My head was laid in a nice white pillow, and my neck was supported properly. They provided me with a bed, slightly larger for one person. My room was quite spacious. There was plenty of room left even after they gave me the desk, wardrobe, sofa, and guest table. Not like I was going to have guests anytime soon, though. They even prepared you with a cleaning drone, which made the room constantly in the best condition. The carpet was soft, but not as soft as the headmaster's room. My room felt neat, with clean white wall panels, wide windows, and minimum decorations. It was fine like that. Fine indeed, and I finally have my own time to enjoy it. Kind of.

I held my tabs casually in my hand. One other hand was busy rubbing and pressing the virtual picture on the screen. It was part of my responsibility to maintain public relations through net social media. Previously I hid my account with a random username, @reddevil6. Then I had to use @heroarmenofficial. It was super embarrassing. If it wasn’t because of one of the tasks in the contract, I wouldn’t be doing this. I had been editing my picture from yesterday's practice to make myself look good and inspiring.

“As the image of the hero of the academy, Armen G. Dalton must maintain his presence in the net as a role model for the other students. He also needs to take responsibility as a part of the visual representation of the academy.” Something like that.

And with some light manipulation and hair retouching, that would be all. The picture taken from yesterday's practice was looking good. But I had to make sure that my aunt was not a part of it. For an obvious reason. The people from the Pharma-C organization would track her faster. It was unavoidable that I became a celebrity, but we had to minimize the chance of them getting intel as much as we could.

There, uploaded. Phew!

Even if I lifted a finger to do it, my muscle was aching really hard. Yesterday training was pretty hardcore after all. We ended up practicing medium rate body enhancement techniques up to 50%. She said that was fine since I was planning to take a break the next day. That resulted in various muscle pain in my whole body. Hence, I had been laying down in bed since the morning, unable to move much. Thankfully, the academy had a droid delivery for meals. I didn’t get starved to death. But really, my muscles felt burned and throbbing all the way.

I finally gave up fighting the pain and remembered one thing. Aunt Penny gave me a mutagen injector. It was something about jellyfish. She said that it will help me heal muscle super fast with just a minor side effect. I refused to use such a weird thing, injecting my body with stuff from animals or monsters. Gross. but I had enough with this pain.

I crawled onto the edge of my bed to get my bag. I found it. The injector was in the shape of a large pen. The packaging said ‘Mediterranean Clytia Jellyfish Mutagen; Heal wounds, muscle pain, and regenerate minor loss of flesh’.

Right, here we go.

I injected it in my arm. I felt a sharp stab followed by some rush of fluid. It wasn’t so bad. I went to inspect the packaging once more to see the details on how it works.

‘Warning, loss control of muscle may occur. Please make sure that you are resting in bed. Also, it would be best to have someone to watch over you--’

Shit! For real? It won’t be that bad, right?

There was no going back, but so far I didn’t feel a thing.

Yep, no problem. Still in pain, though.

The day was still long, and I didn’t feel like taking a nap anytime soon. Might as well check up on instafame to see how things turned out. I rested myself with the pillows, felt comfortable and browsed in my tabs.

“First let’s check up on the latest feed.” I mumbled as I scrolled.

I found a picture of Sarah. She and some people posed with a big wolf, grinning widely as they pet the beast. It looked like a documentation of the animal club activity. I’m happy for you, girl.

I continued scrolling, and the notifications were stacking up. It was probably the reaction from my latest picture upload. I decided to check it later since it would keep on popping up for a while. As expected of an account of a celebrity. I Just continued scrolling until I stopped at a picture of Kevin. He was doing some maintenance of a human-sized robot. He finally found a club that fits his interest. Good for you, Kevin. You find yourself useful, huh?

As I admired the complexity of that machine he was tinkering, an interesting notification popped in.

! @Chocorocco commented on your picture.

“What? it couldn’t be-”

I tapped that pop up and found the section of that comment.

“Seems like you’ve been training hard. Great! See you tomorrow at the gym. Our battle will be legendary!” 169 people liked this comment.

Ah yes. That was our lovely friend Rocco. After weeks of combat practice and theory, we would finally have real combat sparring between the students. I came to think about his words back then and finally reached some conclusions. He was probably going to challenge me in a sparring match to show himself. To reveal that I was a fraud, fake hero, or something like that. I would love to play it low and lose, but the image of a hero was part of the deal with the academy. I couldn’t afford to make myself appear lame. Sorry Rocco, I can’t lose... Ah? He actually followed me.

