In my life, I'd been through plenty of unique and often unpleasant experiences. I'd had ribs broken, been stabbed in the gut, been beaten, and a host of other torments. All of these things had sort of crowded my memory, and made it difficult to remember EARLIER pain and hardship, which paled in comparison. Yet, despite the scale of it being dramatically different, there was one pre-ascendant hell that I still remembered with absolute clarity. Alarms.

I HATED waking up to alarms. It was the one guaranteed way to completely ruin the quality of my sleep and destroy any sense of wellbeing I gained from slumber. I looked back on the few times I'd found it necessary to awaken to an alarm with disdain and irritation.

The first morning in the training camp cleansed me of all those memories. I no longer looked back on alarms with loathing or disdain. My entire concept of an unpleasant wakeup was washed clean by the absolute HELL that was "Reivelle'.

One could be forgiven for not understanding how awful it was from the word itself. Reveille sounded light and airy, almost charming. It did NOT sound, just from hearing it, like a wall of screeching sound that pounded your eardrums like a drop hammer as you writhed in impotent agony on your bed, clawed from slumber by the shrieking wail of a sound that reminded you of nothing so much as a flock of geese being run through a rusty trash compactor.

I rolled clear out of my bed, hitting the floor with a surprising amount of force and grunting as I dragged myself up off the floor, disoriented and in legitimate pain from what was basically a sonic attack. I looked around, finding my friends for the most part just as disoriented, though Abel and Callen both seemed only minorly annoyed as they calmly got up and started changing into our new uniforms.

Armor would be waiting until the end of the first week, as per the contract, at least our personal sets. We'd have an assigned set of gear for battles so we would be a cohesive part of the unit and those would be passed out fairly soon.

Once we finished changing we were called outside, and we all stumbled out the door, blinking sleepily in the far too bright morning sun, the far too cold air like razor blades on our skin as we puffed out small clouds of steam. Camden was there, as were the girls, on the other side, and a series of stern looking figures I didn't recognize but pretty much already hated just from context.

"Good morning." Called Camden sadistically (he may have just been speaking normally, I'll admit I might have been projecting). "Welcome to your first day of training. Beside me are your instructors. Each of them is an experienced warrior proficient in a certain skill, and they'll be passing those skills on to you. Weapons training, formations, conditioning, and any number of other important and useful skillsets will be yours to acquire in this camp."

He gestured to the tall, dark skinned man beside him with a close cropped dark beard and piercing green eyes. "This is Commander Hamill. He will be in charge of your physical conditioning drills. While most of you are already familiar with combat, the ability to function and push through pain on a C-ranked planet is one that must be honed. It will be unpleasant, but it will probably save your lives in the field."

I grimaced at the thought, but he wasn't wrong. Being able to get tired again was a big change, and learning to work through it would be integral to being able to function in combat. Most of us were so far from human on lower ranked planets we barely even remembered what getting tired was. I'd already experienced some of that when we got here, but I had a feeling I'd be gaining a new appreciation for it before the day was done.

Camden continued, introducing the other trainers, then turned and nodded to Hamill, who stepped forward, glaring coldly at us. He gestured behind him. "Between those two buildings, one of which is the mess hall and the other being the healer's quarters, you will find a freshly dragged dirt path. At the beginning of that path you will find a rack, and on that rack are weighted vests. You will each take a vest and begin running laps. You will not stop until given permission."

Forcing myself to start moving, I wondered why in the name of the Revenant I had been excited about this? My head hurt, my eyes hurt, my fucking skin hurt, and that was just from the abrupt wakeup. Benny, who was stumbling along next to me, looked almost as bad. Despite having much lower stats, his might was four hundred points higher than mine because he was so specialized. Lucky bastard.

The rest of the company looked even worse, and I was deeply thankful for the extra Impact we'd picked up in the Glade, which was clearly blunting our reaction to the pressure more than I had realized. Of course, once we reached the rack and took down the vests, I quickly realized that wasn't going to be as helpful as I'd have liked.

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Strapping the thing on, I started running, almost staggering under the weight at first before I forced myself to push through it. Callie fell into step next to me, dark circles under her eyes. Even in agony of my own, I had to shoot her a teasing grin. "So...how's your morning going?"

"Jump in a hole." She growled, her irritated gaze locked on the distant horizon as we ran. "A deep one. Full of spikes."

Laughter really was the best medicine, because my cackle of glee made me feel infinitely better as I picked up my pace a bit. "Love you too honey." Taking pity on my girlfriend, I left her to wallow as I turned to talk to Benny. "So, what do you think they'll serve for breakfast. I'm fucking starving."

