Standing at the front, one of the few dozen strongest men in the American union looked and smiled as he saw an entire half of the student body at Jackson County Public High school and nodded.
With authority surpassed only by the president alone, he was Chasm Might, called a nomad and among the least political true heroes in the country yet because of a major attack of villains he had actually become a common teacher and in front of him was the entire heroic course student body. One of two separate systems with the other being civilian.
What is the difference? Naturally heroic courses train the next generation of crime fighters. How well that is done is naturally different depending on the teachers and students. That said until now the students were pretty normal and had trained for the first two month's of their first year in high school but that feeling was going to end and Mr Might looked coldly, despite smiling, at the entire student body.
“We have gathered here because it is almost time for your first major tests. Don’t think this is any random test, throughout the entire country this test will be placed down and each ability will be divided into their most basic classifications instead of class classifications and will be graded in large groups instead of specific gradings. The result of this, students who get below a combined average score of 75 will be made to train twice as hard with no pity while those falling under a score of 60 will be instantly transferred to the civilian course. You’ve had 2 month's under proper training programs and you have not put in the effort or you're not pushing enough to grow! Training you to enter the cruel world of heroics is not for fun and games, you can still enter the army but you all are clear about the difference between the two. You are not allowed free autonomy, you must follow orders and you will not have specialized armor for enhancing your powers or covering your weaknesses. You are expected to fight like a soldier. The entirety of today and tomorrow have been dedicated to completely testing you all.” He said, making everyone tense.
The principal felt his eyes twitch. The school had never taken such a hard stance with their students such as expelling students from heroics. This was done in much larger academies to only let the best graduate but those students tend to have strong powers and strong potential.
Doing it for a common public school will actually reveal the weakness of the students and might even cull an entire year. Although he was thankful Kevin was here because it had smoothed out a lot of weaknesses and fixed body structure problems in many students letting them be more normal and have much higher strength.
In fact, it is this exact reason that Chasm Might used to force the principal's hand on this subject. Because the students were allowed to become better and their kinks smoothed out, they should be treated as more elites. He had actually added this to his contract and he was basically made the leader of the heroic course so he was in control of this.
One of the girls near the front raised her hand.
“Yes.” Mr Might said.
“Sir, I heard public schools don’t have this system.” She said.
“True, however compared to any other public school, your school has two things that make it different. First is your own easy access gamer space which helps you grow a bit faster and fixes the distortions caused by your abilities and you have me, someone extremely skilled in training people. These two conditions mean that this school falls within the conditions that consider it a high quality heroics school for the duration of my job here. During that time the school has to adhere to the international hero development laws. As such, you children had best be ready to push yourselves to the limit. There is still some leniency until the end of the semester at the end of the year and if you can increase your scores above the minimum of a new test you can be accepted but you have to remember that there is also an end of the year test which will also be like this but even more intense.” He said.
A boy raised his hand, “How can a test be more intense?”
“For the first two months, everyone has done almost exclusively body training, you also did tests which tested your power’s capacity. Of course, the Gamer space improved a good number of your abilities but you all tested that out right after but if you were to test just your abilities, you will find that besides a few of you who have actively trained your powers specifically, there are few who have developed your own ability. This is where the next two month's will come into play before winter break.” he explained.
Everyone exclaimed and looked at themselves and those around them but Mr Might knew it was true, it was almost exclusively strength and stamina development the last two month's even before he came. After two months, only those like Robin and his club who were active in ability research actually had distinct changes but Robin himself did not.
His previous arm length was 60 meters and his legs are about 40 and now, they are barely any longer.
Of course other abilities like Lola and Milo are different, they depend on the summoned creatures and both of them suddenly had a bit of evolution, especially Milo whose skeleton suddenly became much more menacing and finally got his hands on true swords and developed intensely the power of controlling the power of the dead.
He was now on the much stronger scale of vigilante and was likely to develop into quite the powerful strongman by the time he graduates. Lola was no different because of her ability. Among gaining minions that were very good for scouting, she could actually focus the life force of all the summoned minions into one of the four servants or her main contract, making them grow and draw out more of their true power.