I might as well follow his account and investigate.

His account was filled with training pictures, like an athlete or fitness kind of influencer. And also chocolate flavored protein shake. It was fun to find out what kind of person he was portraying to be. Until I found a picture of him and his father. That was the moment when I came to understand a bit of his situation.

He was the only son of Roger Grayfield, a retired military general. He retired early due to physiological wounds on the battlefield 8 years ago. Could it be PTSD?

Rocco was also blessed with two cute little sisters. They shared the same exotic brownish skin tone as him. One seemed a couple years younger, the other seemed just turned 7 last year. I see. The name of the Grayfield family relies on the only eldest son, Rocco. But still, that doesn’t justify acting like an ass to me.

As I tried to scroll further on the app, I suddenly lost control of my thumbs. No, it was more like losing strength. My tabs fell onto my lip.

“Ow. What the heck?”

I noticed that my forearm was in an arch, curving like a bridge. I tried to hold it, only to notice that the fingers in my other hand were wriggling like noodles.

“Wha? Wa his habening do me?”

My speeches started to slur like a drunken sailor. I even lost control over my jaw.

Ah, the mutagen.

It came late to me to realize what happened. I glanced again into the packaging. ‘Side effects may last up to 12 hour’. Thus, for the rest of the day I had to accept the fact that I have become a boneless rubber man.

***

This morning was different than our usual routine as the military program student. We were having some physical test to gauge our abilities. They’ll have us test our strength, agility, dexterity and stamina. Most of the contents of the test were quite simple. We were ordered to lift weight, run, dodge, and use weapons.

And there I was at the top of my game.

“Whoa look at that, Armen hitting the weight” I heard someone murmuring. That made me a little nervous. “He looks so... fresh and full of energy.”

Damn right I do. Thanks to that weird jelly mutagen.

That guy made me remember those hours of being stuck as a living pudding. But I couldn’t complain since the result was astonishing. I felt like a new man. And with this prime condition, I wouldn’t have much problem to leave a good mark as a ‘hero’.

I decided to go with a 12kg weight for my arm and leg test.

Let’s do this!

***

In my sweaty hands, I was holding a card they gave me for the physical result. It was made of similar materials like a tabs but thinner and lighter. A simple digital screen could be seen. It was written like this:

ARMEN G. DALTON Physical Test Results

Based on the Newman Scale

Strength 2.1

Agility 2.3

Dexterity 2.8

Stamina 2.5

PHYSICAL RANK D+

D+? Is that bad? Or good? I have no idea!

The results were not that confidential. Some Students actually took a picture and posted it on net social media to brag. While the others were keeping it as a secret for their own reason. And of course, me as a mascot of the academy faced a dilemma. Whether I should reveal it and brag or keep it hidden for my own safety.

“How’s your result?”

A familiar voice. I turned around to check and guessed right. That silver blondie Erran smirking while waving his test result.

“Of course, you came to check up on me.” I threw away my face, annoyed.

“Yep, I gotta make sure our hero exceeded our expectations.” A grin, ear to ear, and a wink. Ugh, that disgusting face again.

“By the way, here’s mine” Without hesitation, he showed me his test results.

ERRAN VOLK OZBROJENY Physical Test Results

Based on the Newman Scale

Strength 1.8

Agility 2.1

Dexterity 2.9

Stamina 1.5

PHYSICAL RANK D

Whoa, surprisingly he has a higher Dexterity than me. Too bad I didn’t get to see him in action.

He smiled and sat next to me. “I have been trained to use weapons since I was a child. Resulting in my high dexterity, as you can see there.”

“Uh.” I just grunt noncommittally. I didn’t ask about it, though.

The dude combed his silver hair and stared.

“Sooo?”

“So what?” I replied with a lack of enthusiasm.

“I showed you my results. Now it’s a common courtesy for you to show me your secret too.” His eyes were sparkling.

I gave up since I didn’t want to start a stupid debate. I gave him the card. He scanned it briefly and gave a little thought. “Hmm”

“what?”

“I thought you could do better than this.” He passed the card back to me.

“Why? is it bad?” I started to get worried.

“Nope. That’s an excellent result, probably top 10 in the freshman.”

“You mean that it’s not good enough?”

He was about to answer, but paused for a second, thinking. “No, not that.” His statement gave me more confusion.

“When you were being nursed after the bull incident, I asked for the physical scan results on your body. I think you should get a higher score than this. But I guess the machine was not accurate.”

That information gave me some insight.

