35 Ace Solver
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Inside Ravenville's Arena Facility training room on the 2nd floor, a wall-mounted monitor was currently displaying a graph full of words and statistics on it.
[
Name: Irvine Lang
Age: 18
Gender: Male
Muscle Strength: 23.2
Physical State: Stage-2 Human
Genetic Enhancement: x2
-Stamina
-Flexibility
Genetic Modification: [Blast]
Proficiency Level: 1
Statistics:
...
]
The 2nd string players who had gone together with Irvine, Derrick, and Greg to the Arena Facility were all crowding around the monitor with Irvine standing in front.
"...How frightening, this is truly not the stat a college freshman should have..." One person among them was commenting with inexplicable expression on his face.
The rest were either too distracted to react or were simply nodding along with that first person's comment.
Irvine on the other hand, were not too pleased seeing the changes he'd had after these few weeks without scanning.
He of all people knew that his current advancement speed were miles away compared to his growth before reaching Stage-2.
*SIGH*
'Well, higher hurdle is on par for the course I suppose, I'm now at Stage-2... At least compared to my growth in the past life, I'm practically moving at light speed right now.'
Irvine could only look on the bright side of things, the previous him had already been nearing the end of his sophomore year when he was finally able to reach this level of Muscle Strength.
This was the reward for a life comprised of only rigorous training aside from school. Presently, he was even somewhat above average within the whole of 2nd string.
"Good god... What do you eat to become like this?" Even Greg was admiring his stat behind him.
"I'm wondering the same thing. Your stat was even higher than mine when I'm at that exam on April." Derrick added.
"Not mine! I'm already a little bit higher than this in April!" Greg pumped up his chest with satisfaction.
"Dude, Lang's still a freshman." Derrick chided, "Usually, most people's growth spurt happens during college, but I guess Starseeds are a different breed altogether."
'Well...'
There's actually another reason why most people only experience a burst in their growth during their early years in college.
That is, the existence of a systematic and supervised training guided by various coaches of the college team.
Compared to even the most famous high school in the Station, even a low rank Tier-2 college would have a more systematic and comprehensive development plan for their players.
Though they would be less independent as a college student athlete, the results spoke for themselves when they experienced how fast their growth became after joining.
In this aspect, Irvine had more of an edge in the few months he'd had before college because of his knowledge regarding the exercise routines implemented by future pros.
But,
"It's just a number in the end." Irvine replied with what he's honestly thinking,
"Tier-1 League's starting players are usually between early Stage-2 to mid Stage-3, the gap itself is not that huge so most of the time, techniques and strategies play larger parts in winning don't you think?"
"That's true, the higher your Physical State, the harder it'll be to raise after all... Otherwise the matches would only include the 3rd or 4th year players." Derrick agreed with the sentiment.
Although there's a noticeable gap between Stage-2 and Stage-3, it's not big enough that a high level Stage-3 player could single-handedly dominate a team of Stage-2.
'Well, I'm still planning on reaching it though. There're no players getting drafted as a Stage-2 in their final year of college after all.' Irvine still took note not to slack off in this regards.
*clap*
"With that said, I'm going to go practice solving now... Err, what're you guys going to do?" He looked around him to notice many of the players were still discussing his stat.
*chatter* *chatter*
"Stamina and then Flexibility, his Gene Enhancement build is certainly not too far off for a Solver."
"Stamina is most certainly a must, but with his performance today, I was so sure he's taken the Toughness enhancement..."
Irvine quickly noticed one of the topics that piqued his interest.
'...Well, certainly Toughness that increases both the body's defense and bare-handed offense is good, but my offensive fighting style doesn't focus on damage dealing as much as Fielders or Guards.'
Irvine thought back a little to the time he'd decided on Flexibility as his second enhancement. He was very satisfied with his choice.
After that enhancement, many of his body parts could now bend in ways that were simply not possible before. Especially with lean muscles covering his whole figure.
The various new movements that he could now perform with the help of Flexibility was like a shortcut for him towards unlocking more advanced maneuvers he couldn't do previously.
'My build's already very different from my past life, the changes are just gonna keep increasing from here on out.'
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After that,
Irvine had excused himself from the others to go towards the many rows of tower puzzles that're fixed in-place on the floor of the training room.
