When they got to the gym, the attendant issued Karl a workout uniform consisting of sneakers, shorts and a shirt in the Academy’s white and gold colour scheme, and sent him to the locker rooms to shower and change.
That was their policy, shower before and after using the equipment. Apparently, new students didn’t wash enough on their own, and they needed to shower when they arrived. Or perhaps, like he was that day, they were expected to be sweaty already.
It didn’t take long to get ready, but Sergeant Rita was already there, changed into a black tank top and a different pair of green cargo pants with clean boots. Did they think that she might be mistaken as a student if she didn’t wear green? Or perhaps it was a military rule.
Karl had heard that the elite soldiers weren’t officially military, but their own branch of the government. However, they didn’t come to the mines, there was no reason for them to be there, so he had never actually seen one before the injection day.
The agility type warriors, as Sergeant Rita called this class, turned out to be almost entirely female. That made Karl wonder deeply about what sort of bias the mana injection had for the skills that it awakened in people, or what that said about his current physique.
He might not be the most macho man ever, but being subtly told that you currently have the physique of a fourteen-year-old girl was hard on the ego.
Then he looked through the glass wall and saw the strength type warriors from the senior classes training, and the class was full of musclebound meatheads with arms the size of his torso.
Maybe he was in the right place.
“Alright, first up, upper body strength. That skill of yours puts a lot of resistance on your body, and you need to be able to power through it, but without building up so much bulk that you can’t evade anymore.” Rita began.
What followed was two hours in hell. By the time that Karl limped back to the showers, he was sweaty, exhausted and ready to fall asleep right where he was. He was about to collapse when Hawk pushed a piece of cold roast chicken out of the space for him to eat as a form of emergency energy, or a survival ration, Windspeed Hawk style.
A very deeply missed survival ration, even though the bird still had a quarter of a roast chicken and plenty of raw meat left.
Once he was changed, Karl made his way back to the dorms for the afternoon, and straight to the cafeteria for some much-needed sugar and caffeine. If this was going to be the daily routine, he was going to have to start eating much heavier meals than usual.
Somehow, despite feeling like death, he still managed to look like he was in better shape than the next few groups to arrive. They were holding each other upright, and mostly bruised, cut, scorched or dripping with some sort of mystery liquid.
“What happened to you?” Karl asked the mage sitting at the next table, startling him so much he almost fell out of his chair.
“Skills training. All day long, the magic classes undergo skills and theory training. I have one spell, Lightning Bolt, and they had me drink supplements over and over to cast it thirty times today until it stopped hitting me and everyone around me.” He complained, clearly in agony, and so tired he was about to pass out.
“What about you?” The other mage at the table, a girl with charred sections on her uniform, asked.
“I had a combat class with the instructor, then two hours of fitness routine with the agility type fighters. I think my legs have started to turn into pudding already.” Karl sighed.
“Two-hour fitness routine? What did you do to the instructor to deserve that? Even the newbie warriors only get a thirty-minute intensive weight training session and a thirty-minute cardio session along with their weapons training.” The girl asked.
“No idea. I think that she’s got high hopes for me, though, because she’s already talking about forging me into an Awakened body this month.”
The mages winced. “We need to get our mana levels up to awakened levels before the end of semester exams, but that’s way harder than it sounds, and we need to meditate whenever we’re off, but you can’t do it when you can’t focus, and we’re all too sore today.”
“Well, almost all of us. I think that she might be fine, that woman is a demon.” The boy Karl had spoken to first complained, gesturing toward a woman covered in slime at the next table.
“Slime girl?” Karl asked.
“Don’t let it fool you, she’s a water mage, and her first spell is [Refreshing Water Slime]. It helps her recover stamina and mana, so she’s been wearing it like that all day.”
That was almost a cheat ability. From what these two said, the mages trained their aptitude by maintaining and controlling their spells, and hers refreshed her stamina and magic while she wore it, so she could do it all the time without getting exhausted. She would almost certainly grow quickly.
That was the sort of luck that a true protagonist should have, Karl decided.
[Slimes suck, you can’t even eat them, they just squish.]
Hawk had a point, not only was he an excellent combat assistant, he was also edible.
The students slowly made their way to their rooms, and Karl let Hawk sleep off his overindulgence while he lay in bed, too tired to sleep, but too sore to do anything else. He wasn’t sure when that changed to blissful slumber, but he was very aware of his alarm going off the next morning, alerting him that he had fifteen minutes before Sergeant Rita arrived.
Karl took a quick shower and changed into his uniform before the Sergeant was at his door, impatiently knocking and holding a breakfast try in her other hand.
“You’re running late, so I brought food. Let’s go to the gazebo so you can eat while you study.” She instructed.
Once they sat down, Sergeant Rita took out a small stone, and set it on the table.
“What do you think of this?” She asked.
Karl looked it over. It wasn’t an egg, it was just a rock of some sort. He even poked it, first with the handle of his spoon, and then with his finger. No response.
“It’s definitely a rock.” He replied.
“Interesting. So the psychic stone has no response to you, but you can communicate with your bird.” Rita noted.
“Now, try this one.”
Again, Karl put his hand on the stone, tried to make it do something, but it was just a rock.
Then another, and another. But when she put a small golden coin on the table, an ancient monetary instrument from the Golden Dragon Nation they lived in, Karl immediately felt an affinity for the object, and when he touched the dragon on the coin, a sense of power filled him.
“So, that’s the answer. That coin was blessed at the Dragon God Shrine during the last Dragon Festival. It appears that your powers resonate with the dragon energy. Since that’s the case, I want to try something else.”
Rita took out a small vial filled with shimmering red liquid.
[Oh, I want it. Ask the evil lady to give me that.] Hawk demanded.
[You should be glad that she can’t hear you.]