“Must be that jelly doing.” I might feel fresh and full of energy. But when I tried to use my body during the test, my muscles still didn’t feel right. Perhaps the healing was still ongoing.

“Jelly? What jelly?” Erran heard that part and got curious.

“Nope, nevermind.”

“Anyway” I tried to change the topic. “What do you think about my result?”

Erran seemed happy and gave a good thought about what he would say.

“Well, the Newman scale pretty much explains everything.”

I knew we studied about the scaling system in the first week of class, but I wasn’t really sure what it meant. So I asked, “Meaning?”

“The basic Armen.” He inhaled some air, prepared to dump some heavy information. “Just like what we learned. Pre-war humans are rated at 1.0 on average. Soldiers, maybe 1.5 to 2.5. You know what the number means?”

“Uh-huh. It’s like exponential scaling or something.”

“Right. The measurements increase exponentially. Scale 2 is twice stronger than scale 1. Scale 3 is two times stronger than scale 2.”

I interrupted to make a guess. “So, scale 3 is four times stronger than scale 1 then?”

“Correct.” He then pulled his tabs from his sport bags ten meters away with telekinetic.

Whoa. He can do that with such precision. I didn’t know he’s a fine user.

“But the way that the calculation works for the other attributes are different.” He showed me a bunch of formulas on his tabs.

“Agility, Dexterity are a bit difficult to estimate. Since there are a lot of factors involved. Stamina and strength, however, are pretty much easy to measure in numbers.”

My head started boiling for the accumulated information.

“Alright, alright.” I need to stop him from talking further. “But that still didn’t answer my question. How’s my result?”

He gave a sigh, disappointed like a warded off salesman. He then opened up the tabs to check the net social media app and typed #physicaltestresults.

“Here. First, take a look at how others fare.” He let me borrow his expensive looking tabs. I took it and started scrolling.

“I see.” A lot of these stupid teenagers were showing off their results in their Instafame account. After a while, I reached a conclusion on some average numbers for a normal student. Most of them have less than 1.5 score in their scale. When you got over 2, you could brag like a boss. It was highly regarded as an amazing result. Based on the latest survey, most of the freshmen usually have a physical rank E. That category was based on their average score above 1.1, less than that would mark you at rank F. In short, weaker than the average pre-war human.

One post was above many others with a lot of reposting, comments and likes. It was a picture of the test result from @chocorocco. He was smiling widely next to his card. Ah, my best friend.

ROCCO GRAYFIELD Physical Test Results

Based on the Newman Scale

Strength 2.7

Agility 2.0

Dexterity 2.3

Stamina 2.7

PHYSICAL RANK D+

“Whoa, he’s tough just as he looks.” Erran leaned on me to get a glimpse of the picture. I gave the tabs back to him.

“Yeah…” I feel discouraged. Dude was almost twice stronger than me, and he aimed his crosshair into my head. I would die for real.

A small cheer could be heard from the female test area. I could see Ellie was welcomed by a bunch of other girls. It seemed like she made quite some friends. They were giggling and joking around like normal teenagers. One girl asked her about the result and surprisingly she showed it to them easily. It felt strange to see such an amazing act. Or was she being genuine?

Another strange thing was a sudden click, right next to my ear.

“Got em!” Erran was holding his tabs, taking a picture of something.

“What did you do?” That was a stalker move. I couldn’t imagine if anyone would find out. We’ll get lynched!

“Here, take a look.” He showed me the picture, zoomed in on one of the girl’s butts.

“Ah Security! I’m not involved in this--” I turned my head around, pleading my innocence.

“Sorry, I meant this.” He zoomed in onto the card Ellie was holding. As expected of an expensive gadget, the picture resolution was remarkable. I could read the whole details clearly.

ELLIE YURI Physical Test Results

Based on the Newman Scale

Strength 1.6

Agility 2.6

Dexterity 2.5

Stamina 2.5

PHYSICAL RANK D+

“I have seen you take an interest in her. So, I thought you might want this information.” He smiled his corporate smile.

“Uh, thanks. How perceptive of you.” I gave a sarcastic tone to dig up his motive.

“Well, I actually grew some interest in her too.”

“And why is that?” I asked and paid a closer look at his expression for clues.

“Why indeed.”

The dude stood up and chuckled. “You know what? I’m pretty sure that big dude will have you as his sparring partner.” He paused, thinking for a second, “If you beat him, I’ll tell you more about the black-haired girl.”

“What? What do you know about her?”

Erran started to laugh and walked away.

