license issued by the end of it, and they could go on to get their genes modified.
But most, if not all of these passing athletes were college players in either their freshman year or sophomore year of their Arena team. All of them would have the physical state of Stage-2 Humans in general.
Which was why it would always be a very high hurdle for high school students to pass the exam. And also why the ones that did pass were given the name Starseed in their title.
.
.
*swish* *STAB*
in the Orthos Gym's archery room, Irvine, Medea, and Rob the Blue team's Ranger were holding on to either a bow or a crossbow while taking turns trying to hit some faraway moving targets for points.
Irvine had just finished releasing an arrow from his compound bow, one that barely hit the outermost layer of the diagonally moving target.
*BEEP*
[165 points]
Following the target's frame getting pierced by his arrow, his final score was quickly recorded by the room's side monitor.
"Damn..." He mumbled, feeling somewhat regretful for that last shot.
Above the line of text that indicated his final score on the screen were the scores of his two competitors.
Medea was in first place by a huge margin, earning [275 points] for her final score. Almost reaching the perfect 300.
Rob on the other hand, was standing firmly in second place with a solid [210 points] for his score.
"...What do you mean 'damn'? You are too disgustingly good at this for someone who's not even a Ranger." He retorted snarkily.
"I agree..." Medea reinforced his statement with a nod, "Why are you even here anyway?"
The sharp glares of the two had even made Irvine cringed for a second, 'What's with the joint verbal attacks?'
"Haha, come on, Pinch Players have been in trend lately right? Maybe if I learn a bit of everything I'd get to play more even as a freshman."
Pinch Player was a term used to describe a bench player with undesignated position in a match.
In the year 215 UD, the OPL had enforced a new rule that allowed teams to have 1 spot in the bench for a player with undesignated position to participate in matches.
The Pinch Player could take on the role of any blank positions on the field.
Their purpose was to either fill-in when a specific position had no more substitutes because of eliminations, or to act as an emergency player when something happened to a substitute off the field.
They were pretty much the substitute for substitutes with the advantage of their capability in filling-in any positions required.
In pro matches, this position were usually given to promising rookies who had just entered the team after a draft to get them used to official matches atmosphere quickly.
But at the end of the day, the chances of a Pinch Player joining a game was only slightly higher than the non-regulars who's not even on the bench.
.
"Wow, even his answer is irritating." Rob continued to retort jokingly.
"I agree..."
"..." Irvine felt speechless looking at the duo.
"And also... There's no way you won't get to play in your freshman year." Medea suddenly added on.
"Oh, how so?"
"No way any school will prevent a first year with a Gene Mod from playing."
Medea was indirectly implying that Irvine would pass the License Exam without any problem. In fact, she was even more sure now than ever before.
Yesterday, they'd had their usual rematch of Red Vs. Blue with the same team composition as the last time.
During the match, Medea had tried to take command of the situation after reviewing her last match and watching Irvine's plays on tape.
She had tried to direct the enemies' and her teammates' movements with specific arrow placements.
But after a couple tries, she quickly realized that she had been wasting too much of her ammo in the process.
Furthermore, her actions had even caused her accuracy to fall significantly lower because her mind had been overloaded with information about positioning and more purposeful aiming.
Noticing her failed attempt, Irvine had decidedly started to act more brazen for the rest of the match from that point forward.
His plan had been to act as a bait to prevent the Blue team from noticing their slowly depleting number of arrows. Because such information could prove fatal if the enemy's Ranger had suddenly decided to act against Medea.
And if Medea were to run out of arrows in the middle of that game, the Red team would lose their long-range interception advantage during their halfway line battles and their tower zones attacks.
Irvine's brazen display of over-the-top actions had not only been to distract the other team's players, but also to remind Medea to reserve her leftover shots for sure-kill accuracies.
His plan had worked out in the end.
Medea had started to focus more on interceptions and support fires midway through the game, and the Red team managed to clinch a win with an overwhelming 3-0 by the time limit.
But through this, Medea had finally realized the distance between her and Irvine's skills in terms of tactics, planning, and team management during a match.
"..."
And it's also needed to be mentioned that the other thing she'd noticed during the match was how fast Irvine's growth was in just this past week alone.
In that match, Irvine's movement had become visibly sharper, faster, and had caused more damage compared to the previous week. Which was the direct result of a person's increase in their Muscle Strength.
.
"Haha, thank you for the well-wishes." Irvine politely thanked Medea for her comment on him smoothly getting a Gene Mod before college.
"...How did you do it? That last match and the previous one?"
"...What, you mean directing the flow of the game?" Irvine took a second to deduce what she had meant.
*nod*
"...Hm."
"Well first of all, you're going about it the wrong way in yesterday's match." He decided to explain while neatly putting away his shooting equipment for the day.
"How do you mean?"
"You wasted so much of your arrows because you were trying to direct the players movement by warning shots and irregular positionings right?"
"Yes..."
"And that's certainly one way to do it, the Red Dwarf's Ranger Skyler was one example who's famously known for that kind of playstyle."
"But what you need to think is if that's really the correct way for you to adopt?" Irvine hinted.
"That's how you do it though. Last week and yesterday..."
*sigh*
"That's not the point. There isn't only one way of commanding the field for a player. Your main weapon is your precise timing and your accuracies for fatal shots, what were you thinking sacrificing that for the sake of learning other's way of commanding?"
"...My, weapon...!" With that sentence, something had finally struck a chord with Medea.
"..." Knowing that his advice had allowed her to figure something out, Irvine stopped speaking any further and just continued to quietly put away the rest of the equipment in the archery room.
.
.
To the side, Rob who had been quietly listening in on the two's conversation also started asking questions.
"Hey Lang, what about your current Muscle Strength? What's the number?"
"I was at 16.2 the day before yesterday."
"Six... WHAT!? How'd you grow it so quickly??"
Hearing his answer, even Medea stopped her contemplation to once again turn towards Irvine.
"...By training and exercise, that's why I come to the gym in the first place you know?"
"Don't give me that crap! You raised your strength by 1.4 in a week!" Rob was flabbergasted.
Unlike the two, he was a personal trainer in the gym. Matters and knowledges regarding Muscle Strength were things that he should always pay attention to.
"Illegal doping...?"
"Of course not! What kind of person do you think I am?" Irvine retorted and explained,
"It's not that weird, pro players do it with the same speed all the time when they're trying to get back in shape for a new season. Except that since their Physical States are so much higher than my Stage-1, the corresponding increase in points are not that drastic visually."
The higher one's Physical State and Muscle Strength are, the harder it would be to increase. This was a public knowledge shared by many.
"Yes, but their ways are usually that torture method that requires the frequent use of--" Rob's face quickly changed midway through his sentence,
"--Wait, how often have you used the pods this past week?"
"Exactly." Irvine grinned after seeing Rob finally caught on to his method.
"You're nuts... Are you really an 18-year-old?"
Breaking down one's muscles and rebuilding it everyday was nothing short of a torture. Even for pro player who's been on breaks and trying to get back in, it required a high level of mental fortitude.
By that account, it was normal for Rob to react the way he did at the realization.
.
"What's the way?" Medea suddenly cut-in during the conversation.
"Um, you can ask Rob, I'm late for my weight training." Irvine pointed to the guy behind him before slowly walking out of the archery room.
"..."
"Oh, and for the record." He stopped and added, "I also think you'll pass without a problem, so you should probably make up your mind as to what kind of Ranger you'd want to be before college starts."
'Actually, it's more that I already know it. Her true playstyle.'