Mystical Journey

Garen knew very well that this difference was like someone who had nearly completed all their credits within one year of university. Or someone taking the Gaokao and having at least 600 marks after the first year of high school.

He observed Fervale’s sword technique closely. There was a faint rhythm in it, which meant that he had evidently reached beginner-level, so he could properly deal with both offense and defense. Seeing as he was just a teenager, this was indeed remarkable.By observing like this, Garen could also more or less figure out where the martial arts development was in this world.

After Fervale came down, the second-placed Sara went up next.

She was a long-range shooter, a long-range target in the shape of a Mech rose up in the arena.

There was nothing much to see there. At five hundred meters, she scored three out of ten hits, with an accuracy rate of 30%. She also landed two out of ten hits when the target was moving, but she did not land any hits when both the target and herself were moving.

Garen calmed down instantly, there was nothing to see here at all.

“Very good! As expected of Sara, your movements are very smooth, and you could even reach such a high accuracy rate at five hundred meters away!” Instructor Hamm clapped, looking comforted.

The other students also applauded, all smiles.

Only then did Garen remember that they were just year one freshmen, most freshmen could barely even walk smoothly. It was already quite impressive to be able to control a Mech to shoot so smoothly with just your Willpower. She could even hit a target five hundred meters away without computer assistance, even though her accuracy rate was slightly on the low side.

“Last one, Nono, go!” Hamm smacked Garen’s shoulder.

Garen nodded, and walked towards the direction of the warehouse.

Sara met him from the front.

“Good luck!” She smiled at him kindly. Looking at him closely, she seemed to be slightly surprised at his uncharacteristically clean and neat look.

“Thanks.” Garen nodded politely.

Entering the warehouse, he found that it was dim and cool inside, with three Mechs standing in a row inside. There was an automated machine arm inside, attaching some components onto the Mechs.

Garen glanced at the three Mechs, they were all the standard White Swan Mechs, all purely white. These were the Blackboard Academy’s traditional Mechs, very balanced in all the stats, known for their high level of stability.

All three were white humanoids, so Garen just randomly chose one and stepped into the elevator.

Amidst a whir of movement, the black elevator brought him up to the Mech’s chest and stopped there.

With a ker-chak, the Mech’s chest opened automatically like a flower bud, revealing the control cabin inside.

Garen jumped inside directly, and the Mech’s Protection Panel closed automatically behind him.

He put on the control helmet, and a panoramic view immediately appeared in front of him, he could see the view outside, and there was a row of options beneath him that he could only see with the helmet on.

‘Please choose your Weapons Mod’

There were three mods, one long-range, one short-range, and one defense.

Garen tapped the long-range icon, after all, Nonosiva had always been using the long-range Mech.

Two more options leaped out of the long-range option, namely Twin Pistols and a Mono-Pistol

He chose Twin Pistols.

“Loading weapon mods…”

With a clacking sound, the whole Mech gave a slight jolt.

‘Loading complete. You may begin the test now.’

The Mechanical voice spoke again.

Garen activated his Willpower, inserting it into a small round hole in front of him. He waited until he felt that he had completely merged with the Mech before he tried to move.

After five whole seconds, the Mech moved slowly, and took one step forward.

“My Willpower doesn’t work at all…” Garen sighed, and took the little Moonfang out of his pocket rather helplessly, putting it on the right side of the control panel.

The Moonfang seemed to have some attraction power, it stuck tight to the control panel as soon as it was placed there, and rapidly began to glow with a white light.

Garen instantly felt a numbness like an electric current flow through his body. The sense of delay from before disappeared utterly.

“I still have to rely on this thing.”

He took a deep breath, and watched the Moonfang’s condition carefully. Last time, Nonosiva’s Mech stopped moving because the Moonfang suddenly failed, and it nearly resulted in tragedy. Now it seemed that he had used the Moonfang too much, causing it to overload.

Controlling his body, Garen strode out of the warehouse. The world instantly brightened as the sunlight outside his eyes, unnaturally bright, and even slightly piercing.

The contents of the test were some basic movements, and then a set of standard battle skill simulations.

Garen chose the Twin Pistols, so his simulation contents were not unlike Sara’s.

A Mech target rose up five hundred meters away.

Garen stood at the warehouse entrance and raised his two guns, releasing the safeties. These were not laser guns but guns with metal bullets, so they had some rebound.

Bang bang!

After two gunshots, the target in the distance lit up, which evidently meant that he had hit them.

That was two consecutive hits, and it raised a slight murmur of surprise from the surrounding students.

Garen glanced sideways and saw that even Instructor Hamm looked surprised, so he decided to tone it down a little. To him, someone who was already a peak-level martial arts grandmaster, he had extremely precise control over his body. Hitting a target five hundred meters away was a piece of cake, after all, the target was a five-meter-tall Mech.

The second time, Garen purposely pressed the barrels down.

After two more gunshots, he did not hit anything.

There was a murmur of pity from the side.

Garen took some time to glance at the Moonfang, the white light on it was twinkling, unlike during the online simulation battles last night. After all, he was driving a real Mech now, so it definitely took a lot more effort.

