“Congratulations on completing the milestone. Your study progress this month is 7%, surpassing 93% of the students. Please keep up the good work.”
The voice of the personal AI pulled Yun Ruoxi out of her daze.
A wild, beast-like fierceness still lingered in her eyes, and it took several seconds before clarity returned.
The cutting-edge technology of the battle camp was indeed impressive, drastically compressing learning time, but the side effects were equally obvious.
Spending long periods in a virtual space where time flowed unnaturally fast easily caused mental disorientation, blurring the line between reality and illusion.
“No wonder they only schedule half a day of Virtual Training each day… if it were any more, we’d definitely be in trouble.”
Yun Ruoxi rubbed her temples, somewhat satisfied with her progress.
After all, some of the students were as insanely strong in academics as Lin Zhen.
Considering her weak performance in [Cosmic Mathematics], boosting her total score above 93% through [Killing Martial Arts] alone was already quite good.
That old man named Saxin was very pleased with her.
After brutally killing her a hundred times, he gave her a fairly high score and explicitly said he wanted to continue refining her next time.
Thinking of this made Yun Ruoxi’s head throb painfully and her scalp tingle.
She hastily took off the helmet.
She tidied up her tangled blue hair, then got up to head to the cafeteria along with the other members of Nine Class who had also finished Virtual Training.
On the way, she kept glancing at the anime screen in the upper right corner.
Unfortunately, the anime’s time flow remained so slow it was almost frozen, still stuck on the scene where Lin Zhen was attending his second class.
Clearly, as a transitional episode, they wanted to fully cover Lin Zhen’s first year in the battle camp, so the anime scenes were quite conservative.
Yun Ruoxi felt lucky just to have snagged over a minute of screen time before.
Arriving at the cafeteria, Yun Ruoxi sat in her assigned seat and exchanged a glance with the Yellow-haired Little Girl numbered 9993.
Though exhaustion was written all over the girl’s face and her eyes held a dead, vacant look, she still struggled to force a smile.
Poor kid… even someone as strong-willed as Yun Ruoxi was developing thoughts of escape under the strain of the training space.
The other students, whose willpower was naturally weaker, fared even worse.
Yun Ruoxi looked around.
Nearly every student appeared utterly exhausted, dejected, lacking the strength to speak, mechanically tearing at the raw meat before them.
The cafeteria was deathly quiet, filled only with chewing sounds and occasional retching.
“There’s still Physical Training this afternoon. Can these guys even make it through?”
Yun Ruoxi swallowed the raw meat piece by piece, doubting it deeply.
Virtual Training was tough but ultimately just a mental trial. Poor performance in Physical Training meant real physical torment in reality.
However, it seemed the battle camp had also considered this.
***
After lunch, nearly ten thousand students were assigned to enter the Recovery Chambers, each placed into a long capsule-like machine.
“This is… a Field Therapy Device made by the battle camp?”
Inside the capsule, Yun Ruoxi curiously looked around. These Position Therapy Instruments were common in the Universal Academy and Nobility households.
They could adjust frequency and use positions to soothe and heal mental trauma and fatigue.
A very advanced type of instrument.
She hadn’t expected the Saint Hand Association to produce ten thousand of them in one go, and they weren’t limited to just Pandora-35’s battle camp.
Buzz buzz buzz!
The Field Therapy Devices activated, pale blue light waves slowly emanating from generators above.
She closed her eyes comfortably, simultaneously noticing the anime screen had resumed, now showing Lin Zhen receiving therapy.
But the calming effect of the position therapy was very strong.
Yun Ruoxi wanted to watch Lin Zhen’s side, but her spirit gradually relaxed under the device’s influence, as if soaking in a warm spring.
The fatigue accumulated in the virtual space was gently drained away, and she soon fell into a deep sleep.
***
In the afternoon.
Rejuvenated students were taken to their respective training grounds according to their classes, arriving at a giant straight running field with over a hundred lanes.
Each lane was exceptionally wide, covered in turf, roughly estimated to be about ten kilometers long.
Dozens of cylindrical robots hovered in the air, their purpose unknown.
But everyone felt uneasy around the robots, their presence causing an instinctive chill.
“I am Xia Guang, a level-six officer in the Saint Hand Association’s Combat Department.”
A cold female voice suddenly rang from above.
“I will be responsible for your physical conditioning for the next three years.”
The crowd instinctively looked up to see a stunning woman with translucent glass butterfly wings floating above the robots.
She wore a black tight-fitting suit that perfectly highlighted her slender figure.
Her glassy wings fluttered, accompanied by a faintly sweet and fishy breeze as she slowly descended before them.
Such a skillfully seductive older sister appearance was highly attractive to these kids.
Yun Ruoxi could hear some nearby boys swallowing nervously.
Still, no one knew whether this level-six officer ranked higher than Instructor Behemoth…
“Now, everyone onto the running lanes.”
Xia Guang wasted no time, immediately herding the Nine Class students onto the lanes. “Our first-year goal is physical fitness — complete the ten-kilometer track within one hour.”
One hour for ten kilometers wasn’t much of a challenge for these genetically optimized kids, whose fitness approached that of adults from Earth’s era.
So most students appeared fairly relaxed.
Only a few suspected the battle camp wouldn’t be so kind and looked worried.
Yun Ruoxi was among them.
She noticed the slight upward curl at Xia Guang’s lips and felt a chill down her spine.
The next moment.
Click, click, click… the sound of mechanisms suddenly rang out. Numerous obstacles and traps appeared on the turf lanes.
At the same time, the cylindrical robots in the air transformed, revealing bulky water cannons coldly targeting them.
Clearly, they were ready to open fire at the slightest provocation.
“The top 100 students to finish the Physical Training will receive point rewards. The bottom 100 will lose points.”
Xia Guang announced the rules coldly before the countdown began.
“Five, four…”
Yun Ruoxi quickly took her stance. Her number was 4424, fairly high in Nine Class.
So she was placed first in one of the rows.
She bent forward into a starting position, sneaking a glance at the now lively anime screen.
Whether the running field or the rules, Lin Zhen’s Third Class had identical treatment to Nine Class.
Only the instructor was a bulky, dark-faced man she didn’t recognize.
At that moment, the comment section was fervently debating the feasibility of running ten kilometers in one hour.
“As a sports student, ten kilometers is nothing. I warm up starting from a hundred kilometers (doge head holding a rose).”
“The front runners still haven’t settled enough. Aren’t we sports students supposed to warm up by running around the equator?”
“Obstacle course plus water cannons? This isn’t Physical Training, it’s a survival drill! Never have any optimism for the battle camp.”
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