“Alright, each teacher will start dividing the students by major categories, physical enhancement are Strength, Speed, Skill, these are abilities focused purely on attribute enhancement. Energy based, Inner force, Life force, Psychic power, these are abilities which primarily use some form of internal force to achieve superhuman feats. Mutants are those with non humanoid appendages and forms, this includes animal transformations. Finally, emitters are people who emit elements or substances. There are different evaluations for each because the tests will factor the usage of your abilities as well. For those with mutations that don’t have outward changes, you will be factored into the physical enhancement. Those who summon minions will be counted among emitters.” Mr Might said.
Like that the teachers of the heroic course called their home room classes and would evaluate following their setup.
Each class divided the groups and gave their students different colored arm bands with the group name and when everyone was counted for they were sent into each group.
Shoji was in this group because he was purely physical with his ability. Robin walked over and noticed his strange expression.
“You’ve been out of it since you succeeded in making psychic power.” Robin said.
“It feels weird.” He said scratching his head, “I’ve been wanting to use Kevin’s Gamer space but Mr Might has prohibited it since we would become dependant on it and said it would be carefully scheduled so that they could see true growth without a crutch like a number telling us how strong we were.” he said.
“What did you want to do?” Robin asked.
“Add a little bit of wisdom in hopes that my brain would stop feeling so weird, psychic energy just feels so strange and almost foreign so I wanted to try and get my body adapted.” he said.
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Robin smiled at his friends and patted his shoulder and gave a little shake, “At least your ability has entered a blooming. Has it shown any new changes?” Robin asked.
Shoji shook his head with a weak smile. Just like the others, his ability began to change because of the more potent energy. His ability is Sense Emotion, the same power his family possessed but all it did was display an aura with the color of the emotion around people. Using this his father had become quite a good policeman specialized in interrogation. When he finally woke up after fainting when he made psychic energy his ability had grown extensively. The thin aura that was like a thin cloud had changed into a nearly flaming aura in his eyes. He actually also learned to also shut the ability off because it stressed his head as well.
That said, after about a week since then his mind had been making more psychic power and it was still changing and he said that the flame was gathering behind everyone and it looked like a burning face was forming and faint glowing eyes had formed showing his ability was growing because the energy was expanding its ability and he might become an even better investigator depending how the ability works.
Shoji pushed the strange feeling aside and tried to get himself ready for the exam.
“By the way, you’ve been training so that your body doesn’t consume water right? Has it changed at all?” Shoji asked.
“Nah, although it did get more compact but above a certain compression, it doesn’t go further, it just makes it easier to store larger quantities but it seems this compressed power can’t be consumed and doesn’t transfer to my body after consuming what my cells store.” he said.
“Have you tried using it to fight?” he asked.
“When would I?” Robin asked.
Shoji nodded as he understood. “What do you use it for then?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve been learning about it but it seems world power is used in different ways depending on the ability. Mr Atlas’s form is used either in strength development or in fighting. Of course, he also has the energy for merging the stones. Thankfully the world power seems to be pretty good in strengthening everything and I regularly have it constantly flow while spinning in my entire flow system. It seems they have actual physical vessels and they are growing with that and this includes all my acupoints and dantian. I’ve been able to expand the space by quite a bit which feels natural so I feel like it will help gather the power to develop as much as possible.” he said.
“That is good, have there been any changes in your weaknesses?” Shoji asked.
“Only my overheating helps cool down much faster but my heat tolerance is not getting that much better yet since too little time has passed.” He said.
They both understood that their abilities were in constant growth.
“I’m a bit worried though, you already have two incompatible abilities and I’m worried that Mr Atlas’s will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.” He said.
“Yeah… honestly, it feels like it is transforming the camel though, I’m just not sure about the future.” he said.
“Have you tried manipulating your life force?” He asked.
“I can’t just like I can’t manipulate any other internal force, at least not with pills or something to activate them but even then it might not be as good. I’ve heard that people with powers rarely can use any other energy source without outside help for a short time. For people with one kind of power, it is even rarer to be able to unlock the capacity for two powers through natural means.” Robin said.
“Right, although I am shocked Harold was able to make mana with just one pill that Mr Might had prepared. However, now there is likely a big debt the club might have.” He said.
