Wish upon the Stars chapter 529

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'.

Once 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.

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.