The rest of the day was spent testing all the different attributes of each power. Tests varied from types of abilities. A great example is Milo’s summon control when using large numbers.
He did this by summoning a squad of 20 skeleton minions. All of these have a special brand on them because they were restored with medicine and naturally the investment will not be lost.
Although they had common strength, their numbers are extremely good for dealing with crowd control and minor tasks. Milo’s test was actually to control these lesser minions to do manual labor such as building furniture or working as a group to save as many fake victims trapped under rubble as possible.
They instantly showed their ability to pick up life signs and then worked in the needed numbers to pull them out. They were all experts who weren’t in danger in the least.
It was very useful if used by the more powerful ones who could actually move the largest obstacles.
Lola faced a similar thing with her five summons and they honestly showed off. The Tengu, if only a bit weak, was actually scary skilled with the sword. Minotaur had base strength type’s strength and used the log like a club with scary precision.
There were pros and cons to each of them since they were limited by their life force.
At the end of it all, the group of four all passed. On the other hand, nearly a third of the applying students failed and even a number of kong clan members failed.
Robin was able to attract attention only in his speed test where he was allowed to use his powers however he wanted to achieve his fastest speed in a 100 meter dash, 200 meter and 5 lap run.
His speed and strength were some of the strongest due to his power typing. Of course, there are speed abilities that left him in the dust but for a strength type, he was very fast.
“Congratulations to all who passed, those who didn’t still have a chance if you work hard to close the gap in the vital attributes you required. You can go to any Heroics Beauro to apply and get tested to get the license and then come to the office where we can do the transfer to the heroics course but remember that there is a limit of time we can do this.” the principal said and let the students go change.
After changing, the students were called as they left and were given their school schedule and assigned classrooms.
Much to the annoyance of the three, they didn’t have many classes with the entire group. Milo was the most irritated about this but Robin just patted his back to that, “Try to open up so that you can make some friends.”
“Urg… I guess I will be made to even if I don't want to.” He groaned.
Shoji patted his other shoulder, “Who knows, you might meet your future wife. During the tests, I saw some bone based abilities. They might not be scared of you and if they are, you can just join one of those occult clubs. I heard there are tons of occult and psychic powers who get along really well.” Shoji said.
Only a sigh came from Milo.
They stopped teasing him for his reclusive personality.
They were dismissed and went home. Robin was the most proud as he talked about his results which even shocked his parents when he told them how he used his powers and was even stronger then the only monster class ability in his year.
“I’m happy for you son.” his father said.
“Thanks dad.” He said.
“Hey bro! When are you going to teach us to use the spring style!” the two younger brothers asked.
The older one was 3 years younger and the other 4 years younger were named Thomas and Jason respectively. They both have their mother’s pure rubber ability and no mix and all of them have awakened it already.
“You guys might not like it, also you might not be as strong as me using that.” he said flexing his arm.
“You just got lucky!” Jason said.
“Heh, says the crybaby who doesn’t even want to jog with me.” Robin said.
Jason pouted and kicked his brother but none of them felt pain from kicks and punches.
“Hey bro, I want help with my own training.” Judith said.
She was the only other girl in the family and 2 years younger than Robin.
“How is that?” He asked.
“I want you to beat me up.” she said.
“Huh!” The family exclaimed.
“Don’t overthink it. Since I was small I’ve researched powers like ours and found that by getting hit over and over, I will be able to harden my body more. With the exercise I do for strength, I just need to harden my body and maybe I can eventually become invulnerable to things like bullets.” She said.
Robin nodded slowly and raised his eyes and thought of something. “Is it because of your test from two years ago saying that you are projected for almost 18 years old before you can get the trainee license?” Robin asked.
“Yeah.” She said openly. “I’ve been putting in a lot of effort like you did and jogged in the condo next to ours until now but I’m not getting stronger.” She said.
Robin looked surprised but raised his brows and smiled, “Well… if you just run it won’t do anything if you don’t add weights.” He said and stood up. He looked at his worried parents, “I’ll help her out with exercise.” he said.
