My Infinite Investment System

Chapter 31: Review Board

The accelerated review notice reached Seven-B before Ryan’s ribs stopped objecting to stairs.

Mika read it beside the operations wall while the doctor checked his recovery schedule.

"They turned winning into permission to make the next test harder," she said, sliding the notice beneath the phase-two calendar, "that is a very efficient use of resentment."

Failure would not return Ryan to ordinary E-rank status after the review.

It would cap his license for ninety days and classify every above-tier result as unsafe variance.

Because Seven-B’s operational ceiling followed its registered principal, the cap would block D-tier commissions, equipment permits, and higher-value route contracts.

{Current Guild Commission Ceiling: E-tier}

{D-rank Review Result: Pass: D-tier Access}

{D-rank Review Result: Fail: E-tier Cap / 90 Days}

"No villain needs to close the club," Nia said, placing the revenue model beside the notice, "they leave us alive beneath a ceiling our expenses outgrow."

Ryan searched the assigned proctor’s record before opening the published parameters.

The man had thirty-one years of combat evaluations, a C-rank licence, and the board’s highest fast-track failure rate.

Candidates described the proctor as mercilessly exact across every evaluation.

None alleged altered scores, hidden attacks, or bribes in his record.

"Then he is not the trap," Ryan said, circling the board signature, "he is the part they expect to function."

The trap occupied six pages beneath the same approval block attached to the sabotaged raid.

{Gauntlet Composition: High-D}

{Stage Recovery Interval: None Guaranteed}

{Live-Fire Variance: Within Proctor Discretion}

{Scoring Thresholds: Statutory Maximum}

{Final Survival Stage: C-adjacent Construct}

Every condition was legal when read alone beneath statutory review.

Together they required D-rank control, recovery, judgment, and endurance from an E-rank candidate under accelerated review.

Ryan acknowledged receipt through the public board channel before lunch.

Three hours later, the proctor sent one line through the sealed channel.

{Materials Received. Parameters Understood.}

The guild group chat framed the message before anyone learned whether it contained approval, contempt, or punctuation-related violence.

{does this count as a threat or a normal examiner being normal}

Nia began the thirty-four-day calendar with a gauntlet built from bar stock.

Syrup crates became control points, stools became threats, and a sealed cake container became the final construct.

One recruit pointed at the sealed container beside the marked control lane.

"Why is the boss expired cake?" she asked, keeping one hand on the practice shield.

"Hostile composition, uncertain interior, dangerous after contact," Nia replied, turning the container toward the marked lane.

The room accepted her casting because nobody produced a more accurate description.

Opening Position had begun as one controlled lane around Ryan’s spear.

Nia forced him to define entry calls, safe rotations, broken-line signals, and an abort word that outranked pride.

She drove shield pressure into every lazy angle, knocking him off position whenever Spark Reflex repaired planning he should have completed earlier.

Mika taught tempo through club language during the second drill.

She divided each simulation into build, drop, bank, plus encore until Ryan stopped objecting and used the terms in his own notes.

"Your dignity can recover after certification," she told him while resetting the timer, "the drop cannot."

The bathrobe captain handled chained encounters and taught the arithmetic of imperfect victories.

"Leave one harmless target alive for timing," he said, pointing at a syrup crate, "recover while moving, and never spend a finish when containment earns equal points."

Medical authority arrived with the doctor before the first full simulation.

She reviewed Risk Transfer beside Ryan’s healing records and wrote a hard ceiling across the training agreement.

[Capped-Liability Training Active]

[Authorised Damage Deferral: 18%]

[Current Deferred Liability: 0%]

[Medical Override Holder: Doctor]

"Eighteen percent is not a starting offer," she said, requiring both signatures, "it is the amount before I enter the arena and remove you myself."

"Could twenty improve adaptation during a longer sequence?" Ryan asked, testing the number with his pen.

"The ceiling remains eighteen percent," the doctor replied.

Negotiation lasted forty-two seconds because she made Ryan read the clipboard provision aloud.

During the first full simulation, Ryan finished in fourteen minutes thirty-two seconds.

