One week had passed since Gaius started training in the capital of the state and while it had been a bit tiresome, Gaius also felt good about the fact that he was testing his limits daily. He was also using his head to cheat a bit as well since Kennil was looking for ways to make him an example to the other kids.
"Tomorrow, we have a day off, huh?" Gaius thought while he was staring at the ceiling of his room. "Maybe I should check the things being sold here... I have a salary as a recruit, but it is too small. I need to make some money."
Much to Gaius' surprise, the next day he found a bunch of shops in the capital, but they were pretty empty of stuff being sold. He saw some other recruits walking around as well, but they didn't buy anything. A lot of them were taking peeks at the red light district.
"It isn't open during the day, morons," Gaius shrugged.
Gaius could understand now how Relia managed to sell the things that they obtained so fast in that capital… a lot of things there were in high demand. Living there probably will be an expensive like hell… even though the recruits received a salary of fifty silver coins.
After half an hour, the students began to head back to their rooms… the interaction between the kids and anyone else in that place was extremely restricted… they were being raised to be only soldiers, nothing else.
“Herc said that the kids here graduate and receive a position in the army… some of them become lieutenants and even captains and lead groups of ten to one hundred men and their salaries improve accordingly as well,” Gaius thought once he finished his meal. “That is my first goal… even though it might take a few years. Still, joining someone else's army? No thanks.”
It was hard to imagine that Gaius was going to receive the same title as his father in two years, but he didn’t want to waste any more time than that… he also believed that he could learn everything he had to learn there in just two years. He just needed to be known like that, but not follow other people's orders.
After returning to his room, Gaius noticed that his feet looked and felt a lot better than before… he didn’t know if his healing speed was that good, maybe the water in the bath had some healing properties, either way, he decided to sleep early since he didn’t know how early the day of the kids would start.
Fortunately, Gaius had the chance to sleep well until six in the morning before he noticed some noise outside… The students get up around that time and have their breakfast half an hour later and rest until eight in the morning. Considering that the instructors spent a good part of the day pushing their limits, it would be too much if they trained more than eight hours per day.
Gaius noticed Kennil’s annoyed gaze… he realized that making Gaius out of an example didn’t work with just running, so he decided to push him hard with other exercises. Pushups, situps, handstands, moving around the training grounds while crawling by only using his arms… he could do all that with relative ease and without struggle. His parameters were higher than his father’s for a reason.
The exercises weren’t enough to tire Gaius out. In the afternoon, he sparred with a bunch of kids, but he had an easy time disarming them with a spear… he thought that Kennil would force him to use other weapons, but he let the kids choose their own weapons.
"I guess this much should be enough… there is no point in standing out more than this," Gaius thought.
While Gaius had an easy time with the physical training, he wasn't that certain about the tactical lessons that he was going to have. Back on Earth, he was average when it comes to his grades, so it was entirely possible that he would be a dummy dummy again.
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Fortunately, for Gaius, memorizing things was a lot easier than he recalled… Although they were only kids, they were learning a bunch of things from formation, to the type of coded messages that could be spread on the battlefield to pass orders to the soldiers. He was learning those with ease…
"I wonder if Wisdom also increases my learning capacity," Gaius thought while he was listening to a lesson that revealed the history of the wars of the state.
The other kids were having a hard time with those lessons, so maybe that was true… but maybe his mind was sharper since he had his previous memories. Either way, after one week, Gaius had gotten used to life in the training grounds and since the next day was Sunday, he finally had some free time and he could leave the place without worrying about training for a full day.
"This is fine and all… but I don't have much to do out of here," Gaius thought while he was staring at the ceiling of his room.
No one tried to talk with Gaius and he could tell that they were being afraid of getting in the middle of Kennil plans to make an example out of Gaius. Unfortunately for him, he had already learned all the rules of the place and he wasn't a slacker.
Although no one talked with Gaius, he heard some people whispering about past incidents… It looked like a few months ago, a lot of fourth-year students were severely punished when they tried to escape the building at night and spend their salaries in the red light district… Gaius wondered why they didn't wait until Sunday… even if they had to return before sunset, which was the time the red light district would start to work, they would get punished either way, so it was better to choose the best option.
"Puberty, huh… I was a bit shy in my first years, but I will have to watch myself here," Gaius thought. "Mom had a reason to be worried since she has her instincts."
Gaius' soldiers were still working hard to get the funds to get their wagons and horses, so he didn't have much money to use he left a lot at home as well… walking around in the city seemed a waste of time. Although having a full day to rest was good for kids that were still growing, Gaius decided to spend his day off training in the morning and practice his reading and writing for the rest of the day.
The same thing happened again a couple of times, and after two weeks, Kennil gave up on the idea of making Gaius an example and told him to follow the same exercises of the first years. The only thing that was different for him was the fact that he began to spar with the second years. Those guys were a bit bigger than the first years since the training made them develop their bodies faster… At the same time, they didn't fear getting hurt during sparring like most of the first years, so Kennil thought that Gaius finally would fall for once and taste the dust of the training grounds for once.
Unfortunately for Kennil, Gaius had an easy time sparring with the second years too… he could easily defeat kids that were three or four years older than him even without using Mana. Gaius didn't feel much accomplishment from that, though.
When the swordsmen tried to take him down, Gaius would just focus on speed and stab their stomachs with his training spear… while he hadn’t practiced that quick attack since the spar he had with his father, Gaius felt that he got better at it thanks to the training in the last few weeks.
When the other students used spears against them, Gaius focused on disarming them after blocking their attacks with the point of his weapon. They didn’t expect that kind of impact, so it didn’t take long for their stances to break and for him to use that chance to attack their hands and disarm them.
The students of the first and second years only used swords and spears, while some trained with bows as well, that kind of weapon wasn’t possible to use during the sparring sessions.
After that first day of sparring with the second years, Gaius heard during the whole day and night, since the sound was engraved to his brain, the sound of their teeth clenching… they didn’t like the idea of losing to an eight-year-old boy.
“They didn’t understand that their goal here was to learn something while sparring… who does that is the true winner, so I don’t feel like one at all,” Gaius thought. “Speaking of which, I am already nine years old… It is kind of sad to experience such a day without hearing a single happy birthday. Hello darkness, my old friend… I've come to talk with you again…”