“Make this time memorable, doll-face, it’s probably our last,” said the old crone as she slipped out of her modest dress, revealing the illicit attire she wore underneath.
“I only received one credit,” replied John.
“One credit is one more than all but a handful of students get during academy! I could only get away with that three-credit award due to the danger of the task. Twelve Li died,” snapped out the old crone. In a softer voice, she said, “But I knew my special boy wouldn’t. Go on, take it off and turn around.”
“May I ask one more question first, Nani?”
The crone sighed and said, “What?”
“I have a good number of credits now. I figured I’d be called to another clowder to force me to…”
The crone interrupted. “You can’t be forced to spend credits. Clowders forming is a rare thing and I doubt you’ll see another anytime soon. We had to directly confirm you weren’t defective, could be controlled as other Peerless are, and lay the groundwork for your acceptance into our society. Stop looking for trouble around every corner and you’ll be less likely to find any. Now, why are you still clothed and not facing the wall?”
John did as he was bidden to. Some minutes later, while being whipped, he asked, “Is it easy to earn credits from the Nani Heiau? And which heiau will I be put in?”
“You’ll find out soon. If you pass the final exams. On the bright side, if you do recycle, we can keep our game up for another year, doll-face. Remember to wince and make a lot of painful noises. You’re just standing there silent as a ghost. That doesn’t do it for me. Cry out like it really hurts.”
“Sure.”
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Whenever John created shen, his chest pain flared up some, but it couldn’t be avoided. Shen had to be created before it could be converted into emptiness. And he wanted to fortify his soul more.
John found it odd that the ancient old one had never once mentioned or demanded that John be careful and avoid unnecessary risks.
He can probably heal my body and take it for his own use no matter how I died or how much I damaged it, thought John.
Regardless, John planned on continuing to abuse and push his body to the limit. And fortify his soul as much as possible. As more time passed, he discarded or modified his beliefs. Currently, his ego was edging ahead of his rationality.
Betrayal could think he would win the contest of wills all he wanted. John believed Betrayal, like everyone else, was underestimating him, and specifically underestimating the strength of John’s will, and the lengths John was willing to go to if it meant winning.
Most people saw a pyrrhic victory as a loss. John saw it as a solid win that required much sacrifice. Maybe being a vampire for so long and having the great ability to heal and regenerate from injuries had flavored his views too much, but there was little he wasn’t willing to sacrifice if it meant winning.
The rational part of John’s brain knew he stood no chance at all of besting the ancient old one in anything, but he had always viewed that part of his brain as a whiny defeatist.
Just as Avatar had little faith that he’d be able to defeat the Peerless Empire, John would prove them all wrong. To the best of men, failure was never an option.
Though John couldn’t increase the power of his body through exercise any longer, it was necessary to stay conditioned. Since most exercise in academy was done together as a battlegroup, John received no benefit from it at all, though it pushed all the Li to their limits.
And John exercised in higher spirits than usual. It was the last week of academy. He had passed all six of the academic final exams.
Barely, but barely winning was still winning.
The academic tests given for the final exams were still the same tests as given long ago, established while Akua was still alive, when every single Oli was needed to fight Circle Joyat.
The Peerless had no desire to send a student that made it all the way through the academy to recycle over academics, so those final exam tests had never been updated or made harder. The real tests were given during the rest of the week. And John knew he’d excel at those.
Every single student besides John received the full 80 of 80 points on each of that day’s exams, and all of them had stated the tests were a joke and ridiculously easy. A score of 40 and below was a failure, and failing one of the tests would’ve resulted in John needing to recycle and repeat the whole year again.
John had managed to eke out a score of 42 on the math theory test he was most worried about. His other scores were 45, 46, 46, 52, and 58. He was very proud of the 58. He was also very proud and very relieved he had passed all six of the tests.
Nine still held the First in Class position. If John pulled off some big wins, there was a real chance he could overtake his friend. Firstday was over and there was only two more days of testing. Fourthday and Weekend would have additional classes for the students that graduated.
John only knew what one of those classes would be – an overview of bioware and cyberware, and graduates could pick between one and three pieces of either. Since he was attending Premier Grand Akua Koa Academy, the top academy, he would be able to pick his choices from among a higher-graded list.
All the remaining exams were known. The peripheral test was the only one John knew Nine could outscore him in. The biosynth was a true magician with peripherals and could control many of them at the same time. He had four bolters attuned to one slot, and six pucks in another.
The puck peripherals were used to block incoming damage. They could be used offensively too, as John well knew, since when he fought Ele Four-three in the Challenge of the Mighty Khaga back on Earth, he was physically attacked with pucks.