Their father sighed, “It is always my power that puts you kids in hardship.” he said.
“It isn’t dad, because of your power, my own strength skyrocketed after I got control of it. Judith doesn’t have anything holding her back besides lack of instructions. Oh right, since you three are so excited to get stronger, let’s enroll you all in the gym. If you had wanted to train earlier, you could have trained for much longer.” he said.
“You were just focused on getting strong until now so we never got to play much.” Thomas said.
“Alright, come on and i will show you guys how i train my rubber and body.” he said and with the three younger siblings, they went to the basement and he put Judith on some of the weight machines while the two rubber boys were shown rubber body exercise machines that used their own bodies to pull.
Their bodies didn’t have the same elastic strength that Robin’s had but he realized that maybe this was a good method to increase tensile strength of their muscles and make up for the lack of it.
The next morning he caught the bus to school and looking at his list he found his home room at this highschool, Jackson County Public High school.
The highschool had several main buildings but the one he entered was the same for the very large gym where the test had happened. That said, the gym was built with classrooms surrounding the main gymnasium. This is the Heroics course building while there is a different gym for the common course.
His room was 103 and the sheet said his homeroom teacher was named Mr Atlas.
The class was filling up as he got in but none of his group was in his homeroom. That said, he drew a lot of looks. The kong clan sent glares but the others sent admiring looks but he didn’t think much of it and greeted them with a simple ‘hi’ or nod before sitting down halfway to the back on the window side of the room. That said, he closed the blinds because the sun was in his face and it would heat up too much.
When the class was almost full the bell rang and the teacher soon arrived.
What appeared was a very strongly built man but strangely enough, he carried a few atlas balls while several actually floated around him like satellites.
“Hello kids, my name is John Denis but you can call me Mr Atlas.” He said.
Instantly several boys shouted in excitement.
“No way! The newest rising super strength vigilante that suddenly appeared last year and skyrocketed up the ranking of vigilante!” one of them.
That said, Robin reacted to a different part of the introduction. A face appeared in his mind of the thin and weak man that was stuck on the bed without even the energy to move. Slowly that face overlapped with the one in front of him but he couldn’t see the similarities. Whether it is the face or muscles, they changed and it almost looked like he got younger by nearly 15 years and looked only in the mid twenties as opposed to the nearly 50 year old looking man he saw.
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“Alright, calm down you all. I’m not into the heroics business. I got the license and permits so that I could be a heroics course PE teacher after I fell ill during my younger years and discovered how much I hate being stuck indoors.” He said looking around and his eyes landed on Robin. His eyes shined and his smile brightened.
He let go of the stones in his hand and they dropped until stopping just before hitting the ground and started to levitate up.
“Now let’s start the roll call before homeroom ends. Quiet down!” he said and pulled out a hand console and after touching it several times he called names in alphabetical order. He smiled when he called Robin’s name but continued.
After that was done, he spent the homeroom period doing orientation until it was time to go. The students each packed up to go to their first class.
At this time, Mr Atlas walked over.
“Good to see you again.” he said.
“Sir?” Robin said.
“Naturally I mean when you saved my life.” he said.
“So it is you! You look so different. Didn’t you say you didn’t want to do heroics?” he asked.
“To be a teacher in heroics I need to at least have a license and I don’t do much heroic work though. I’m honestly not cut out for front line fighting.” he said.
Getting up Robin walked out and the floating rock orbs followed.
“What class do you have next?” Robin asked.
“Yours. I’m your PE teacher, that is why I stayed and went to talk to you.” He said.
“Oh!” he said surprised and checked his schedule and it was true what he said.
They walked together and talked a bit before he finally pointed at the rocks, “These are the fragments right?” he asked.
“Yeah, after I found the problem with my power, I merged all the smallest fragments I coughed up and then merged them again but we soon found a new but very positive problem. My body has limited space to contain a huge amount of energy. Basically every cell is a tiny reservoir but if I keep filling without exerting myself, I will only get weaker as my cells start to break from the strain. After that I started to train and my cells actually fed on the energy and constantly grew stronger.” he said.
