Every year in Nexus University combat-related students go on a training camp to experience real-life survival training.

If it were the typical type of survival training almost every student would be eligible to attend, however, the event’s venue has been the same for several hundreds of years and is the main reason not all student can participate. Located in an isolated area was a series of islands used to breed, manage and test Inzektors.

Not only did students have to scavenge for food for several days they also have to survive the onslaught of Inzektors protecting their territories.

However, where there are demerits, there are also benefits. The essential underlying requirement was to survive on these islands, but as a bonus, each Inzektor was tagged by type using an application developed by Novera Corporation. This allowed students to record their kills and the students could convert their kill records to Galaxia coins. Although cultivated, these Inzektors are valued half of what it was if they were killed in the middle of the war.

A student could become rich overnight, but at the same time, nothing can stop the Inzektors from killing on the island. Teachers do monitor the process, but rescue operations are nearly non-existent.

Every year a few students do actually die which is why before they join the camp they have to sign a life and death liability wager.

But the most crucial factor that would prompt students to join would be medals. At the end of the assessment students who participated get a medal which increases their future salary by 20% and if one were to rank first, they would receive a medal that would boost their wage by 100% for any company they work for. Of course, if the company hired these students, the cost would naturally go up making them hard to get hired which is why all their extra pay came from the government.

Another feature of this medal was a tax reduction. In many cases, taxes were expensive wherever you go, whether receiving money from work or when buying products in stores. This medal can reduce the amount of tax one would have to supply by nearly half the amount.

Although it may seem crazy for the Nexus solar system to do so, for the government system to maintain their strength they utilized every single option available to keep their citizens in the Nexus solar system, especially the ones with combat abilities.

Of course, this wouldn’t matter that much if you traded in the black market and avoided the government officials. Unless one is more powerful than the government system that is.

For example, Novera Corporation, the Nightwalker Family, and the Mythos clan were difficult factions for the government to take action against. Another was Zekar Drake, although Luon didn’t know how powerful he was, none of the government officials made any trouble for him. Luon was curious, but no matter how intrigued Luon didn’t bother asking as it may potentially affect his relationship with Zekar. He still had many things to learn so he couldn’t care less about the affairs in the solar system.

Luon read the announcement recorded on his BMPU while in his dorm room late at night. It has already been a few months since the school started. During combat class, Zythos never had the opportunity to bother him ever since the first one. Captain Waver after assessing everyone's strength in the first class created individual training plans, and the class was divided into different segments.

For half the day students were lectured in the Vortex Containers about the biological traits of millions of different species in the universe. Captain Waver first covered the common ones before moving on to the unique ones. After studying the species, students were made to fight against them, and he would take the opportunity to lecture the student based on their combat.

Once the lecture on different species was finished, students would exit their Vortex Container to exercise utilizing the training menu that Captain Waver wrote up for them.

The sets of exercises that Luon received from Captain Waver were quite basic and caused no real harm to the body. Luon was supposed to jog several kilometers a day, do several hundred basic exercises like push-ups, sit-ups, and squats, cultivate for a few hours and then rest in the Vortex Container.

Although Luon could do this all in the Vortex Container, there was one thing that he couldn’t receive during his incubated training. The body could be tempered, and the mind can be developed, but his stamina never grew. Which is why Captain Waver assigned these tasks in the first place.

Luon other classes were the same, busy as hell and Zythos had no opportunity to bother him. First of all, neither Zythos, his minions or his secret connections within the school could interfere with Luon’s daily schedule. The halls were monitored, most classes were virtual, and there was no way to hack it, and Luon’s relationship with Zekar made it challenging to approach.

In fact, Luon learned more from Zekar Drake than what he did in his Engineering class. From Zekars examination Luon should already be ready for the second engineering examination but told Luon to solidify his foundations first before testing, even though Zekar had already covered the class topics he said to Luon to follow along in case the professor had some interesting extra details to add.

Commander Training class, however, could be summed up in one word. Fun. The teacher, Helen Ishtar, had an easy-going personality as she only taught the students for a few hours on basic formations, counters, and traditional tactics used in the past. Once she was done teaching, she would have the students get in their small groups to matchmake themselves online to battle against others.

The Nexus solar system wasn’t the only place with Vortex Containers. Once in awhile the class would be paired against the people from the Sea Kingdom, Avalon, Ark Judgement Empire, and the other solar systems found in the Intergalactic Federation. To people in the Alliance, other than being a method for training, these Virtual Battles were like sports. They’re pubs, bars, and cafes that stream many live matches and anyone could partake as long as they have a group.

