Almost a week had passed since Jake’s fight with Laura King, and a lot of things had happened since then. All six cadets who’d been caught fighting inside the training hall had spent every subsequent morning going through hellish conditioning with Officer Gwyra from 0500 until the start of their morning class. By the time the first class arrived, they were all already exhausted from their two hours of intense conditioning and the rest of the day was just as brutal as usual, as they had spent the last week focusing on combat training and hand-to-hand combat techniques.
The good news, however, was that the brutal conditioning had played a major part in rapidly improving Jake’s Basic Reinforcement spec, which had granted him a pretty big boost in attributes.
Status
Name: Jake Hawkins
Rank: Cadet
Energy Core: 23/45
Recovery Rate: 0.225
Base Attributes
Strength: 7
Dexterity: 10
Constitution: 7
Recovery: 7
Perception: 11
Cognition: 16
Specs
[Basic Reinforcement | Lvl. 4 | All attributes +4, Core +20]
Skills
[Basic Telekinesis | Lvl. ]
The most notable improvement had visibly been to his core, which had once more grown at a rapid pace, thanks to his Basic Reinforcement spec gaining two levels, for a total of 10 additional units. Moreover, his core had also grown by another five units thanks to the vial he’d won in his bet with King, and all of his attributes had grown by an additional two units thanks to his spec. Usually, every subsequent level became harder and harder to reach, for both skills and specs, but thanks to the hellish week of training he’d had, Jake had been able to improve his spec unimpeded so far.
Still, the most shocking thing was definitely that the arm that King had broken in two barely 6 days before was now 100% healed and fully functional, thanks to the healing stim he’d received from the First Lieutenant Gwyra, with even his crippling internal injuries disappearing the very next day after his duel.
As of right now, every cadet was inside the training hall even though it was still a good fifteen minutes away from 0700. Jake, Ryan and Owens, along with King’s little clique had already been in the training hall since 0500 and were now waiting impatiently with the rest of the cadets as they were expecting to finally receive the gear they’d selected a week ago this morning. Finally, both of their training officers showed up a few minutes before 0700, and they immediately started class.
“As I’m sure you’re all aware of already, today is the day you will receive the equipment you’ve selected at the Academy’s armoury. While we wait for First Lieutenant Breyr to bring the equipment to us, I want to take a moment to remind all of you of the rules concerning your new equipment.”
Then, her gaze shifted toward the left, where her eyes met Jake’s and King’s respective groups before she continued.
“I will not tolerate any use of your gear unless I explicitly say so, and you will be required to bring every single piece of equipment to every single training, and it will be left at your desk at all times unless I or Officer Valadis say otherwise. Moreover, using your new weapons on another student will be met with your immediate expulsion from this Academy. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The cadets answered promptly.
Almost on cue, the gates that led inside the training hall swooshed open, and every cadet turned around to look at the new arrival. Near the entrance stood the First Lieutenant Breyr, still as tall and wide as a mountain range. Behind him, a huge wagon — the kind that was used in mines and manufactures to store heavy materials and the like — was hovering a few feet off the ground, and was filled to the brim with the cadet’s equipment.
“Morning, cadets! If you would please come and pick up your stuff once I call your name, I'd appreciate that.” The giant declared, his voice so low it sounded like two rocks scraping against each other.
For the next half an hour, every single cadet was called up to the wagon, where they exchanged a few words with the smith about the particularities of their equipment, before they were sent off to try it out with Officer Valadis. In the meantime, every other cadet whose name hadn’t been called out yet we’re going through a conditioning session directed by Officer Gwyra.
Unsurprisingly, Jake, Owens and Ryan as well as King’s clique had been called out last, giving them all an extra half hour of conditioning with their training officer. Ever since the incident a week ago, they had been treated unfairly so many times they’d all stopped counting.
Still, when it was finally Jake’s turn to receive his gear, he almost ran toward the smith in excitement but managed to keep a calm appearance as he walked over to him.
“Ah, I was pretty excited for your turn cadet, I must admit.” The officer said to Jake, who looked surprised upon hearing that.
But he didn’t even manage to ask what the officer meant by that before he spoke up again in his powerful voice.
“But first things first, let’s start with your suit, cadet. Here, take this and put it on.”
For a moment, Jake gave the smith a confused look as he grabbed the small ring the officer was handing to him, but he did as the officer said and put the ring on one of the fingers in his right hand, above the glove of his training uniform.
“Now, run some biotic energy inside the ring.” The officer added.
“How do I do that exactly, sir?” Jake asked, and the officer patiently explained to him how to do that step by step. Turns out, one only needed to feel and guide the energy from his core to the inside of the ring to do that, which revealed itself to be a lot easier than expected.
