Virtual

In the few days that followed Regis could see a group of cadets who had been trying to find as detailed information on the war as possible through various contacts and sources available in Camp Cerberus. Although he too had received detailed instructions to find more information about the war and relay it to the Kleeve Senatorial family, he did not make much effort to do it.

<Name: Regis Kleeve>

<Race: Subhuman Mutant>

<Mutation: Sub beast Mana type>

<Evolutionary stage: 1 (___)>

<Age: 16>

<Stats:>

<Strength: 2.0> <Agility: 1.7>

<Endurance: 2.7> <Mana capacity: 1.4>

<Reaction speed: 3.5 milliseconds>

Regis walked inside one of the training pods. After finding the details about his mystical element from his personal AI network, Regis now had a better understanding about the direction he had to improve in. His mystical element had fused with him, but it had not yet awakened inside his body, so there was no known way for him to increase his mana capacity, the most important stat for 'Sub beast Mana Type Mutation.'

The other direction of improvement was to align his stats with the mystical beast called the Lunanine, a mystical wolf that was said to have a body made of darkness and silver horns that resembled a reindeer. These horns were able to harness the power of light and darkness. After reading this information from his AI network, Regis finally knew what the tattoo on his chest represented, but...…

'I can't remember any culture having a creature at my time that resembled the Lunanine or the other common mystical beast models used for the mystical elements. The legendary elven mystical element also looks different from the description of elves from my time. But, the human version of elves that is similar to my impression was popular belief until a few decades ago before the mystical elements came into being...'

Regis now had another doubt in his mind. Was the human version of many mystical creatures flawed and the mystical element version, correct? Or, was he in a completely different world altogether?"

'Please select the type of training.'

A mechanical voice entered his ears. Regis shook all the thoughts off his head and decided to focus on the training. Same world or not, since there was a way for him to come here, there definitely was a way for him to go back as well.

And, to find that way, he needed to get stronger as soon as possible.

"Agility: Training and simulation." Regis spoke lightly.

'Processing.....activating module...3..2..1..Start!'

Regis felt the familiar sweet smell mixed with some other scent while his surroundings turned dark.

'This would have been the most sought-after gaming system in my time.' Regis looked at the virtual world around himself in admiration. After the momentary thought, Regis immediately went back to focus on his training. He did not have the luxury of imagining the scenario where he had a similar gaming system in his time.

The training only required Regis to perform different sets of movements while the terrain and the environment switched rapidly, making it increasingly difficult to keep balance and maintain the pace of his movements. The simulation was a battle or rather dodging against a virtual monster that had stats far surpassing him.

The simulation itself showed many rapidly expanding and shrinking spots on the body of the enormous monster or the nearby ground where Regis had to be present at a given time in order to not be crushed by the boulders launched in the air due to the monster's movements or die under the monster's attacks.

The task of dodging was becoming tougher every passing second and Regis finally died by the monster's attack when he slipped and the capsule he gulped could not heel his ankle before the monster crushed Regis.

After the first attempt, Regis wanted to continue, when a small notification appeared before him.

'Wanna play! Come, lets play!'

A message from Alex. Regis thought that he might as well give it a shot. He replied 'yes' in the space under the message. His surroundings began fragmenting and disappeared. Regis found himself standing in the 'public' training arena for the cadets of Camp Cerberus.

While many preferred private ones, the public one was a location where they could get together, compete or spectate the other cadets as well. There were also other virtual facilities like virtual stores and the virtual limited training equipment. Humans were at a phase where anything imaginable could be created in reality, but only as long as the thing followed the physical laws of the three dimensions that humans had knowledge about.

The virtual world was a hub of the ideas that were imagined by human minds, but out of contemporary human knowledge to create. Most of the training facilities of the virtual world were such versions.

"Which one should we go to?" Alex and Avner's avatars arrived near Regis' avatar and asked.

Regis looked around and spotted a more advanced version of the system he had been using.

"Let's try that one." Regis pointed towards the virtual image that looked like giant ape that spanned tens of meters in height.

Alex looked towards the image and nodded.

"You know the rules, right?" Alex turned to Regis and asked. He knew that this was the first time that Regis was using a training pod. Regis nodded in reply.

