First War Simulation Exercise

<Name: Regis Kleeve>

<Race: Subhuman Mutant>

<Mutation: Sub beast Mana type>

<Evolutionary stage: 1 (___)>

<Age: 16>

<Stats:>

<Strength: 1.7> <Agility: 1.5>

<Endurance: 2.1> <Mana capacity: 1.4>

<Reaction speed: 5 milliseconds>

Regis looked at his stats displayed in the holographic screen. Over the last week, his strength has increased by a total of 0.5 points whereas his endurance had leapt up by 0.7.

'Just what is that tunnel.' Regis was told that the average growth in the stats of the cadets was about 0.1 or 0.2 in a month, just like his agility stat. The reason for this slow increase was that they could only circulate mana and not use it actively or release it out of their bodies at will, but every time that he found himself lying on his floor after trotting about in the tunnel, he could see his stats rising.

He looked at the meditation disk and sighed to himself. Most of the other cadets were training in special combat rooms, while he was here trying to meditate and remember more of the memory fragments, but this was much more important to him than training at present.

He had exhausted all means that he could think of to return back and the only hope left to him was the window of light at the end of the tunnel, but something told him that he could not reach it with his current stats.

He had also wanted to figure out if he was in some parallel universe or if he had travelled through time, but only a small part of the history from three thousand years ago was accessible and out for public knowledge. Three thousand years being the time when humans had taken the first step in space.

Shaking off the distractions, Regis assumed the lotus position while sitting on the meditation disk and closed his eyes.

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"Since it is the first time for some of you here, let me give you a basic summary of what is going to be your training today." The senior instructor looked at Regis as he spoke. Over the last two weeks, Regis had made sure to keep his performance such that he did not stand out even slightly. The only reason the instructor looked at him was because it was his first time in this training. The others in this batch had already attended at least one of these war simulation exercise.

"The area that you will be operating is limited to 40 square miles. The barrier that you see before you will lock you inside the area for ten hours. You are given a space expansion bag each with limited amount of combat gear. I repeat, the kit does not have a full set of combat gear and you will have to make do with whatever you receive. There are many synthetic beasts, real mutated beasts as well as mechanical creatures in there. The terrain will be manipulated continuously and there is no source of food or water other than the one you are carrying."

"Due to time dilation, the time you will stay inside is two days, whereas out here it will be ten hours only. You will be paired with one of your colleagues and your mission is to bring back the cores of the robots that are designed to act and have similar stats to a Asceptus battle rat. There will also be some subsidiary missions that are unique to each pair and you will also have to clear at least three of them."

Regis nodded and proceeded to walk towards an elevated platform that was numbered similar to the space expansion bag that he was carrying. Alex looked towards Regis and gave him a thumbs-up before walking to his platform. Regis returned the favour with an awkward smile and stepped up on his platform.

His vision blurred and Regis immediately found himself in a completely different terrain. Before Regis could have a complete view of his surroundings, something sharp poked the back of his spine. Regis broke out into cold sweat before leaping away.

Regis reached out his hand and grabbed a nearby tree and pulled himself to change his direction in mid-air. He immediately opened his space expansion bag and took out a pair of shoes and a device that resembled a glove mounted with a small cannon.

A dagger was already placed by his neck in the time Regis tapped his watch and the boots dismantled and assembled back covering his legs. Regis also got the first view of his assailant.

Grey hair fluttered before Regis's eyes as the assailant withdrew his knife from Regis's throat and nodded at him.

"Be more alert." Regis had never expected any sort of apology anyway and nodded. He was caught off guard this time.

"When did you put on the gear?" Regis asked.

"Before stepping up on the platform." Alex replied. "Your reaction was pretty nice as well. You took the most difficult route calculated by the trackers."

Regis nodded as he put on the gloves.

The eyes of his mask lit up and Alex immediately turned towards their right. Regis was a bit shocked by the scene he saw towards his left. The ground over there suddenly caved down a few hundred meters and some large trees with shiny blue leaves grew out of nothing turning the previously flat ground into a cliff of sorts.

'Those are very much real trees.' Regis looked at the hundreds of feet tall trees in amazement.

"The terrain manipulation tech used by the camp truly is powerful." Alex looked back at Regis and spoke. Regis nodded in reply.

'They can even change such large land areas in mere seconds.' Regis took in a cold breath.

"Anyways, lets go. It will be difficult to defeat even a single Asceptus bot if we don't have a good co-ordination. We should practice on other bots or mutants before we go for the Asceptus." The lights in Alex's mask began glowing as he scanned the area around them.

"This way." Alex pointed towards his left as soon as the colour in the eyes of the mask blinked to red.

"I got this scouting mask, a dagger that can project laser beams about two meters away? Yours should be hoverboots and gloves that can fire beams of different types of energy, right?" Alex asked while jumping back to the ground.

Regis nodded and jumped down as well. As if attracted by something, his fall was drastically faster than Alex. Just when he was getting ready to bend his knees and absorb the shock, the boots slowed down and remained hovering a few inches above the ground.

Alex landed on the ground just beside Regis and immediately dashed towards the direction he had previously pointed to. Regis did not even need any active effort to keep up with Alex as his feet remained stationary and the hoverboots propelled him forward. After covering a distance of about two hundred meters in just four seconds, the two cadets immediately halted.

The first thing that came to Regis's focus were ten claws as big as his palms. Before them was a humanoid creature that had a completely green skin. It had lower legs of a human and stood two and a half meters tall. Its face appeared to be that of a bull, but highly deformed and no overgrown horns or ears. The back of this creature was covered with irregular lumps of mass that looked very disgusting and disturbing.

The eyes of Alex's mask shone brightly and he stared at the creature for some time.

"It has very strong forelimbs and should be faster than the two of us. The best way to deal with it is that you distract it and supress its movements with your ranged attacks while I will sneak attack it." Alex said as if reading from some sort of instruction manual.

Regis nodded once again.

"By the way, what happened to you? You are very less communicative today than you were over the last few days."

Regis froze for a second before turning towards Alex.

"I just don't feel like talking too much, especially since we are struck in a forest with these mutated beasts and hostile mechanical creatures." Regis replied while adjusting his tone and ascent to that of the Regis from his fragmented memories.

"Yeah. I know, the mechanical beasts in the last session had very sharp senses, but you shouldn't worry too much about it. My mask can scan everything in a hemispherical volume of radius of few hundred meters accurately. Even the camouflaging beasts can not hide from its detection." Alex required while pointing towards his mask.

Regis nodded in response. If he immediately flipped his behaviour after being told about it, he was sure that Alex may pick up that something was not right. Alex nodded back and jumped-up a nearby tree while trying to be as silent as possible.

Regis took a deep breath to focus his mind on the target and raised his hands such that the nozzles of the two miniature canons mounted on his hands pointed straight at the beast. He looked towards Alex who was slowly getting closer to the creature from the branches of the trees.

When Alex was finally in position, he looked at Regis and gave him a thumbs-up gesture. Regis nodded and took aim.