There were many peripherals besides bolters and pucks, including field-healers, strikers, spiers, spinners, shooters, and busters, but most Oli stuck with bolters.
John liked the idea of pucks but controlling them effectively while also fighting was too difficult for him. Bolters were easy. He just sent one zipping towards an enemy. Turning a bolter when it was moving at its top speed was the most difficult part.
The Oli-specific biosuit only allowed for two different types of peripherals to be bound, though Nine, unlike other Oli, could easily handle more. The suit’s limit couldn’t be changed, and the biosuit for Nine already had to be drastically altered to integrate with his biosynth physiology.
That night, after evening exercises, most of the students put great effort into deciding what to eat as fuel for the physical exams to be given the next morning. Though everyone was excited and worried, everyone went to bed early to get extra rest in preparation.
If Nine was allowed to repurpose his function for each event, John would be worried. As things stood, he saw the physical exams as the best way to close the gap with Nine. His friend was currently 670 points ahead of him.
There were six events in the physical exam – push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, pull-ups, a 9,000 dan run, about 17 miles, and a 54k dan ruck-run heavily laden with weight, over a hundred miles.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Each event was worth 80 points. A score of 40 points or below would result in failure and recycling. But if a student received an 80 in each event, they were graded on an extended scale.
Receiving at least a 40 wasn’t difficult. Like with the academic exams, though being physically capable was more in line with the bread-and-butter function of Oli, the Peerless didn’t want to send students to recycle for having one bad day in one event.
The physical scores had more weight in how a Li’s price was calculated, so everyone strived to excel during this test, and the majority of students attained scores from the extended scale.
The next day, once the physical exams were over, third place received a total score of 631. Nine placed second with 976. John held first with 1,439. Both Nine and John received a full credit for breaking the previous record.
After the physical exam was a short field exercise testing knowledge of formations, perimeters, and actions to take versus various obstacles or enemies such as ambushes, mine clearing, a fighting retreat, and the like.
The field exercise was immediately followed by weapons qualifications. For rifles and similar weapons, there was a range with pop-up targets on a timer.
For close combat weapons, there was a mechanical pell with pop-up targets on various parts of it and the test required both offensive and defensive actions.
Most students received perfect scores on all events, but there was no extended scale and no way to earn extra points on any event after the physical exam, something John could’ve really used to help close the gap with Nine.
Then came the peripherals exam. It was easy and most students, again, received perfect scores. John was glad this event didn’t have an extended scale or a way to earn extra points, as Nine would’ve enlarged the point gap significantly.
The last event of the day was testing on self-cultivation. The exam was a mixture of verbal questions, performing what actions the instructors demanded, and showing competence in basic manifestations such as essence-shields, enhancements, unbinding, protecting against unbinds, and soul veils. All in all, John thought this exam was so easy it bordered on silliness.
The second day of testing ended with John trailing Nine by only 207 points.
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The morning of the third day of testing started out very poorly.
The first event required every student to execute a prisoner. All the prisoners were ch'ran marked for death as retribution for terrorist acts, and about half of them were females. The ch'ran birthed many, many children at once, and the Peerless gave that race’s females little of the regard they gave those of other races.
For most of John’s life, if he killed a soldier, there was a decent chance he killed a very young man pressed into service against his will. An innocent that had no desire to fight or pit his worth against anyone in battle. But that person was always male.
John prayed he wouldn’t be assigned a female. Having to execute an innocent woman didn’t sit right with him, far more so than killing an innocent man.
Amber could call him sexist all she wanted, but discounting the handful of years John had lived in modern society, the deal made between men and women throughout his whole life had been that men bore all the battle, danger, and as much hardship and suffering as they could take on themselves to spare their wives and children from it. Women bore the children, caretaking, and other responsibilities.
It was a man’s lot in life to spend it protecting what mattered most, and that always included women. When a neighbor conquered a neighbor, even if male children weren’t spared, the women almost always were. He never really thought about whether that was right or wrong. It just was.
That wasn’t to say women didn’t suffer both physically and mentally. Throughout time, most women, like men, suffered terribly in many, many ways. In John’s opinion, the societies and cultures that rose to greatness were the ones where women suffered the least and were protected the most.
This deal between men and women was so ingrained it was never thought about or put to words. What always mattered most to a man was that his family was safe, and what followed naturally was an unspoken agreement that all women and young children were to be protected by all good men of that society.
And if most of those men fell in battle but their women and children survived, their lineage, their heritage, their beliefs, their people would carry on, and those men’s lives and deeds would have great meaning and purpose.
And when one of those men lay dying on a battlefield, he could take great comfort in knowing he did not merely exist, but had lived a life worth living, and proudly died for such.