“Make sure that you put up a good show. Remember about the contract, eh?”

“Hey, wait!” As I got up to chase him, a whistle was blown in the middle of the gym. The next phase of the physical test was about to begin.

***

“Alright Greenhorn, my name is Hector. It’s Mr. Hector to you. I will be your combat instructor for the next physical activity.”

Not Mr. Ivanov, huh?

It was a man with a crew cut, bulky as a cow on steroids. Huge, but not as huge as Mr. Ivanov. The only other person rivalling that size was Rocco, who was standing a few strides away from where I stood.

“As you have heard, we will be having a sparring session right now. This is to determine how far you have learned in these 3 weeks of basic training. And also--”

We were told to stand in line, standby position. There was no other choice but to listen to the opening speech. To sum it up, the sparring session will score and sort out the ability of the students. The best few candidates will be an assistant to teach the other students combat skills. Since in the field, the graduated student will mostly become an officer. The ability to be strong and to teach other soldiers will be indispensable.

“The rules are simple. No targeting eyes and hitting the groin. Try not to hit too hard and kill your opponents. Well, that’s what I’m here for.” He chuckled, finding his own words funny. The students cringed hard. In the silence he coughed and cleared his throat. “Only minor body enhancement is allowed. That means no higher than 15%. Elemental manipulation is also forbidden. We want to see your physical performance only for now.”

Shit! I couldn’t use my telekinetic ability? that’s bad.

Suddenly I saw a young man in the front line raising his hand.

“We can’t use telekinetic too?” He asked.

“Are you deaf, kid? I said no elemental manipulation! Telekinetic is the same thing.” The young man slumped in embarrassment. Well, I couldn’t blame him. Some people still got confused with the term they used. Elemental manipulation was just a more in depth way to describe the ability of moving things with our mind.

“No more stupid question, I suppose?” He stared for a second into some random directions. “Alright then, let’s start right away.”

He was looking into his forearm guard. A tabs was securely attached to it. Some list of names and details appeared in front of him.

“We will start with our best student to give a great example of a proper fight.” A profile was shown on his tabs. “Rocco Grayfield! Please move forward.”

The big, dark-skinned young man walked into the front of the line. Everyone was expecting this, but they were still amazed by the intensity that he gave off.

“Rocco Grayfield! Standing by, ready for action, Sir!”

“Yeah, obviously.” He chuckled. Once again nobody followed what was funny. “Uhm. Rocco, you have proven yourself with excelling in both the entrance exam and today's test--.”

“Thank you sir!”

Mr. Hector paused for a second, either amazed or annoyed by Rocco’s intensity.

“That gives you the right to show us some examples of proper fight. Also, you can choose the first sparring partner. Better choose a good one, someone who can keep up with you.”

“Already got that in mind, sir.” He turned around, smiled and glanced at me. That triggered everyone to look at me as well. “Armen G. Dalton!”

What a surprise.

“Great, now go get your sparring gear and prepare ASAP.” He pointed to a droid carrying two sport bags. Me and Rocco immediately went into the side of the gym and checked it out. Not much, just a knuckle wrap, a boxing head protector, and a mouth guard. We started to gear up right away. While I was busy wrapping my hands, I saw someone at the distance. Mr. Ivanov and the Headmaster Gabe stood on the second viewing floor. Shit! The bigshots are watching!

I felt nervous. I heard that talking before getting onto the stage may be a good idea, but I got no one to talk. Except for this muscular young man next to me. Then again, looking at his muscles granted me a good idea of a conversation topic.

“Hey, Rocco. Those muscles are huge. Must be training hard, huh?”

What the hell am I saying?

He glanced with an eyebrow raised.

I need to clear any misunderstanding! Quick, any related topic will do!

“Have you tried jellyfish mutagen?”

He was looking at me, frowning.

“Yeah, once. That was the worst.” He finished his knuckle wrappings.

“It felt like your body turned into a--”

“Jelly pudding.” I added.

“Exactly. A Jelly” He chuckled and put the headgear on.

“What’s with you, Hero? Suddenly striking a conversation? Trying to get into my mind?”

“Nope, just a little bit nervous and trying to get rid of it.”

Rocco just laughed hard at my retort.

“Thank you for your good sense of humour. But I'm still gonna beat you hard.” He put on the mouth guard and walked away.

That was a great topic to talk about. Way to go, me!

I finished equipping myself with all the gear. I walked slowly into the arena with wobbly feet. It was either because of my nerves or the mutagen, but they indeed felt like jelly.