My best friend's face took on a greenish tinge. "Don't bring up food right now. Imagining eating is making me motion sick. I'm glad they didn't feed us before this. We'd be puking our guts out."

The mental imagine made me cringe. He was right, but I wish he'd phrased it different. As we ran, I was reminded of all the terrible sensations I'd felt as a normal human being. My knees were throbbing, my lungs were burning, and I had a stitch in my side. Even my Vitality wasn't enough to offset the pain.

I desperately wanted to heal myself, but part of the contracts had been amended for this exact situation. We WERE allowed to heal, but only after the entire day's training was done. I now thoroughly understood why Camden hadn't been worried about it. We were still getting the full effect of the training this way.

In fact, knowing I could have healed myself at any time and been full of energy was making the pain WORSE, because it all felt so damned pointless. I just had to push through it, watching the blue leaved trees as they slowly crept by, trying not to focus on the agony that was my entire body and losing myself in the staccato rhythm of feet pounding dirt.

We ran. And ran. And ran some more. Did I mentioned the running? Finally, Hamill stepped out into the path in front of us, signifying it was time to stop.

Rather than coming to a halt, most of us just dropped to the dirt where we were, caked in sweat and panting as we twitched on the ground. The impassive looking Commander nodded. "Good. That was exactly what we needed." He looked down at the path, a circular track we'd run dozens of times, and tapped it with his boot. "You packed the dirt down. Now the track is ready for use. All of you hit the mess hall. Once you eat we can start that actual training."

We all stared at him, horrified, before glancing down at the dirt path which, as he'd said, had been packed down hard by our boots as we ran.

I almost wanted to say something, but I was saved by the fact that my lungs were in too much agony to easily speak. So just like everyone else I watched in silence as he turned and strode off. Crawling over to Benny, I used him as a handhold to lift myself up, climbing to my feet painfully. I considered taking off the vest, but decided against it since no one else was.

Benny glared at me from the ground, and I almost offered a hand, but I didn't think I had the strength to actually lift him, especially in his vest. Instead, I walked over and offered my hand to Callie, who was much smaller and weighed less IN the vest then Benny did without one.

The vests were weighted with more than physical weight too. They were F-ranked materials themselves, which added to the strain. My best friend flipped me off but crawled over to help Celine, and then we all headed for the mess hall as a group. I debated finding the others, but I was pretty sure they could track us down, and I was too sore to delay. It felt like it took an hour to drag myself to the building indicated, but apparently it was only a few minutes, because there was still plenty of food when we arrived.

I'd expected shitty food, but they'd kind of gone all out. Eggs, bacon, sausage, a full breakfast including fresh squeezed juice from some native fruit called a gwunch (disgusting name, but a pretty decent taste, kind of like a mix between a guava and a pineapple) that I had four glasses of.

Mentally, I knew I shouldn't fill up. I knew that it would make working out worse, but between the hunger of having recently woken up and the hunger of my body trying to repair itself, I had no choice but to pig out. It. Tasted. Amazing. I didn't know if that was due to the cooking or my hunger and I didn't care. I just devoured the stuff.

Once I finished eating, I shoved the plate forward and let my head thunk onto the table, groaning in relief at the sheer ecstasy of not moving. I heard a chuckle and had to lever my head up to see a lanky, olive skinned blonde woman and a short, powerfully built tan man with red hair. They both looked... better than I did. The woman grinned at me. "First time doing an adjustment drill?" She asked with a chuckle.

I meant to respond, but all that came out was something like. "Urgh." Which just made both of them laugh harder.

"It gets easier." She promised. "Once you acclimate to the pressure. The thing they don't tell you is the drills don't just help you push through the pain, they also teach you how to properly leverage your muscles. Might is what decides your output, but just because you're strong doesn't mean you know how to engage your strength. It's an important skill, and not one that many people bother with."

I hadn't really thought of it that way, but it did make sense. "Thanks." I grunted, managing speech this time. "Solomon." I jerked my head in either direction to indicate Benny and Callie. "Clockwork, Nightstrike." Then nodded to our fourth party member, who also seemed surprisingly unbothered. "Celine."

The woman laughed again. "Loretta. And this is Owen. We've been mercs for a few decades, though we're new to the planet. Tell you what, stick with us an we'll help you navigate the ins and outs of the first few days." I nodded gratefully and forced my hand up, holding it out slowly to shake. Which they both did. Two new friends on the first day wasn't bad. I just wished I wasn't so sure my day was going to get much worse from here on out.