As soon as he filled the ring with a slimmer of his biotic energy, it activated and transformed into a full-blown armour that covered his entire body except for his head.
“Good. You’ll need to spend some biotic energy to keep the armour activated, and it will go back into its ring form once you stop supplying it with your energy. Now, let’s take a look at the next piece of gear.”
Suddenly, the officer reached back inside the wagon and took out the pitch-black sniper Jake had previously ordered. Seeing it from up close acted as a good reminder of how big that gun actually was, and he was pretty certain that thing was almost as heavy as the sword.
[Actually, the gun only weighs around 55.86 pounds, since it’s mostly made up of a carbon alloy, which is nowhere near as dense as the oblivium from your sword.]
With a grunt, Jake arduously lifted the sniper off the hands of the Officer, and he was nervously starting to wonder how he would carry all of his stuff on his assignment.
[Don’t worry about that, we only have to keep improving your attributes and you should be able to wield the sword and the sniper in a month or two at most, although separately.]
WHAT, how the hell am I going to fight then? You told me I’d be able to swing the thing by the time we depart for our first assignment!
[Are you crazy? That sword is almost 200 pounds, you dumb kid. Being able to take a swing with it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to fight with it, but it’s fine, you’ll be able to shoot with the sniper as soon as you reach 50 units of your maximum biotic energy capacity, which should be in a few days at the latest.]
I’ll only be able to shoot once!
[We’ll figure it out once we get there, for now, you should seriously consider improving your Basic Reinforcement spec, and fast.]
At that point, Jake was almost fuming at the thought that his implant had screwed him over during the selection process. Now, he needed to do everything in his power to increase his strength before they departed for their assignment. Thankfully, there were still two weeks left before their departure, and they were bound to learn a few more skills during that time, although the thing he needed most right now was probably a strength spec. In the end, Jake didn’t get the time to ruminate for too long before the Officer’s voice thundered again.
“And finally, the sword. It is a good weapon, but its size and weight are certainly a huge downside, especially for someone like you whose strength stat is only average. I’ve taken the liberty of crafting a sheath for you, and I’ve already installed it in the back of your armour by the way, as well as another one for your sniper right next to it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
After a moment, Jake finally activated his suit again and grabbed the sword with both hands. However, as he was unable to even put the sword inside his sheath thanks to the odd position he needed to lift the sword it in order to put it inside the sheath, and he had to resort to asking for Ryan’s help. He’d gained a lot of attributes since his awakening, but he was still far from strong enough to use this weapon in a fight, or even in training for that matter.
[I’ve greatly reduced the amount of biotic energy allocated into improving your spec from 1,15 to 0,15 units per minute because of the suit’s energy cost, but I will shift everything back to normal once you take off the suit.]
It was obvious that Jake needed to find a way to reduce the burden from the sword, but for now, he didn’t even get to think it over before Officer Gwyra’s commanding voice ordered everyone to shut up. Behind her, Second Lieutenant Valadis looked weirdly excited for today’s class, although Jake couldn’t begin to figure out why. Finally, after everyone calmed down, the First Lieutenant spoke up again.
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“While I’m aware that you are all eager to try out your new gear, I will ask that you please leave all gear except your armour at your desk at all times, unless I require you to take them out. You will also keep the armour deactivated at all times unless told otherwise.”
When he heard the officer ask them to drop their weapons, Jake let out a sigh of relief and rushed over to his desk as soon as the officer dismissed them. Once more, he’d needed Ryan’s help to take the thing out of his sheath, which got more than a few laughs from the nearby cadets, but Jake simply shrugged them off as he and Ryan made their way back to the mats, where the two officers were waiting, while Officer Breyr was currently heading outside the training hall, followed by his huge floating wagon. Finally, when every cadet had made their way back to the mats, Officer Valadis spoke up.
“Today, you’re going to learn a new skill, and I greatly recommend that you guys spend a lot of time improving its level in the coming weeks, especially those of you who have spent most of your biotic energy improving their spec rather than their telekinesis skill so far.” The officer announced.
Barely a moment later, a small prompt appeared through Jake’s implant.
[You’ve received a digital grimoire. Learn Basic Biotic Reinforcement? (Yes/No)]
Without hesitating, Jake quickly selected the [Yes] option in his mind, and the prompt instantly faded away.
It wasn’t long before the cadets were asked to try out their new skill, and Jake impatiently made his way toward one of the empty mats. Just like before with telekinesis, he had this weird impression of knowing exactly how to use the spell, as if he’d somehow been using it his entire life, and he quickly activated the skill.
