Vanessa’s eye twitched as she struggled to even wrap her head around his reply, but didn’t give the situation another second of her time.

As she turned her glance, the next fight was her own.

She was up against a rather confident looking boy, with bright red hair and piercing blue eyes. His hair was scruffy and spiky, looking like it went in pretty much every direction possible.

He was around 5’10, and quite lean for an exosuit cadet.

However, he still acted as if he was more than capable of beating Vanessa.

As the fight began, Vanessa rushed forward with immense speed, thrusting her fist forward for a punch.

The confidence and arrogance of this boy washed away upon taking the impact. Even though he was taller than Vanessa, the two of them were of similar weight.

Her punch knocked him back a step, but she followed up with numerous more punches and a final kick straight onto his lifted forearms.

For the final attack, he was forced to grit his teeth, taken aback by the forceful impact.

The swift boy managed to catch Vanessa with a punch to the face, and followed up with another immediately after seeing that his jab had connected so well.

Vanessa wasn’t going to get clipped like that a second time. Therefore, she dropped to her left and the punch flew straight past her. With the perfect opportunity, she delivered a powerful hook to rattle the boy.

Those of Carlo City looked happy to see her connect with such a blow, and her assault only intensified from there.

This boy couldn’t match her explosion and athleticism. Vanessa was of the Di Fonti family after all. Even if she was one of the weakest out of that prominent family, she was still a talent.

Leaping forward and back into range, she punched him right in his solar plexus, before hurling her fist upward and into his chin.

His head was thrown back rather alarmingly, and a cloud of blood and spit was thrown off his face.

Vanessa subsequently descended and landed a wild-looking overhead right, empowered by her exoskeleton’s powered gauntlet. The redhead was knocked right off his feet and sent stumbling away, leaving several metres in between him and Vanessa.

Seconds passed with him still on the canvas, and the soldiers approached the ring, ready to conclude the match. Cael and the others from Carlo City watched on with their heartbeats raised as they awaited the battle’s outcome.

After strugglingly lifting onto his feet, it was only a split-second before he was sent falling right back onto his hands and knees.

A soldier swiftly stepped onto the ring and stood in between Vanessa and him. The match was over, and she had taken the win.

Cael began clapping along with the others of Carlo City and a handful of the other home students that watched on.

Many of them were too arrogant to show the girl the respect that she deserved. Even if this was ostensibly a nice chance for the students from both institutes to test their abilities against each other, growing in the process.

However, the competition aspect was inexcusable and ever-present.

After this event, the Carlo City warriors went through similar training to what they were used to back home. However, what was different was the intensity.

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With these warriors being stronger than C-Grade institute cadets overall, they could push their students harder since they had it in them to continue.

As a result, they found the training sessions to be even more intense and gruelling than what they were used to. On treadmills, they’d find themselves crossing tens of miles in a single day, while having tens of 6-minute rounds on punching bags that weighed more than a tonne.

In this day and age, these warriors were hooked up to systems that were able to tell them the physical statistics of their body. It gave them more variables than the technology used in Carlo City, and they were immediately submerged into this more premium feeling of training.

They wore masks that were able to lower the oxygen levels of the air they’d breathe in. Along with that, it would measure blood saturation, heartrate, breathing rate, amongst other things.

The treadmill itself also had the ability to measure the average force of the runner’s strides, along with their average stride speed and length.

For the likes of Emeline, these statistics were just far higher than everyone else’s. Her heartrate was kept to around the lowest for the entire group, and her speed was by far the highest. Her speed was absolutely unbelievable not just in explosive short distances but in the ultramarathon runs that they’d take part in.

She could maintain her pace and just continue going with ease.

Whilst Cael and her group had marathon times of around 45 to 50 minutes, Emeline did hers in as low as 37 minutes.

As she trained, she didn’t even consider the praise that she received. All that mattered to her was the training in Cael’s view, and he found that endearing. That level of discipline and drive was something that he always strived toward and found it fascinating to see it first-hand.

She didn’t speak much at all either; most words that she uttered were replies to officers or replies to attempted conversation with her from the other students training with them.

This gave her an even more mysterious vibe for Cael, it made him intrigued to hear more about her.

Her name was Emeline Murillo, whose father was a native to Zarcona. Her mother hailed from Oseron directly, and even though she retained the name of her father, she was a lot more involved with the noble Sanguis family, renowned for their scarlet red hair.

Even though she was daughter of one of the female members of the family, her talent still made her a valid contender for the head, which would change its title to matriarch. Of course, her gender made it much harder for her to claim this position and the pieces of the puzzle slowly started to fall into place for Cael.

It was clear that she was trying to grind against the adversity; to prove the other’s wrong and show that she was great enough to claim that title over the other male contenders.

Being woken up annoyingly early for yet another day of training, the students were ushered to a training room to begin their morning. Many of them looked fatigued, including Cael, but were used to relying on caffeine to keep them going.

The urge for Cael to stay up late and work on his creations was hard to resist, but he just knew that he’d have to literally drag himself through the training that would follow the next day. If he wanted to keep himself going with this strenuous training regime, he’d have to make sure that he got his beauty sleep.

Military soldiers of the institute stood ahead of them in their usual ordered format, standing shoulder to shoulder.

Their posture was almost perfect; totally straight backs and muscular arms right by their sides. Each camouflaged outfit showed off the rank of each soldier, with the youngest-looking officer having the rank Lance Corporal and the eldest proudly and ostentatiously puffing up his chest to show off his Sergeant rank.

“Greetings soldiers. Today, we would like to explain to you what we have in store for the coming days. As a result of your amazing performances, the Colonial Guard want to utilise your talents to keep the peace here.”

“The roles that you will partake in won’t be very serious as even if you all are talented, you are gravely inexperienced. The service will mostly consist of patrols during calmer hours and shadowing another officer on guard.”

The students seemed indifferent to what was happening, until a nugget of information was dropped.

“For this, you will all receive wages. Don’t think you’re doing this for free.” The soldier then replied.

Light chatter then festered between the students, and they suddenly seemed far more excited about the upcoming apprenticeship training they were about to take part in.

Even Cael was quite surprised about this, not because of the money he’d receive but because of the fact that they were actually being rewarded monetarily.

Cael was already receiving far money than he knew he’d ever get from such training through his business and with Leon still creating items for his merchant profile, he was steadily receiving income even during his stay in Zarcona.

The training for that day, since it was a Friday, was particularly light and focused on learning new techniques from the officers.

Their amazing level of experience continued to wow the students, and Emeline was very attentive as they showcased some of their wisdom.