Chapter 51: Training Doll
Upon arrival at the clinic, he quickly walked into the doctor’s office without even bothering to see who would be taking his vitals.
"Dale Green. Good to see you again." A familiar voice spoke slowly and Dale raised his head to see Dr Edmond.
Dr. Edmond smiled softly. "It’s good to see you here and active especially considering your previous track record of ending up hospitalized. For both our sakes, please be different this year."
Dale raised an eyebrow, "No promises. Anyway, that’s besides the point. I thought you would remain in the previous building, what are you doing here?"
The doctor smiled and twirled his moustache. "I got transferred here. Happens a lot in the military... Though I’m sure you’ll get used to it very soon."
He nodded and the doctor proceeded to take his vitals and they waved each other goodbye.
Since the assessment hadn’t yet been done, the only space available for them was an extremely large hall wide enough to contain 125 people which was exactly what it was built for. All 125 of them.
Dale entered the hall and scanned through the stacks of bunk beds placed beside each other.
While there were no distinct names, their luggage that had gone missing when they appeared was arranged neatly beside the beds.
Dale walked through slowly trying to find his. It wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be.
After all, most people’s luggages weren’t just a pair of sabers and a pair of clothes.
Eventually, he found his luggage and picked up his sabers, tying the sheaths around his waist.
’Who knows what might be on these people’s minds? For all I know, they would steal each other’s weapons just to weaken them ahead of tomorrow.’ It was certainly something he could do.
’But I’m far too pure and holy for that.’ He nodded to himself. Certainly, he was far too good for the world.
’A model citizen.’ Dale smiled and sat on the lower bunk of the bed, waiting for people to gather in the hall.
Slowly but inevitably, more than a hundred filed in and that was just for the second year of the boot camp.
Surely there were more boot camps scattered across the nation. And even in other years in their specific year.
The mental image of so many Awakened and Dormant on one battlefield seemed like a confluence of the world’s forces.
’And to think that there are most likely Ascended who’d be on the same warfront.’ It was unlikely though.
As with chess, the more powerful people were less likely to make a move at the initial stages of war. It was the pawns — the Dormant, as the case may be — who were sacrificed for strategic reasons.
Even if the ranking system wasn’t there, the war on the horizon was more than a reason to trigger his Awakening.
Now more than ever, he was tempted to meet Trevor so that the latter would help him Awaken.
’No. No. No. Don’t think about it, it’ll only lead you to your destruction.’
He stood up and walked out of the hall, ignoring his friends even as they tried to call him.
Dale didn’t have a particular destination in mind as he walked around the underground city.
Aside from the recruits, it contained a surprising number of people with shops and various buildings.
He saw a market square, a boutique, and even a dance studio.
’How bizarre.’ Dale thought as he walked into a restaurant. People, regular people he assumed, walked in and out, taking seats and looking at menus.
They had gotten paid as compensation for what happened while they were hunting the Ascended beast.
Out of the 100 credits he had, Dale spent 4 on a juicy steak and 6 on cold wine.
’Such a rip-off. The steak wasn’t that juicy nor was the wine of such high quality.’ Though he couldn’t tell, he had never drunk wine before.
But now that he was of legal age, and had the money, he wanted to try it.
Ever since the discovery of awakening pools, the legal age for ability users had dropped because of the advanced makeup of their bodies.
So instead of the standard 21, it was now 18. Needless to say, Dale quite enjoyed the taste of wine.
’It tastes amazing compared to other alcoholic drinks. Like gin for example. Who in their right mind would drink something so bitter?’ He shuddered at the thought of such masochism.
’But still 10 percent of the money I got from almost dying is gone just because I wanted to wine and dine a little? How aren’t more people poor?’
The server brought a massive black box to him and Dale raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, what is this for?"
The young man ran his eyes over Dale slowly and visibly chewed the insides of his cheek as though biting back the urge to comment.
"It’s for payment, sir. Place your watch against the box and the fee will be deducted." He eventually said.
Dale chose to ignore the meaning behind the earlier gaze and placed his watch against the box. Truly, it buzzed, 10 credits had been removed.
The server bowed slightly. "Enjoy the rest of your meal, sir." And turned away.
Dale did in fact enjoy it. It was far better than anything he had had within the previous boot camp.
’Surely a trick to make us waste more money.’ That was the only logical reason.
Eventually, he left the restaurant but didn’t return to the hall where they stayed. Instead, he walked to a small building with a sign out in front of it. ’Dojo.’
He entered and took in the surroundings. A white space with dark curves as the design.
The curves often overlapped to form chrysanthemums, a strangely haunting and beautiful pattern.
In the center of the dojo was a single humanoid wooden doll with four arms and a blank slate for a face.
Dale pulled out his sabers and took a stance as lightning arcs coursed through the surface of the blade.
Before entering the restaurant, he had made enquiries about training grounds and this was apparently the best.
In all honesty, he had thought that training spaces would just be empty grounds for people to spar. Needless to say, he was pleasantly surprised.
When he heard the cost of the room, he still remembered letting out a scream. ’40 credits per hour. Honestly still a scam.’
But for the special feature of the doll, it was worth it anyway, and not that he needed it for more than an hour.
The moment Dale took a single step forward, the surface of the doll sprang to life, clicking as pieces within it spun and rotated.
Its arms fused until they became two and a pair of sabers sprouted out of them like a growing tree.
From the blank slate, a silver light ignited where its eyes would be and with every second, it seemed to become more lifelike until it was a perfectly wooden replica of Dale.
Then it charged at him.