He did not move much, and shot off the remaining rounds calmly.

In the end, he landed three out of ten hits, just like Sara.

After that was the moving target.

One hit.

When he had to move with the target, he also missed all the shots.

In the last bit, when he had to move with the target, Garen watched in terror as the Moonfang began to emit smoke, the twinkling light growing more and more urgent. He knew that after it was damaged once, the Moonfang had also become extremely fragile. In the past, such movements would not be any problem whatsoever.

“The test is over.” Instructor Hamm’s voice came in through the barrier.

Only then did Garen quickly stop moving, and began walking towards the warehouse slowly.

By the time he walked to the spot in the warehouse where he was supposed to park his Mech, the Moonfang’s white light had already dimmed down. It looked like it was at the end of its tether, and was scalding hot to the touch.

Garen took off his helmet, and lifted his hand to see the time on his white watch.

“Approximately eleven minutes, perhaps slightly longer. The Mech can’t move too quickly, even if I maintained the same slow pace as I had in the end, I can probably only last for fifteen minutes max.”

“Looks like I have no choice but to be a long-range shooter.” Garen felt helpless, he still needed to be a long-range defensive shooter, because that only required very simple movements, and did not involve complicated movements with his whole body.

Picking up the Moonfang that was still burning his hand, Garen got out of the cockpit, and stepped onto the elevator.

Aier was already waiting for him in the warehouse below.

“Not bad!” Aier patted Garen’s arm with a laugh.

“It was only okay,” Garen smiled.

He was still worried about the Moonfang, he did not know how long it would take for this thing to recover.

“Nonosiva, would you like to fight a match with me?” A calm voice came suddenly from the warehouse entrance.

Garen and Aier looked up to see Fervale standing at the warehouse entrance, looking their way.

“A match?” Garen frowned. “I’m not interested.”

Fervale was slightly stunned, it did not seem to occur to him that Garen would reject him so decisively.

He had also seen how smoothly Garen was controlling the Mech, he had achieved Sara’s results with relative ease, and had evidently not used all of his power. That was why Fervale grew interested, but he did not think that the other party would reject him so directly.

He was not very good at speaking, so he also could not think of what to say there. Normally, once he asked, he would rarely ever get rejected. After all, his family background and his own excellent performance made the other students in his class unable to reject him.

After a pause.

“Fine, then,” he said calmly after recovering. “The person you injured that day, some people from his family are at the staffroom now. Instructor Hamm pressed down that incident that day, but I think it’s not over yet. You be careful now.”

“Thank you.” Garen had thought about that himself as well, but now that Fervale was warning him as well, he began to pay more attention to it.

In actuality, it was his acting up last time that got the opponent spooked, that was why his opponent just froze there, and was finally hit by his retaliating shot. Half of his body had been burned up, and he nearly lost his life as well. It was all thanks to the wonders of medical technology that he got out of the hospital one month earlier than Garen.

If Garen was still paralyzed in bed, perhaps the other guy might let him go. But now that he had somehow left the hospital good as new, the other person was probably going to try something else.

Walking out of the warehouse with Aier, Fervale left the arena directly, walking towards the other arena, probably in order to watch how the students from other schools fared in their ranking tests.

Garen greeted the instructor, and seeing that most of the other students had scattered to watch the other matches, Garen found an opportunity to walk with the instructor alone.

“Instructor Hamm, I wanted to ask, how’s the family background of that student I accidentally injured last time?”

Instructor Hamm did not look particularly surprised.

“Did they find you?”

“No, Fervale just reminded me there, so I wanted to know more about them,” Garen replied honestly.

“That student’s name is Corlan, someone in his family is an instructor at the academy, with decent ability, I guess. Don’t worry, I’ll help out with this matter, after all it was all just an accident, nobody meant for it to end that way,” Instructor Hamm lit a cigarette and spoke after taking one puff.

“Thank you, Instructor,” Garen nodded, even though he was inwardly not bothered.

Leave the instructor, he split up with Aier, and took one round around the arena, watching the tests in the other arenas.

The Mechs were engaged in intense battle, their movements quick and fluid. Their techniques and skills were no lower than what Garen understood as third- or second-rate combat skills, and there were many complicated and precise movements as well. But most of these were undergoing a higher-level test.

Even so, he had garnered a clearer understanding of this world.

Although he was a Secret Technique Grandmaster, and had been at the peak of his era, the martial arts skills here were pretty decent as well, and they could develop into something even greater. Some of these combination skills, and all those powerful combinations of cold and hot weapons, created all sorts of strange effects. Without an understanding of how the opponent’s weapons worked, and if they used peak-level combat skills, perhaps even Garen could fall to such an opponent at his current level. After all, his body was way too weak, nowhere near as powerful as he was in his previous lives.

After taking one round, he went back to the dorms directly, and began to train diligently.

Right now, his biggest problem was that his power was not his own, and came instead from the Moonfang. Should he be discovered, that would be in violation of academy rules, and he would be guilty of lying to the administration. They might even disable his Willpower altogether.