(Don't worry about it, we'll be here talking about you behind your back for a while longer.) Was what Derrick had said to him when he'd left.
*phew*
*click* *clack* *swipe* *tap*
Not long after, sounds of a tower section's components being solved and operated on resounded to the rest of the Arena Facility's training room.
Even as Irvine was quietly practicing his solving at the corner alone, there were still some people taking glances at him from afar, mostly the solvers among them as well.
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"..."
"Hey."
"Ah! Yes...?"
A timid looking girl who's one of the 2nd string Solvers coming to the facility with him was suddenly approached by Derrick when she was caught looking at Irvine.
"Is he fast? His solving speed?" Derrick was looking for an objective opinion from people with the same position as Irvine since he wasn't too familiar with it.
He was rather curious as to what level Irvine's solvings had achieved when compared to his combat prowess.
"...Fast."
Hearing such an answer, Derrick then grimaced at himself, "So he's really good at everything? Even without Abilities like [Overload] to help him think fast or something?"
"N, no... I mean, I'm saying he's very fast considering he doesn't have that..." The girl Solver was a little flustered at his question,
"Why would you take that into account? He's a Solver, one way or another, he's gonna be compared against other Solvers who HAVE compatible Abilities you know?"
"T-then..."
Hearing such a retort, the girl tried to observe Irvine a little bit longer to evaluate him again.
"..."
"Well, I-I think he's not crazy fast but he could still keep up with normal Tier-1 Solvers... Barely though."
"Normal Solver huh..."
"Y, yes! And I think the reason lies in that." The girl pointed at the figure of Irvine's solving.
"What's that?"
"He didn't rotate the sections much when he's solving. Instead he's solving the components not in his line of sight by reaching out with his hands to the back of the cylinder. This cuts back a lot of his time."
"Hm?"
The components installed on each section of a tower puzzle were built to cover the whole circumference of the cylinder.
To ensure that Solvers wouldn't need to frequently circle around the tower puzzle to solve the interconnecting components, each section of the puzzle could be rotated independently from each others.
Usually, a Solver would rotate the component parts he was trying to operate on to face them first before solving it. But Irvine's solving didn't utilize this very much!
The first step in every decent solve was memorizing the progress and positions.
This memorization step was the basic many Solvers would need to learn if they wanted to cut back on their time. If they could remember the locations of each component, they would not lose track or get panicked by every bits of interruptions happening during a match.
And up to this point, Irvine's process had been the same with others.
But after that, most Solvers would still need to 'look' at the parts they wished to solve to make sure their hand placements were correct before solving them.
However, Irvine's way was to make use of his good spatial awareness to skip over this part of the process!
First, he would try to imagine the relative position of a component he'd need to solve.
After that, Irvine would reach out to that part with his hand without needing to rotate that particular part of the section to the front of his face.
Simply by feeling the distance and placement of each component relative to him, he could put his hand on it and solve without needing to waste time looking at it.
This was the main idea Irvine had come up with to make use of his spatial awareness as another one of his weapon in solving.
'With this, I can at least strive to keep up against Solvers with Abilities.'
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"But most Solvers memorize the puzzles right? If you remember the position, won't you be able to do a blind solve as well?" Derrick continued to ask from his own point of view.
"Remembering it is one thing. But if I want to solve them without looking, I think I would waste too much time trying to place my hand on the correct switch or latches or something?"
The girl tried to imagine herself imitating Irvine, but she felt that doing the same thing would not be as easy as the theory behind it.
Even a blind man would need to pat around a couple times in his own room to grab a specific item. Not to mention a tower puzzle where every centimeter off was a different component altogether.
"So in the end, he's a bona fide Solver even without solving-related Abilities right?"
"I think so..."
"...A true monster alright."
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Inside the conference room on Ravenville Arena Facility's 1st floor.
Head Coach Lark was almost finished briefing the regular members on the situation at hand.
"We've convinced her? The 5th Starseed Medea Dormer?" Clint asked, not trying to hide his surprised expression.
"Yes."
"So she's coming here?"
"It was a close call, it's almost a done deal for her to go to Eastern Zeta. Apparently, neither she nor our Irvine Lang knew of the other's decisions even though they're acquainted with one another."
"What's with that, lover's quarrel?"
