"What? Do you really think the school would do that?" Darius asked in shock.
"Do you remember what Rufus told Victor earlier? Jax spoke. "Plus, if you watched the teachers, none of them seemed to react at all when the fighting began despite watching the whole thing."
"Damn, so they are really just okay with students fighting each other like this?" Darius spoke in outrage.
A thoughtful look appeared on Victor's face as he answered. "If you think about it, all our lives we were being taught combat skills and how to use them. Perhaps today was the day they finally let go of the reins."
"Did any of you guys see the other members of Matt's Gang?" Elaine asked, changing the subject.
Everyone in the group looked at each other before shaking their heads.
"Usually Matt would have stormed in with all his henchmen behind him, but I find it so strange he came alone." Rosa noted.
Elaine nodded in response. "I thought so too. Either they are still undergoing treatment, or they are avoiding Matt."
Jax whistled. "Wow, is this the fall of Blood Punch?"
"Oh yeah, and one more thing..." Elaine began speaking before she abruptly pointed at Darius. "I challenge you to a duel."
"What are you—" Darius turned to Elaine in surprise before appearing to be reading a notification that appeared in his vision. "Wait, was it seriously that easy?"
Upon seeing the scene, Victor came to a realization. A duel challenge was just as simple as stating your intention to duel. The group experimented a bit more and found that while it could be that simple, sending a duel request could quickly become a more complicated endeavor. While it was possible to challenge someone on the spot to a duel just by saying it out loud, it was also possible to draft a duel challenge in advance, setting various conditions for the duel and specific penalties for those who lost. Complicating things further was that if the opponent didn't agree with the set conditions, they could also negotiate with the challenger and modify the terms as they wished.
But as they experimented more, they found some functions to make forming a dueling request easier. The first was that most of the contract details were seemingly generated based on both parties' intentions rather than needing to be written out manually. The second was that reading the contract wasn't entirely necessary, although it certainly helped. With practice, they could sense the gist of the contract and what it meant without directly looking at it. If a person had spontaneously accepted a duel, this function allowed them to quickly know what they had agreed to so they wouldn't violate the rules without knowledge.
After figuring out that much, Victor looked at the time. "If we continue, we will be late for class. We can do more in-depth experiments after class ends."
With that, the group of friends said their goodbyes and headed over to their afternoon class.
Victor soon found himself standing in front of Miss Mallor's in a different part of Teaching Building B. Miss Mallor and four other teachers were waiting along with their classes for the remaining students to file in before they started their training. This location greatly resembled the training rooms that Victor and his friends preferred to use for their morning training sessions. One area was designated for spectators and those resting between exercises, while beyond it lay the true training area, where the room morphs and changes according to the whims of the controller—either their teacher... or torturer, depending on one's perspective.
Victor entered the room with his classmates, all clad in a sort of athletic wear. He quickly found a part of the room by himself where he started warming up. At the same time, he glanced at and observed the faces of his fellow students in the gym. Obviously there were the students from his class who were doing their warm-up routines, plus Doak and Kera, whom he found leaning against a wall in the corner with bored expressions. Occasionally, Doak and Kera glanced over, but Victor wasn't too worried because he instinctively knew they wouldn't be able to retaliate against him as easily for the next month due to one of the penalties for losing the duel.
Victor quickly ignored them and began studying the other students in the room. He was faintly surprised to find Rufus in another part of the room by himself. Although they were both in the same building, he didn't expect to see Rufus again so soon.
Rufus, Victor, Doak, and Kera all attending class in the same room. Victor shook his head in response. 'This was going to be fun.'
As if sensing his gaze, Rufus turned and sent him a casual wave, but nothing more than that. Victor waved back before looking around the room to assess the situation.
'It looks like classes B6 through 10 are all here. Then that means the other five classes in Building B come here in the morning.'
Miss Mallor's class was B9, while Rufus looked to be from B7. Realizing something, Victor scanned the room once more. After a quick count, he realized B10 was missing one student.
'Matt's friend is still not here. Is he still recovering?'
A few more minutes passed as all the students filed into the room, totaling 109 students, with the gang member from the Blood Punch gang nowhere in sight. Having no answers, Victor made a mental note of the event before the class started with Miss Malor speaking.
"Alright class, we will now begin our physical portion of our curriculum. In the morning we will focus more on knowledge and theory. In the afternoons we will focus more on our physical skills along with four other classes. Most evenings you will have spare time to practice and train your ability, unless a special event interrupts."
"For now, we will be doing some physical tests to set a baseline for your skills. Everyone, please enter the simulated training area."
Victor and the rest of the students followed the teacher's instruction quickly and without complaint, finding themselves surrounded by the color of the dull grey simulation room.
"The first test we will start with is a running exercise. Your objective is to last as long as possible while dodging obstacles without crossing the boundaries..."
The explanation continued, outlining lesser rules, and at that moment, all the participants saw a menu appear in front of their eyes, seemingly prompted by the teacher's explanation. Reading the description, he realized the content was almost identical to what Miss Mallor was saying, so his eyes quickly skipped to a particular part of the window.
[Rewards:
1st place—3 White Promotion Shards
2nd to 10th—2 White Promotion Shards
11th to 109th—1 White Promotion Shard]
'Just by participating, I will have already earned 6 white shards today.'
Victor nodded while looking around the room after the explanation finished, and he noticed that the three-meter stretch from the resting area to the training area was glowing a subtle red, indicating the failure boundary.
Victor made his preparations by walking over to the middle of the gym with the other students and turning his gaze toward the other end.
Two main groups formed in the gym. The transfer students were positioned on the left side of the room, while the other 99 students occupied the right side, deliberately leaving a conspicuous gap between the two groups.
Rufus seems to be somewhere at the back of the group to keep his distance from Doak and Kera at the front.
The floor of the room started to move like a giant treadmill, interrupting Victor's observations, slowly flowing towards the entrance of the room where the red boundary lay.
Predictably everyone started moving in response. The floor moved slowly at first, but within a minute everyone had entered a light jog.
It was then that the first obstacles started forming at the end of the room. Parts of the floor slowly rose up in the form of pillars, bars, and various other shapes, stretching to all different sizes and reaching various heights before changing to colors and textures.
The newly formed obstacles quickly approached the students who were jogging. The locals who grew up here all weaved between the obstacles with practiced ease. As they had grown up on this planet, they had gone through this type of simulation many times before and knew what to expect. Even the worst of them wouldn't be tripped up in the beginning stages of this test.
The transfers, however, quickly found themselves out of their depth, seemingly unused to a challenge like this. However, none of them were lacking in the ability to adapt, so they all quickly found their tactics to dodge the obstacles. However, despite their efforts, a noticeable difference in technique remained between the transfers and the other students. Whether it was due to experience or physique, the transfers were both lacking in comparison to the other students. While the treadmill was still moving slowly enough for them to keep up, as the assessment progressed further, it was almost guaranteed that they would be the first ones to drop out of the race.
Doak seemed to quickly come to this conclusion as well. Realizing he would be unable to reach the top 10 at this rate, he seemed to come to a decision before abruptly dashing to the right.