[Name: Arthur Wright]
[Race: Human]
[Level 8]
[127,000/400,000 EXP]
***Primary Stats***
[Points Available 3]
[HP 19/19]
[Strength: 11]
[Dexterity:7]
[Stamina:9]
***Skills***
[Breaking Point]
***Passive Skill***
[Martial Arts Master I (upgradeable)]
[Brilliant Tactician I (upgradeable)]
The first thing Arthur did was finally assign his free stat points. He had been thinking a lot about what he was hoping to achieve and wanted to be a well rounded offensive and defensive pilot. He had learned in his short time at the Academy the importance of a good defense and offense.
Assigning two stat points to dexterity and one stat point in stamina, Arthur thought it was a great start to get to where he needed to go. The next thing he did was pull up his quest reward from defeating the freak of nature in the underground fighting ring.
[Quest Reward - Select one skill out of three options presented]
[Melee Weapons Proficiency 1 (upgradeable)- grants the user base fighting knowledge of any weapon picked up with the intent to defend or attack]
[0.5x Experience multiplier passive - permanently increases experience gain by .5x]
[System randomly assigns most help active or passive skill based on current aptitude]
Arthur took a few minutes to look over his 3 options. Two were passive skills again, which didn't bother him any. Passive skills were skills active all the time that he didn't have to worry about thinking about or activating. The third skill was a wildcard and he didn't know if he was willing to take the risk, possibly getting a skill that may not benefit his mecha pilot dream. He understood the system assigning him the best skill possible based on his current aptitude, but the best skill and the one he needed to further his dream didn't always equal the same thing.
In the end, Arthur was much more satisfied choosing Melee Weapons Proficiency 1. He had a feeling that understanding how to effectively use any melee weapon might be better than a small exp modifier since he already technically had a modifier. The other benefit to the Melee weapons skill was, just like his other passive skills, it was upgradeable. He knew that in the long run, having skills that he could develop on his journey and get more useful as he got stronger was much more important than potential skills he might grow out of.
Arthur and Strong woke up the next morning and continued the daily grind. With the extra stat points Arthur had assigned the night prior, the run was starting to get easier. It still wasn't comfortable, but Arthur knew he was never supposed to feel comfortable doing these hellish work outs in the morning.
Once breakfast was over, the cadets went back to the indoor training area to practice the forward stance and more basic strikes, blocks and kicks. A few of the cadets were looking at Arthur with new found admiration as they had been present for his fight the previous night. Arthur gave these cadets hard stares and the cadets, understanding his silent demand, kept tight lipped about the events that had transpired.
Arthur got the cadets into formation and began their stretches when a sergeant walked in with a tablet in his hand. Arthur had Strong come up and lead the stretches while Arthur went to intercept the Sergeant walking his way.
"Sergeant, what can I do for you?" said Arthur
Non commissioned officers were always addressed by their rank whereas officers were always addressed as "sir". The only exception to this rule was a Drill instructor. Technically sergeants, they were also called "sir" during training by cadets. Cadets outranked the drill instructors according to the imperial military ranking system, but there was an unspoken rule that Drill instructors would hold the unofficial rank of officer to cadets, but be referred to as sergeants when an actual officer was addressing them. Complicated, but it worked well here.
The Sergeant stepped up and held the tablet out to him to read. "I was told to bring this message to the martial arts instructor over this platoon, but looks like this is the platoon being taught by the cadet who knocked the instructor out. You'll want to read the message and deliver it to the platoon."
Briefly reading the information, he quickly handed the tablet back and replied "Thank you Sergeant, I'll relay this information as soon as the stretches are done, the cadets will be extremely excited."
The sergeant nodded his head and went back out the front doors while Arthur took his place back up at the front to address the class.
"Listen up Cadets!" Yelled Arthur to get everyone's attention. "I've got some exciting news. Looks like we are doing martial arts training for another two months and will then finish up the training with a competition between the twenty platoons we currently have in the first year. The winning platoon will win an as yet unannounced prize. I think they will announce it based on the results of the winning platoon, but that's just my guess. I will also be competing since I'm a cadet so I'm going to train everyone the way I would be training. We will work on basic stances for the rest of this month and then we will be doing weapons training for month two. Be thinking about the weapon you would like to use. I'm going to request weapons racks be brought here for our perusal, but we will not have time for you to pick up multiple so choose wisely. You also have the option of fighting unarmed, but it would still do you good to have some basic weapons training in case you are up against an opponent with a weapon in the competition."
"Obviously, the goal in this competition is to win, I promise you I will do everything in my power to help everyone get a firm grasp on what you need to know before the competition starts. Who wants to win? who's with me!?" yelled Arthur.
"Fuck yeah!" yelled a few cadets as others cheered. With a renewed vigor, the cadets threw themselves into their training and progressed much faster knowing that they had a competition to participate in in two months time.