"Doesn't matter right? Now Ravenville has got 2 out of the 7 Starseed." The Captain, Renee Morgan, suddenly interrupted their discussion.
"Exactly." Lark also agreed with her words.
"...How did you convince her though, Head Coach? Don't tell me she's coming here purely because of him?"
"No need to worry about that Silver, or are you intimidated now that your starting Ranger position might be threatened?" He retorted.
"Haha! This team needs me too much for that to happen." Clint shrugged,
"Still, I guess that means we've secured our Ace Ranger for the future at least. Unlike yours huh Captain?"
"Haa?"
"I mean, you're already in your final year and yet you're still the only notable Solver we have on the team right now."
"..." Renee didn't reply to Clint's words.
"That-- Might not be the case either." The Head Coach, Lark, suddenly interjected with a grin.
""?""
"Which brings us to the next agenda, the 4th Starseed Irvine Lang."
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Back at the 2nd floor training room of the Arena Facility.
Irvine had just finished his practice after a non-stop hour-and-a-half dismantling of his tower.
When he'd finished dismantling once, he would quickly reassemble the parts back to its initial shape before scrambling them into randomized positions and begin another round of solving.
This had gone on for more than 90 minutes without breaks until the fingers on his arm were too numb to make anymore fast or accurate movements.
*phew*
Currently, most of the 2nd strings were each doing their own thing, either playing pool together in the other room, or doing some light cooling down after today's marathon training.
But before he could look for them, Derrick had approached him first with a clean towel thrown at his face.
*swish*
"Good work."
*grab*
"Thanks."
Irvine caught the towel before it could hit him, but he settled with just hooking it on his hand because his fingers were too tired to even make a proper grabbing motion.
"What have you all been doing?"
"Greg's watching TV in the adjacent room, some of us are still playing pool in that same room."
"What about you?"
"I got restless seeing you practice so I just did some light run on that treadmill over there." Derrick pointed at one of the machines close to them with a chuckle.
"Well your legs are your weapons after all." Irvine simply nodded to his reply.
"Weapons... Huh? I guess so. But you're something else, torturing your hands like that for practice."
"There're restoration pods so I could rest easy."
"...Sure."
"By the way." Irvine suddenly changed the topic, "Where can I access the current roster of the Ravenville Illusions?"
"What, trying to get to know your senior or something? Here, I'll send you the link." Derrick didn't think much of the request and gave him the website link of their team through his mobile device.
*ping*
"Thanks."
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After getting the list, Irvine took some time to skim through them on his own phone.
And he must say, he was still amazed at the line-ups even though he had prepared himself beforehand.
'Baron, Clint Silver, Dennis Young... Most of these regulars are future pro players.' Irvine had recognized many of the names.
'Among them, Clint Silver will probably become the most well-known in the future. Playing as the Ranger for the Southern Sector team, Omega Clockworks. But...'
Amongst the future renowned players on the roster, one name had drawn Irvine's attention more than others.
Renee Morgan.
It hadn't drawn him in because it was a name that Irvine could remember from the future pro scenes. Quite the contrary, there wasn't a single person with that name!
It would be normal if it was simply a person from the 1st string roster who didn't become a pro. But the frame of her picture on the website had indicated that she was not just anyone.
'Captain... How is someone like this doesn't turn up to become a pro player later on?' Irvine was quite curious.
"Hey Wallace." He called on Derrick to confirm.
"Hm?"
"What kind of person is our current Captain?"
"Ooh, what's this? You fancy her?"
"No. I follow college Arena a bit and have some impressions on most of the seniors on the roster but not her." Irvine replied straightforwardly without getting flustered at all.
"Hah? Then how could you not know her as a Solver yourself? She's been the Illusions' Ace Solver for 2 straight years now."
"Really?"
"Not just that, during last year's Silver Crown, she was one of two Solvers who've gotten the individual awards you know."
"...Which one?" Irvine had turned more curious.
As Derrick had said, there're 2 types of individual awards specific to Solvers in any Crown Tournaments.
The Golden Hand Award for fastest average solve. And the other...
"The Untouchable Award, least amount of damage taken on average." Derrick answered.
'How could someone like this not become a pro player??' He was even more stunned now that he'd learned of this.