“Is that why you got so physically active?” Robin asked.
“No, I just hated the thought of staying indoors. I joined a gym, ran outside or did whatever just to not stay inside. It helped that I went back to finish my college degree and at the same time I worked to become a PE teacher. During that time I had to get strong enough to be a heroics teacher and to my joy, a new miracle medicine appeared from an institute for disabilities which helped greatly develop bones. I was able to get a pill and suddenly my entire skeleton got harder and stronger without side effects besides a lot of pain. In fact, I was able to merge many stones up several ranks as a result.” He said.
Robin smiled upon hearing that, since they had only been able to make a small amount of pills to sell to the institute since they weren’t a proper trainee or in a heroics club. To discover that he was able to get even a few of them was rather surprising but it made sense since he was likely in contact with the institute. “Did you figure out more about your ability?” Robin asked.
“More or less, these rocks are connected to my body and mind. Merging even once is a big strain on both. I’ve taken to giving levels to the atlas stones for each merging.” he said.
“About that, why do you call them atlas stones? Is it just because they look like them?” Robin asked.
“Nope.” he said and casually took one of the bigger ones and handed it to Robin.
Before he could react, his body instantly got pulled to the ground. “What!” he exclaimed and gripped the stone hard before picking it up. “W-what is… with this weight!” Robin exclaimed before the weight suddenly vanished and the stone levitated.
“See why they are called Atlas stones? It is because of this weight that I could get from a civilian nobody that was sick in bed to an upper rank vigilante. This one in particular is a level 9 stone. It has been merged 9 times which means it contains 512 fragments.” He said.
“How is it so heavy?” Robin asked.
“Because they are super dense.” he said and lined up the atlas stones by size. “These lowest ones are level 5, these are level 9 and this single one at the end is level 10. Level 9 weighs about two and a half tons while level 10 weighs 8 tons because each level the rock combines the denser it gets.” He said.
“Woah… do you make lots of fragments?” He asked.
“Yep, when i started up, the simple quantity of energy caused me to cough them up daily like my parents said i did as a baby but that had bad consequences since it takes from my bodies nutrients so I ate like a starved man for a good two months until my body seemed to catch up to the true number of fragments i needed. After I started merging them, it was then the turn of purity and energy quality to cause the same effect. After so long, I discovered that every time I rise in the level of the highest quality one I undergo an adaptation period. At the end of it, my body is usually much stronger because I get a higher quality energy.” He said.
“So lucky. I only recently discovered my power’s true problem as well as it’s cure.” he said as they entered the gym.
“Alright, we can talk later, go get ready for PE because we are starting a harsh course from day one. We can talk later.” he said.
“Great.” Robin nodded and ran into the locker room. He stored his things and took out his gym clothes and eventually got out. The gym was massive and it could hold a full dozen classes each with their own teacher.
He found his class by the bleacher number 6 where Mr Atlas was sitting.
He sat down and they continued to talk and he explained his ability’s problem and solution.
“Wow, to think that bioenergies had that kind of effect. Despite abilities being around for over 200 years, research into these abilities is pretty superficial. That said, isn’t it said that people with powers unrelated to different energies can’t even stimulate them?” he asked.
“I wonder as much as you but I guess I am simply supplementing what is lacking instead of stimulating it like the people who actually use them.”
“Oh that actually makes sense!” he said.
The talk lasted very little after that as the last students arrived and Mr Atlas had to introduce himself once more and started to tell them what they would be doing for most of the year.
“Well, most of you are, to some degree, above human standards now as trainees. That said, this is barely the first step and to even think about being anything more than a trainee you need to put in immense effort. We are here to help you do that systematically. In a little while, you will all be given weights. The materials are all extremely heavy but we naturally adapt it to each person’s base strength limit. This is not how strong you punch but the limit of weight your body can hold. From there, everyone will be running track.” he said.
Some people groaned at that.
“Aren’t we supposed to train our powers?” one student asked.