“Don’t worry about it. Last month Milo’s pills alone brought in over $150,000 so it is easy to see that as the production process improves this will only go on. Although it is 250 thousand, we can cover it after a few months.” Robin said.
Shoji nodded and looked at the group and found a certain someone looking as he walked from his class to the group and walked to two boys.
“Yo, bubble gum.” Silk said, looking down at Robin.
Robin looked up and then looked at the shirt, “So it’s dumbass today.” Robin said grinning.
“What was that!” Silk said, suddenly swinging his head down and smashing the shiny metal pompadour into Robin’s head who was only pushed by the force before quickly rising up and smashing the metal hair with a hardened skull and bouncing him off, “You shitty hard headed dumbass! What was that for!” Robin shouted.
“Calling me a dumbass, what else!” he shouted.
“Learn to read you dumbass, you have it written on your shirt yet you still think the freaking thing says motivation! If that isn’t being a dumbass then I don’t know what!” Robin said.
Veins appeared on Silk’s face, “Don’t you dare call my sweet sister a liar, you bastard, want me to kill you, huh!” He said as the two got up in each other’s faces like they were about to have a fight and the other students quickly opened space because it was a dangerous prospect to be near these two.
Shoji and the followers took a few steps back and just gathered in a small group laughing weakly, “There they go.” Shoji said.
Almost instantly, Silk flicked his head and with shocking power, the metal hair sent Robin’s head into the ground.
“You bastard!” Robin said as he pulled his head and this time his head covered with his compressed world power and he got up and slammed into silk’s chin making him stand up straight.
They both looked at each other with red eyes and instantly Silk’s fist gained a faint shine while robin’s had the same with a green aura and they instantly clashed causing a shockwave as their fists meet, giving everyone the sound of metal clashing.
Shockingly, neither of them backed off and suddenly they released a flurry of punches at each other for a good ten seconds and then they jumped back, surprisingly even Robin was bruised.
“Wow… the growth of his chi is quite fast, he is even bypassing robin’s blunt defense with the energy attack.” Shoji said.
“You have sense emotion right?” one of silk’s followers asked.
“Yeah?” Shoji replied, confused.
“What do these two look like when they meet?” he asked out of curiosity.
“How?” Shoji said and smiled weakly as he looked at the two standing in the middle of the group growling at each other.
Around both of them was a massive burning, bright red auras while the growing development showed two determined eyes shining in that aura.
“Like two massive flames excited to clash and see who is stronger.” He said.
The others chuckled because to them it was like mortal enemies.
He took out his phone and searched the color and showed them the emotion range and explained what he saw in the ‘eyes’ that had formed.
“So like we guessed, at the start, it was surprising when the normally cool and kind Silk suddenly began to butt heads with Robin like this. Remember that?” One of them said laughing.
“Right, you guys joined in and it turned into a big fight until the teachers arrived and we all got detention. Now only these two idiots fight and compete whenever they meet.” Shoji said actually happy Robin had this kind of causal interaction with an equally strange ability owner who is shockingly strong.
Him suddenly gaining chi and training it efficiently is strange and Shoji even thought Mr Might had a hand in this to give Robin incentive but he had no proof and it was possible that he already had chi to power his ability and just learned to train it is all.
Eventually, after nearly 5 minutes that the two clashed, Mr Might appeared and just pulled them apart, “That’s good enough or you will fail your tests and I won’t pity either of you.” he said.
It was like an adult talking with preschoolers, he easily lifted them and his massive size made them look small before he dropped them and they just snorted towards each other and the group just chuckled and split off to follow their friends.
“What is with that smile?” Robin asked, irritated.
“Nothing.” Shoji said, chuckling.
“Your grin is mocking me…” he said.
“You’re seeing things.” Shoji said seeing his friend's irritation in his aura but surprisingly the eyes of the aura were aimed at the equally irritated aura of Silk that looked at Robins and made Shoji smile because he could feel the unique bond Robin created with silk unlike anyone else's. This was especially true among his family.
Finally when the last students were divided up, the teacher in charge of each group explained the grading qualifications for this as they were divided into smaller subcategories but still simplistic like before and it was finally time to start and everyone began warming up and preparing to compete with each other while still doing their best to finish the test.