He broke Opening Position five times and spent Spark Reflex until every moving bottle looked equally urgent.

{Simulation 1: 14:32}

{Control Breaks: 5}

{Risk Transfer Used: 18%}

{Final-Stage Hold: 41 Seconds}

Before another full run, the doctor made Ryan repay every deferred percentage under monitoring.

The interval between simulations became recovery rather than free practice.

[Training Liability Cleared: 18% -> 0%]

By the fourth day, spear retraction became punctuation between valued targets.

Black metal vanished and returned across the drill floor while Ryan’s raw output remained unchanged.

{Fourth-Day Time: 12:08}

{Position Failures: 3}

{Deferred Damage: 14%}

{Construct Control: 58 Seconds}

Every later simulation followed the same rule under the doctor’s supervision.

Previous liability reached zero before the doctor authorised another transfer.

At the end of the second week, all eight members moved around Opening Position without correction.

Ryan’s declared range had become the guild’s shared combat language instead of one man’s trick.

[Guild Doctrine Recorded: Opening Position]

[Shared Response Accuracy: 61% -> 88%]

His best run reached ten minutes fifty-one seconds with one control break, nine percent deferred liability, and a full seventy-second hold against the cake item after somebody reinforced it with a keg.

"The cake is now a credible threat," the newest recruit said, checking the reinforced lid, "I would like hazard pay for dessert."

"Pass the test first," Mika replied, replacing the lid, "then negotiate with the pastry."

Ryan used the score sheets to separate stable habits from gains that still required repetition.

Retraction, abort discipline, and target valuation held under sustained fatigue.

Chained recovery alongside blind-angle handoffs continued to degrade whenever the stage changed early.

Nia cut drills that only improved speed once they stopped teaching judgment.

Mika converted every recovery gap into unpredictable tempo for the changing stages.

The newest members rebuilt the final construct with different weights each night.

’The calendar had stopped measuring improvement,’ Ryan thought, crossing out another easy drill, ’it measured what could still embarrass him in public.’

Numbers exposed the remaining weakness more clearly than fatigue did.

The revised schedule became the real test because every controlled success had to survive fatigue, public timing, medical ceilings, and a board waiting to call efficient restraint unsafe while the gallery measured every recovery breath against an E-rank licence.

Ryan scored near maximum while fresh, then lost fourteen percent of his control accuracy whenever a stage began before his breathing recovered.

Mika removed the visible timer and changed music between stages, forcing him to recognise tempo through formation rather than a countdown he would never receive during live variance.

Nia introduced false abort calls until every member obeyed only the designated word.

The three newest recruits rebuilt the sabotaged-raid descent and made Ryan command through familiar failure.

By day thirteen, Spark Reflex consumed thirty-one percent less attention per simulation.

Enough perception remained to identify scoring opportunities instead of merely surviving them.

{Spark Reflex Attention Cost: 100% -> 69%}

{Average Criteria Captured: 72% -> 91%}

The improvement changed no rank by itself during the board’s review cycle.

It converted eight people’s injuries into procedures the board had not priced.

By breakfast, hunter forums had discovered the public test docket.

Betting lines opened with Ryan at four-to-one against while Seven-B regulars organised viewing tables like a cup final.

Across the bar, the bathrobe captain placed a bet whose size and direction he refused to disclose for morale reasons.

"Keep enough cash available for unrelated celebratory liquidity," he said, folding the receipt into his robe.

Ryan had twenty days left to close the final control break when a revised scheduling notice replaced the calendar.

{Previous Evaluation Date: 20 Days Remaining}

{Revised Evaluation Date: 6 Days Remaining}

{Reason: Proctor Availability}

The same board signature approved the change, compressing two weeks of planned drills into six days without altering a single maximum criterion.

Silence moved through the operations room while everyone performed the subtraction.

Mika pulled fourteen training cards from the wall and placed them facedown.

Ryan studied the gap the way he once studied $900.17, ’A number becomes fatal when planning pretends it is not there,’ he thought, moving the six remaining days beneath the criteria sheet.

"We stop training for their test," he said, facing the eight people watching him, "six days will train us for mine."