They arrived eight minutes before the time. Long before even most of the Warrant Officers arrived. But Jones along with Warrant Officers Trevor and Barnum were standing around quietly speaking to each other. "Trainees Wintry and Steel, you are early. Good. You should be five minutes early to any designated time. Go on and get in line there. You will be the first ones on the obstacle course." Jones pointed to a marked location by the obstacle course.
"Yes sir!" They replied in unison and stood at attention.
Eventually the other Warrant Officers and Trainees arrived, when Arrowhead and Coble arrived it appeared that Jones sent a look of contempt towards Coble. "As you might have realized, each Squad is attached to a Warrant Officer who will be in charge of your day-to-day activities. As for your actual classes, it will consist of several Officers who are either under special assignment or retired. I will be in charge of your hand-to-hand combat training as well as military law classes. But for today, you will run this course." Jones pointed to the half a mile long obstacle course behind her. "You will run this course until your system activates. Fortunately Trainees Wintry and Steel have volunteered to run it first. Go you two!"
Wintry flinched for a moment while he ran toward the course, "yes sir!"
Jace quickly scaled the rock climbing wall, hearing Wintry responding only a moment slower. Once he was over he hopped down into the mud pit and trudged through it until he got to a rope. Pulling himself up he started climbing until he reached the monkey bars. He climbed along until he reached a platform and dropped down. Then he started walking across a thin board while heavy bags were swinging. It was only a minute before he was on the next platform, where it appeared the next platform obstacle was rope swinging. It only took a moment before he was at a tight rope obstacle where he also had to dodge heavy bags.
He was halfway across when one of the bags sideswiped him. Sending him crashing into the mud below as he blacked out.
He suddenly shot up when he woke up with Officer Jones lurking over him, "Good job Steel. You almost reached the academy record for first time runs." Jace looked around to see a few others were now running the course. "Most of them haven't climbed the ropes. Now let's see if your system is activated." She pointed to a podium with a hand imprint.
Jace nodded while still recovering from his fall, but his head was quickly clearing up. But even then he already knew his system was active from what was sitting in the air in front of him, that the others clearly could not see.
[Name: Jace Steel
Age: 13
Compatibility Rating: D
Talent: Enhanced Perception
Temporary Growth Enhancement: Strength x3, Health x2, Intelligencex2
Strength: 5
Agility: 5
Speed: 7
Health: 6
Intelligence: 11 ]
He placed his hand on the hand spot on the podium and his name and compatibility rating appeared.
"Rank D, now that is a surprise. But it does appear your system is active. Now until dinner go to the workout area. You should practice until then, you will have to train your body a lot before you're even allowed to go to the next school year courses." Jones explained, "to get to the second year you have to have at least fifty points all together. For the third year it is seventy five points. Understood Trainee Steel?"
"Hmm… Yes Sir. What do you suggest I work on?" Steel asked as he realized he should get used to his new name.
"What are your growth enhancements in?" Jones asked as she looked towards the obstacle course where another student was walking towards them from.
"Strength, Health, and Intelligence."
Jones looked at him in confusion before nodding, "Health is not something you can independently train, for that one you need to spar and just work out in general. Intelligence will be worked on naturally during classes. Finally for strength, lifting weights and the resistors will work. But I suggest you don't just focus on that. You should work on your agility and speed as well."
"Yes Sir." Then Steel walked toward training equipment. Spotting the weights, he decided to start there. Mostly since it appears there was no one to spar with today.
He jumped right into training taking the Officer's advice to train his strength mostly, but working on his speed and agility stats as well.
A few hours later he realized the majority of students were avoiding the resistors. Only a few were working on it, and they were the ones with higher compatibility rankings.
Walking up he started looking over the settings and noticed it could be set to two of the three trainable attributes at a time. He decided to stick to strength for now, as the resistor started he felt himself enter the resistors simulation. From the outside he was inside a beige metal container that had artificial gravity set to three times the normal gravity.
It was similar to the virtual reality drive pods but instead it used air instead of a heavy liquid in conjunction with artificial gravity.
He realized why most students gave up quickly, it was tough on both the mind and the body. But he persisted for a few hours when he realized dinner was an hour out. Stepping out of the machine he felt his whole body was sore but ignored it in favor of doing a last jog for the remaining time.
After a 45 minute jog he was covered in sweat but walked to dinner, going to one of the cafeterias with a different menu. When he arrived he noticed a familiar face and sat next to her. She looked over looking similarly exhausted, "how are you still standing? The teachers and Warrant Officers were taking bets on when you would faint." Wintry asked.
"Ha… I'll sleep after a shower. Who won the bet?" Steel asked in turn.
"Chief Officer Jones, she bet you wouldn't faint." Wintry was quickly working her way through the meatloaf and mashed taters.
"Hmm… did we get an update on what we are doing in the morning?" Steel grinned at the thought he might have caught the Officer's favor.
"Yeah…" she lowered her voice as she looked around, "I learned that Coble and the other WOs plan to wake us up at 6 in the morning but the cafeteria opens at 5:30. So we could get in an early breakfast since they plan to have us training all morning until lunch. We also have to clean our workout gear tonight or we will get punished."
Steel felt something about what she said was off but noticed a few other students sitting next to them. "You two must be freshmen. Which squad are you two in?" one of the older looking students asked.
"Coble, I heard he was new." Wintry responded.
One of the older students visibly flinched, "ah… yeah. Rumor is that he got severely demoted after committing a crime, the only reason he is even still in the military is that he is a Count's son. But an Inquisitor investigation could only place suspicion and not prove that he was forcing himself on his junior officers."
Wintry frowned while Steel only shook his head, "thanks for the info. But I think it isn't free?"
"Looks like the newbies have a brain in those noggins of theirs. Yeah we will take the pudding." the upperclassmen grabbed the pudding from their plates.
Wintry frowned but didn't complain while Steel did not care.
After dinner they retired for the night and got what they needed done before the next day. Which would soon become his new normal.