Many, many songs spoke the truth of that sentiment, of such men dying for such a worthy cause. Songs John knew well. Songs he thought of now. Songs that filled his chest with pride and his mind with thoughts of glory. He remembered these songs, and he racked his brain trying to think of a way out of doing this base deed.
The best plan he could come up with was to fight all comers while helping the ch’ran escape their cages, and John and all the prisoners would die in a futile stand of defiance. A useless plan.
There was no way out of it alive. The main result of fighting would be more ch’rans marked for death as retribution. All the prisoners in cages were already dead. The only choice John had was to join them in death or live to avenge them.
Since the ch'ran looked like giant, monster man-spiders mixed with a good amount of nightmare and terror, though he knew it spoke little of him, that would make it easier to execute one, even their women. He had never liked insects. They were low creatures, and malicious.
John had taken a grave risk to save the Kahaki girl in the Nether, a deed that resulted in the death of his good friend Talker. But the Kahaki girl didn’t look all that different from a human girl. The ch’rans all looked alike, both male and female, and looked far more monstrous than even demons did.
The best of men wouldn’t be so superficial. They’d see the ch’ran women the same as a human one. John knew that.
The best of men would be smart enough, competent enough, to save the prisoners. John knew that too.
John wished he were the best of men. On this day, he would not strive to be one. There was absolutely no way he could save the ch’rans. No matter what he did, these ch’rans would be delivered the same fate. The best he could do was give the prisoner he was to execute a quick and painless death.
Then John almost changed his mind when he was assigned a small female. A Wood. A child. He tried pulling her into his Mind’s Eye to explain to her how sorry he was, that he’d avenge her and her people, that he’d be the destruction of the Peerless. The ch’ran refused the pull on her mind and hissed horribly as her mandibles clicked together over and over in fear and anger until John ended her suffering as softly as he could.
Oli were expected to obey orders immediately and without question, and this was their initiation. This event was to inure the students to the future atrocities they’d be required to participate in, or that’s what John assumed.
When John was young, he had little issue killing any not of his tribe. They were others, not real people, and when made enemy, he treated them without mercy, from infant to elderly.
It was Ahn that helped change John’s views on that, how his old master saw everyone as others, as toys to play with and make suffer. Not everyone should or could be others. Every man needed a people to belong to.
Later, the way John saw aristocrats, nobles, and other men and women of means and importance treat their own people, people they were supposed to care for, solidified his beliefs, as they saw their own people as others.
Most decent men were only capable of engaging in the brutalities of war by seeing the men standing across the battlefield from them as animals, not people. Killing people was hard. Killing others, killing beasts, was easy on the mind. Only the nobility and aristocracy of enemies had to be seen as people, with lives of value, to be treated with dignity and respect.
Bloodline and position meant nothing to John. He had many times seen those considered the lowest of men with the worst of pedigrees rise to the greatest of heights and prove themselves truly noble, and the highest of men with the best breeding and pedigrees prove by act and deed they were scum and worms.
The green-haired Alii trainee ordered the students to kill their assigned prisoner and John had obeyed, proving he too was no better than a worm himself. One more dark stain on a soul already filled with so many.
Killing the ch’ran child affected John far more than he was prepared for. He knew it would make him feel base and low and cowardly. But it filled his chest with more shame and his mind with more regret than the same act had in the past, maybe because, as he thought of those old songs, his chest and mind were so recently filled with pride and glory and thoughts of good men. Maybe because those songs of good men reminded him of the ancient pact he had just broken, as if spitting on a grand legacy. If his time was limited, he didn’t want to meet his end having his hands and soul further sullied with innocent blood.
Thankfully, the two other events that day took place in a Trainer and were combat oriented. John was glad and hoped the exams would take his mind off the cowardly act he had just committed.
Real Trials and Tribulations couldn’t be created until a cultivator reached at least peak Transcendent and had access to the Between. The Trainers had no such limitation, and all students were required to complete the same Trial and Tribulation Akua himself had while training on Kiamoni with Circle Joyat.
Both the Trial and Tribulation, even if completed successfully, required a minimum score to pass. And both the events gave John a chance to surpass Nine in points.
John knew it meant little to the ch’ran girl he just murdered, but he swore over her corpse he would take the First in Class position in honor of her sacrifice. Her death wouldn’t be meaningless. It was a contribution towards the destruction of her and her people’s enemies. He swore to her corpse that he would reap such a slaughter among the Peerless that her soul, no matter what the afterlife had in store for her, would alight in such brilliance that she would know she was avenged. He hoped she heard his oath and took comfort in it.