Chapter 116

Xiao Lin continuously swore and guaranteed he would take his life seriously and finally managed to subdue Song Junlang’s suspicions. Song Junlang finally agreed to look for a place to train with him in the city the next day.

As the central city of the American colonists, there were an immense amount of graduates there. Even after leaving the academy, people there would still take the time to train and improve their abilities, which led to the establishment of training halls in the city.

The next morning, Song Junlang woke Xiao Lin up very early. He told him if he really wanted to train then, he needed to be early; There might not be any spots later. He then told him about the training halls.

“New Washington has a lot of training halls of various levels. The low-leveled ones are similar to the ones in school. The mid-level ones have a lot of weapon facilities, as well as specialized instructors who are usually part of the military. Their skills may not be ranked high, but they have plenty of combat experience. They also provide specialized sparring, but don’t even think about it. The sparring partners here are all at least Black-Iron rank; against you, it wouldn’t even be called training. It’d be a beating.”

Xiao Lin did not listen to Song Junlang’s further explanations; he just asked, “Then what about the high-level ones?”

“That’s very expensive!”

“How expensive?”

“I remember the price used to be around three or four hundred New Dollars, but I’m not sure if the price has gone up.”

“Three to four hundred dollars for a day is pretty okay.”

Song Junlang corrected him. “It’s not a day, it’s for an hour.”

Xiao Lin was shocked. His wages in New Washington were 400 New Dollars a day. He has already earned 2800 New Dollars after a week of working with Professor Brown. He was not sure how much buying power that had, but Song Junlang did tell him the income was quite good. However, just an hour of training in the high-level training halls would set him back by a day’s worth of wages. That fee was really quite exorbitant.

Song Junlang saw the look on Xiao Lin’s face and shook his head. “I told you it was expensive. You don’t even need to think about it.”

Xiao Lin thought about it and did not immediately reject it. “What do the high-level training halls provide?”

“Ah, the high-level training halls have the newest virtual battle systems. It can automatically generate opponents that you need to face. It’s pretty advanced stuff–only invented about five to six years ago. It can be considered the pinnacle of fusions between science and alchemy.”

With a sigh, Song Junlang looked at Xiao Lin’s puzzled expression, and continued to explain, “Have you played online games before? This virtual battle system would give you a 0 level 0 attribute and 0 skill character for you to freely customize by yourself. After that, the character would virtually fight you, and because it’s a virtual fight, there’s no risk of injury.”

Xiao Lin finally understood, and was quite intrigued. This battle system sounded really impressive, so he asked, “Why don’t we have this system at the academy?”

Song Junlang laughed. “This system was originally researched to be built in the academies, but they realized later that the cost of building it was way too high. A lot of the materials needed were quite rare, and the manufacturing costs were expensive as well. None of the academies had the ability to install it, so it ended up in the hands of private investors. That led to the opening of training halls in the colonial territories, and the income was quite good, so it was a profitable venture. There are only two high-level training halls in the whole of New Washington.”

“Let’s go take a look.”

“No problem. It’s your own money after all!”

The training hall was situated in the army district, which was in the south-eastern corner of the city. The army district was actually not where the troops were garrisoned. In truth, the soldiers of New Washington, which were the dragon-eagle knights, were stationed outside the city. The army district was where all the facilities which had to do with training, and was where weapons and gear were situated.

Entering the army district, Xiao Lin could feel that everyone there had a different kind of attire compared to those in other districts. Most of the people there were either wearing a suit of armor or mage’s robes. The majority of the people there were colonists, but there were also a small number of Normans. The most interesting ones were a few sharp-eared elves with mildly green skin. Xiao Lin was a bit excited when he saw the elves, but Song Junlang told him it was nothing to gawk at.

America had signed a nonaggression pact with the elves a long time ago, so them appearing in New Washington was a very common matter.

The high-level training hall that Song Junlang talked about was very eye-catching. It was probably the building that occupied the largest area here, and there was already a huge queue in front of the hall.

Xiao Lin gaped. He thought there would not be so many people at such an expensive facility, but it turned out to be so popular.

Song Junlang went over and chatted with one of the Americans before returning, “How unlucky. The other training hall is closed for repairs today, so everyone ended up here instead.”

Xiao Lin looked at the queue with a troubled expression.

Song Junlang asked, “Do you really want to go in?”

Xiao Lin nodded earnestly.

Song Junlang then said, “Then go look for Hank. We should have just looked for him when we headed out earlier! We’re diplomats, so we should get some special treatment…right?”

“Why are you so uncertain?”

Hank was usually at an office next to the castle. That was pretty much Judge Academy’s foreign affairs office, specially there to handle matters related to other academies. Hank was in charge of the Dawn Academy.

It took them some time to locate Hank. When Hank heard what they wanted, his attitude was a lot better than what they expected. He passionately assured them that, as invitees of Judge Academy, they would be given special priority. That training hall actually had a good relationship with Judge Academy, so he could be of great help with the matter.

Song Junlang was curious about his attitude, but Hank very quickly thanked Xiao Lin. It turned out Hank had gone to Professor Brown to ask about the work they were doing, and Xiao Lin had gotten some praise from Professor Brown thanks to his hard work.

Even though they were invited over, Judge Academy obviously wanted the money they spent to count, so they would ask for an update from Professor Brown every week to prevent anyone from earning an empty wage.

It seemed like Xiao Lin’s hard work for the whole week really paid off. On the way to the army district, Hank beat his chest, saying he could get Xiao Lin a discount thanks to his personal relationships.”

“Could I get a fifty percent discount?” Xiao Lin asked in anticipation.

“No! five percent!”

Xiao Lin’s eye twitched, not knowing what to say.

Hank let out a dry cough. “You need to understand, maintaining the virtual battle system costs a lot. Even though the training hall is supported by our academy, it’s still a private venture in the end, so they can’t really give too much of a discount.”