Instantly, a thin layer of swirling blue energy appeared over his entire body from head to toe, and Jake instantly felt his entire body loading up with energy.
[At level 1, this skill will cost 10 units of biotic energy per minute to maintain, and will provide a nice flat bonus of +1 to three of your main physical attributes, meaning strength, dexterity, and constitution.]
It sounded almost insane to Jake to be spending that much biotic energy only for a flat boost to three attributes, but he knew that the skill would grow stronger as he improved its proficiency over time.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat disappointed as he glanced over to his new sword. He’d hoped he’d be able to wield it a lot faster than he’d thought when their training officer had announced they’d be learning a reinforcement skill, but it seemed he was still far from reaching that point.
In the end, Jake spent the next 4 minutes going through conditioning while keeping the skill active, and he was pleased to notice that even though the bonus to his attributes was extremely small, he could feel the difference in his abilities instantly.
While it was clear he wouldn’t be able to rely on the skill to fight any time soon since its energy cost was very high, especially for Jake, it would come in handy as a last-ditch power boost when placed in tough situations.
[From now on, you’ll spend every available unit of biotic energy that is not put toward your spec into improving this skill, and we’ll overlook telekinesis at the moment, as it will not be useful to you as you are now.]
For the remainder of the class, the cadets were tasked by the training officers to go through their usual conditioning while keeping their new skill active as often as they could, which proved a lot harder than Jake had initially thought. Just like telekinesis, the reinforcement skill would deactivate any time Jake lost focus, which was hard to do when moving around. Moreover, he could only maintain the skill for around 4 minutes before his core ran dry, and his energy took over three hours to recover whenever he did.
Ryan on the other hand, displayed biotic abilities many times more powerful than he’d given the boy credit for, as he could maintain the skill for over 20 minutes, proving he was somehow one of the strongest biotic users in the whole promotion. When Jake had asked him about his sudden improvements, he’d revealed to Jake that he’d actually been allocating almost all of his biotic energy into growing his spec, leaving him in a situation similar to Jake’s. Along with King and Owens, Ryan was surprisingly among the awakened with the largest core capacity among their promotion, as he’d been one of the cadets to keep the reinforcement skill activated the longest.
As per usual, Jake, Owens and Ryan spent the whole lunch break together, as the trio had almost become inseparable in the last week. They spent every meal and every spare minute together, either chatting, going through extra training or simply relaxing after their long day of training.
By the time Jake and the others finished their lunch, it was already time for them to get back to the training halls, where they’d be going through their afternoon training. Thankfully, he now didn’t need Ryan’s help to carry his new blade everywhere as he could simply activate his new skill and boost his strength enough for him to sheath the weapon by himself. The worst was that Jake had to activate his armour any time he wanted to move the sword, since carrying the thing in his arms for an extended time was extremely annoying, especially since he had to carry the sniper as well on top of that. Every time he did activate the ring, he couldn’t help but mumble a plethora of crude insults at the intention of his implant, although Ed didn’t seem to care one bit.
When they finally arrived at the training hall, Jake was relieved to finally drop both of his weapons at his desk and deactivate his armour, before making his way to the mats along with Ryan where Owens was already waiting for the both of them.
In front of the cadets stood both Officer Gwyra and Officer Valadis, who looked as cold and unbothered as usual.
“I have good news for you, cadets. Since you lot are going to be sent on your first assignment a lot faster than usual, the Alliance has gifted each of you with one attribute stim of your choosing. This will act as a way to prepare you better for this assignment, as well as payment for the job.”
The cadets could barely suppress their excitement at the First Lieutenant’s words, and every one of them exchanged whispers with their neighbours about which stims they’d take.
Only one stim for a twelve-week assignment? What the hell!
[Oh, common kid. One attribute stim is worth more than 100,000 credits, you lot are probably the highest-paid cadets in the entire history of the Alliance.]
“Now, please let me know which stim you’ll be choosing through the poll I’ve sent through your implants.” Officer Valadis declared.
In front of him, a large screen displayed all the available choices of stimulants for him to choose from, and Jake thoughtfully looked over all of his options.
Ed, what do you think?
[Go with the strength stim, it’s going to be much needed if you want to wield that sword of yours someday.]
Instantly, Jake selected the strength stimulant option on the screen display through a mental command, and the display faded away.
A minute later, Officer Valadis suddenly produced 50 little vials out of thin air, before the vials each floated over to their respective cadets, without the Officer even guiding the things with his hands like the cadets did to use telekinesis. The amount of power and skill needed to accomplish such a thing seemed almost incomprehensible to Jake, although he had no doubt this simple display of telekinesis was nowhere near the officer’s full abilities.