'Select Gear'

A screen hovered before Regis. He scrolled through the library of gear presented to him. There was a limit of maximum three pieces of gear per person. Regis only had experience of using the gear that he received during the combat simulation exercise, he chose the hoverboots, the gloves he had on and a helmet which had the ability to predict the movements, a more powerful version of Alex's mask but without scouting abilities.

The selected gear appeared on his avatar and fitted on it automatically. Even the weight of the gear and the feeling of having it on felt similar to what real gear felt like. After the gear appeared on his body, Regis turned to look at Alex and Avner. Ten very faint silhouettes appeared around both Alex and Avner, each making a different pose.

"Let's enter." Alex gestured towards the entrance. Regis was surprised with the accuracy of the helmet. Even before Alex had moved in real time, most of the silhouettes faded away while only a few remained, whereas one silhouette got increasingly clearer with time. A few seconds later, Alex's pose matched completely with the darkened silhouette.

Avner had chosen a set of full body armor, hoverboots and a small handgun. Alex on the other hand had a pair of hoverboots, a light armor that covered his upper body and a pair of daggers, one in each hand.

The three of them immediately found themselves in a completely different location as soon as the program was run. They appeared on a planet with rocky terrain and a different gravity than what they were used to.

Regis followed Alex and Avner and tapped on the side of his hoverboots with his other foot. The hoverboots adjusted to the gravity of the planet.

5.4.3.2.1!

'Rumblee!'

The timer ended and was immediately followed by a loud rumbling noise from underground. Three different spots appeared on the nearby ground lit up. Regis, Avner and Alex immediately dashed towards the spots nearest to them.

'Crackk! Crackk!.....'

Five enormous snake like creatures appeared from the underground and surrounded them.

"Aim for the spots that are shone with the red light and move to the spots with blue light as soon as possible." Alex's voice registered into Regis' ears.

Three of the five snakes immediately picked a target to aim at while the other two attacked randomly. Immediately after the snakes spawned, Regis could feel his vision filled with all sorts of red and blue spots, some of which appeared as circles, while others appeared like lines drawn on the ground.

They not only had to determine where to go, the spots each were meant to be approached or attack by a different individual depending on the gear they were wearing.

Regis immediately slid forward towards a blue spot that appeared on the ground. He fixed the target of one of his gloves on the snake that had appeared at his last location and fired. The second glove was fired simultaneously, but its aim wasn't locked so that it could be used if the other two sankes decided to show up suddenly.

The red spots vanished immediately after they had appeared and only one beam was able to hit it. The snake's speed was very disproportionate when compared to its size and it was immediately upon Regis the very next moment.

Regis slid backwards and moved towards his left once again. He shot his beams towards the spot he was previously at. One of the ten faint images projected by his helmet started to grow darker until a second snake emerged and replaced the image.

The beams hit the snake on one of the red spots. A HP bar appeared on top of the snake's enormous head.

'Bang!'

Regis turned around. Avner's handgun released a bullet made of shiny blue metal. The bullet hit one of the red spots and drilled in through the thick reptilian skin. Regis immediately focused back on his side of the battle.

Both the snakes were now only metres away from him. Regis performed a sidewards roll in air and slid away.

'Boom!' One of the snakes body-slammed into the ground, leading to rocks being thrown in all directions on impact.

'Whoa!' Regis appeared back into the virtual plaza along with Alex and Avner.

"270%. That is quite a decent score. If it hadn't been Regis' helmet detecting the various instances that we were going to run into each other during the latter half, I bet it would only have been 180% or something around that range." Avner said.

Alex nodded in response.

"By the way, do you know what is up with those guys?" Avner pointed his face towards two cadets who were acting a bit strangely.

"Ah those guys. I heard that their families are very interested to know what happened during the battle against the Asceptus, so much that they are forcing them to find out about it in as much details as possible. I even heard that five cadets got into some trouble with the soldiers due to their over-persistent approaches." Alex replied while Regis looked towards the two cadets.

'Strange.'

Regis could feel that something was not right.

...…..

A strange silence had spread through Camp Cerberus. The excitement and energy that had spread throughout the camp for the last few days after the victory over the Asceptus had been washed away in a matter of minutes.

An emergency meeting was held inside Klesen's office that was attended by only the ten captains of Camp Cerberus.