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Luon’s group was ranked 530984 in the whole alliance which wasn’t bad at all seeing how there were several million different groups recorded. Of course many were inactive as fans only just tried the game out for fun.

Every time they rose up in points they cheered and celebrated, but because Luon and his friends all had their own lives to attend to they only played a few battles a week.

What was surprising was that Thomas Graves became their fifth member, he had no combat abilities, but Luon and Gizmo both found him to be a very useful engineer who could manage the workers so they could build strategies utilizing creative structures, weapons and tools.

Workers could follow the instructions labeled from the designs that CITA gave them which were recorded in the Alliance database, but having someone with real experience can shorten the construction time by nearly half. It was like comparing someone who was cooking off a cookbook versus someone who lived and worked in the kitchen. This was a big difference.

Luon’s commanding ability, combat skills and his knowledge about engineering rose significantly in the last few months as he worked nearly around the clock.

Every once in a while he correctly rested, but he couldn’t help but smirk about his status when he glances over them.

With that in mind, Luon pulled up his status board once again.

[Luon Fate]

[Race: Half-Human/Half-Elf]

[Federation ID: NEX-6854BP]

[Job: Student]

[Combat Level: 49]

[Racial Skills: Quickness, Night Vision, Mana Affinity]

[Active Skills: Wind Magic Lv3, Reinforcement Magic Lv3, Mana Manipulation Lv4, Manaqi Lv3, Steps of Starlight Lv3, Array Formation Lv2]

[Passive Skills: Swordsmanship Lv4, Parallel Thoughts Lv3, Eye of Insight Lv4, Circuit Establishment Lv3]

[Species Knowledge Evaluation: 587/1000]

[Technical Knowledge Evaluation: 720/1000]

[Monthly Salary Evaluation: 2427 Galaxia Coins]

[Recommended Job Paths: Engineer, Soldier, Commander]

In the end, Luon gave up learning the last untouched manual [Revolving Wind Blade] in exchange for lessons on creating and engraving arrays which he studied the basics from Bendan and the more advanced materials from Zekar who noticed Luon’s interests in the topic.

There were only 2 weeks before Luon had to wait before the survival training started and students were allowed to bring whatever they want to preserve their lives.

Luon thought of some neat things he would like to create for the event, he had a beautiful sword and several decks of cards with formations engraved on them. There were many things he could still make to increases his performance during the event. Luon dreamed about getting first for extra salary and tax benefits, but the primary goal without a doubt was to decimate as many Inzektors as he can to receive payments based on kills.

Gizmo, Bendan, and Tyron also applied to go to survival training as well.

They all had different intentions, Gizmo wanted money - quick, comfortable, and fun. The face Luon saw Gizmo had when he was thinking about the event expels greed out of every single pore on his face. Bendan wanted to temper himself with real Inzektors and treated the event like a field trip or a stroll in the park. Tyron, however, used the occasion to practice his hunting skills and took it seriously.

What surprised Luon was that Arisa, Shizuka, and Belle were also going to participate. He didn’t think that these high-class ladies would attend such an event. It wasn’t known until recently that Gizmo told Luon that Belle was actually the daughter of one of the most famed commanders in the military division.

However, the most troublesome news yet was the participation of Zythos and his goons and having signed the life and death wager, he couldn’t help but be more cautious of them as well as the Inzektors.

The night passes as Luon flicked through different stories about other people’s experiences at the event. Luon mentally wrote what he needed to do and what he needed to accomplish it and when daybreak comes he plans on heading to Zekars shop to equip himself.

…

“Zy-Zythos, are you sure we should be doing this,” Chester said with traces of doubt.

Zythos stares into the eyes of Chester causing him to yelp backward and timidly face the ground. Chester sweated profusely from the stare he had just received. In his eyes was filled with anger, hatred and many malicious thoughts that Chester had never seen before in his young master. He couldn’t help but think it was all the fault of Luon, but what sealed the deal was the punishment they received from the head of the family.

“Hmph, that old man of mine dared punish me for losing to Luon. Calling me a disgrace and ruining his plans, he even told me not to do anything to the damn brat that may attract some attention. Well, good thing we heard some news about Luon joining the survival training we could get rid of him once and for all.” Zythos smirked.

“What about the monitoring? Wouldn’t we get caught?” Chester replied timidly.

Zythos laughed echoes around the room as he said, “Well wouldn’t we just need a plan where we don’t get caught? Haha, with these things here our plan of ours is bound to be flawless.”

Zythos stared at the top of the table which laid tightly sealed box. Zythos once again couldn’t help but smirk. Zythos's evil laughter was like howls of wolves in the moonlight, only more devastatingly human.