Still, Jake finally refocused on the small vial that had appeared on the corner of his desk, this one radiating a pure white light. It didn’t take long for him to swallow down the vial’s contents, and he couldn’t help but wonder how many vials the two training officers had consumed to grow this strong. While they were normally extremely expensive to acquire via normal trading channels, Jake had learned that the alliance possessed a huge amount of labs that could produce large amounts of them in bulk, and it commonly used these stims as a remuneration for the soldier’s assignments, along with credits. Hopefully, he would be able to earn more of these as he completed assignments in the future, although Owens had already told him entry-level assignments usually didn’t award even a single vial as a reward since they were so expensive, meaning he would probably have to wait a long time before consuming some stims again.
In the end, they spent the whole class going through the same conditioning exercises as they had that very morning, again while trying to keep their reinforcement skill active.
Once more, Jake only managed to use the skill for a total of around 9 or 10 minutes during the whole duration of the class, which was a little disheartening since it meant his skill would most likely take forever to reach the next level at this rate.
Still, as soon as training ended, Jake, Owens and Ryan made their way to the cafeteria and ate lunch as fast as possible before they made their way back to Jake and Owens’ dorm to practice their new skill. This time, Jake completely stopped feeding biotic energy into his spec so that he could improve his recovery rate and use his new skill more frequently.
At 0900, the three of them were completely exhausted and called it a day, as they had been training almost non-stop since 0500 this morning. The last week had been particularly brutal on each of them as they had spent every morning going through extra conditioning as a punishment, and the fatigue from training kept piling up even with their implants and improved attributes greatly speeding up their recovery.
After saying their goodbyes to Ryan, both Jake and Owens sat down on one of the couches. It had been a long time since they’d spent any time together alone, ever since Ryan had joined their little group, and Jake realized he didn’t know what to say to her. Thankfully, Owens didn’t seem to be overthinking it and pulled him out of his nervous internal rambling as she spoke up.
“I’ve wanted to ask you this for some time now, but why did you enlist?”
Jake looked over at Owens, somewhat surprised by her question, but after a few seconds, he answered.
“Both of my parents died during the war when I was still an infant. It’s not like I want to walk in their footsteps or anything, but I’ve always believed I was born for this life, or at least I believed it until the awakening. What about you?”
She looked at him with a grimace for a moment, before answering.
“My dad was a Lieutenant Colonel and a powerful biotic wielder, he married my mom because of her powers as an awakened. His goal in doing that was to give birth to children with incredible talent as awakened. And he did succeed, both myself and my older brother are very talented in biotics, although not as talented as our father.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been hard on you.” Jake answered, sadly.
“Oh, don’t worry too much about me. I may have been brought into this universe to be a soldier, but it doesn’t mean I loathe this life. Yes, my childhood sucked, but I do look forward to becoming a full-fledged soldier, and I am glad I became an awakened. This life is filled with dangers and adventures, and the opportunity to grow beyond our comprehension, so of course I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.”
As a response, Jake simply smiled at her, as he thought back to everything they’d gone through since their arrival at the academy. Then it was his turn to ask Owens a question.
“What are you going to do once we graduate basic training?”
She looked at him with wide eyes for a second and seemed to think her answer over in her head before she spoke up.
“I’ve thought about it, although I am not entirely sure yet. But I’m either going to embark on assignments near the frontier, or join the frontlines and fight in the war. What about you?”
The frontier was located at the border of the Intersystem Alliance’s territory, and it was widely known as its most dangerous area. It was in major part unexplored territory that held many unknown dangers, and assignments at the frontier were among those with the highest fatality rates, even among veteran soldiers and high-ranking officers. However, it was also full of opportunities for the awakened looking to temper themselves and grow stronger, on top of being extremely well paid.
“I haven’t thought too much about it yet. But for now, I’m planning on going through assignments at the frontier until I get strong enough to join the war effort.” He finally answered.
“That’s a pretty good plan. Why don’t we try to go together then?” Owens asked, and a few seconds passed before she seemed to realize what she’d said, and she turned red from the embarrassment.
Jake quickly noticed and immediately turned red himself as Owens quickly started to blabber nervously, growing a shade more red as she did.
“I meant with Ryan, as a team you know? The three of us make a good team, and it is possible to enlist as a group for assignments to the frontier. Anyways, think about it, I’m going to bed.”
And she was gone. Jake hadn’t even had the time to accept her offer on the spot like he’d wanted, before she’d simply got up and left, with both of them looking as red as a strawberry.
[Oh boy, this was hard to watch.]
“Shut up, Ed!” Jake mumbled under his breath, and he was gone off to bed too.