“Later on, the reason is quite simple. Your body’s strength is the basis for your power. With so little strength, you will be easily overtaken by even the simplest villain who has even a slightly stronger ability to yourself. Imagine if you had to fight someone with gigantification, that would require a lot of power even to stall for time let alone win.” Mr Atlas said.
Everyone begrudgingly agreed.
He continued to explain the follow up exercises but basically everything was all body strength training without exception.
When they were ready, he took them to a storage room and brought out thick metal arm bands that almost looked like barbell weights. At Robin’s turn, he had three layers attached making his arms almost start to stretch if he didn’t flex his arm.
“Keep your body from stretching or it will affect your running stance.” He said laughing.
Robin groaned and walked with heavy steps but with his rubber control, he kept them from stretching.
When the last was prepared, they all walked outside and got on the track. There were already others doing the same and they joined right in. The usually fast teens were all reduced to a crawl and some had some really heavy weight attached to them.
They had to run a full 5 km around the field and when they finished the five laps, since the field was 1000 meters in length, they were dropping like flies while sweating heavily.
The teachers each brought some sports drinks to help the students before they switched the arm and leg weights and put on a new weight around the torso which made it hard for them to balance themselves.
“Now you will be doing all forms of exercise for your arms and legs.” one of the teachers shouted.
Everyone moaned and knew that everyone would suffer the same fate together until they started to specialize in the form of training.
In the 50 remaining minutes of the hour and a half class, they underwent tons of different exercises that worked muscles they barely ever felt. Robin, someone who frequented very good gyms, was also shocked by how much shock his body's muscles were taking and the burn felt like lava.
The teachers focused nearly 80% of the class on commonly untrained muscle groups and when everyone was done, even the strongest were soaked in their own sweat.
Marcus was in this class period and he honestly suffered the most. His strangely developed body was actually super inhibiting for him. The teachers asked how he trained and as you would expect, besides some core exercise and leg strength done to carry his own weight, he barely did anything and relied mostly on his power’s innate strength. The transformation type abilities all grow with a different base growth.
With that in mind, the teachers decided to focus on his entire body and the ball of muscle felt the intense burn throughout his body. He constantly complained but no one had the time or energy to waste on him.
When that class ended, the teachers had removed the weights and they all were allowed to use the showers and they headed to their next class.
Many teachers were ready for the tired students and it helped them since the energy of the students was spent and it left them with far less difficulty at handling them.
Robin looked at the schedule and was surprised that PE was in all first classes. He sighed at that since it would mean every day they were under pressure but to grow he couldn’t stop.
Finally when the final class was complete they were released a little early to go to their homeroom.
“Alright, before you children are dismissed, you all should remember that club activities are mandatory. Heroics clubs are a requirement for every heroic course student. There are dozens of different clubs who focus on different thoughts. Some are power type exclusive and others are ideal differences. Tomorrow, the representatives of each club will be coming and you all can decide. All students will be going to the Gym to decide. If there is anyone who wants to make their own clubs then you will need to decide there. That said, each club needs a monitor who is a teacher who has the authority to help with the club activities but also give our required tasks.” He said.
Robin slightly frowned but thought that Mr Atlas might help out on that.
After finishing the announcement, everyone was dismissed and Robin waited a bit and went to talk with him.
“Hey, did you need something?” He asked.
“Yeah, it’s about the clubs. I was planning to make my own club since our idea for our heroic career is different from normal.” He said.
“I think I remember your dream. Do you want me to be the monitor?” he asked.
“Yeah, are you available?” Robin asked worriedly.
“Yeah, I joined this year so I am still not part of any club. That said, it will be a big war for a free teacher like myself who is still very involved with students. Want to call your friends and tell me about it?” He asked.
“Alright, we can get Shoji or Milo to get a car and we can go somewhere.” Robin asked.
“No need, we can just go to the cafeteria. Call them over and I will wait there.” he said.
“Great!” Robin said excited and pulled out his phone and called the others to the cafeteria to try and get their club monitor.