65 Rift City Wall Fortress

"Wyatt," Savannah shook me.

I caught myself before I growled at her. I'm human right now on a bus. Growling would be considered abnormal attention grabbing behavior.

"What?" I grumbled.

"We went through a teleportation circle," Savannah explained, "We're only about twenty minutes away from rift city."

"I hate teleportation," I sat up in my seat.

System my xp.

25/800 xp until level 8.

I had a lot of work to do until I leveled up. I would be stuck in my human form all weekend so I might as well get used to it. I was as ready as I was going to be when the bus stopped. I got off the bus with Savannah. We stayed paired up all the way into the wall facility.

Staying lined up like the good little military pupils. Goliath was at the front of our line, and there were over a dozen other buses waiting they're turn to unload. Goliath went down the line checking us all in before we were ushered inside quickly. We were rushed down a hall quickly to a large barracks. Goliath checked us all again before assigning us beds.

Partners were assigned to the same bunks. I was assigned the bottom bunk. Savannah the top. I didn't like it, but I was too tired to argue with anyone. I yawned as I thought about laying on the bed, but I couldn't right now.

"Now before you get any R and R in you have to select the gear you'll be taking with you into rift city," Goliath typed a code into a control panel at the back of the room, and a weapons screen popped up, "This panel dispenses any standard military weaponry normally available to soldiers. It's cheap, and mass produced equipment, but it's better than nothing. As I stated in the info link any unique equipment that you want to use you'll have to transport yourself."

There were a couple grumbles from a few of my other club members, but I didn't care. I was feeling a little excited from the idea of handling a real weapon. No more of this fake laser gun bull. I'd never handled a real gun before, and that would be my weapon of choice for the exercise so I had to be careful what I picked. I was already debating on what weapon I would choose as I stood at attention waiting for my turn.

Goliath handed out standard issue body armor, and kept an eye on how much equipment we were trying to grab. He seemed to limit us to one primary weapon, and one secondary. Like if someone were to grab a sniper rifle, and try to grab another heavy weapon Goliath would stop them. Then he would suggest a smaller lighter weapon. Savannah selected a fire core sword, and a light machine gun for her weapons.

I found it kind of interesting that she would select a sword as one of her weapons.

"Why did you choose a sword?" I asked when she came back to stand next to me.

"It's difficult to channel mana through bullets," Savannah whispered to me, "Channeling mana into weapons strengthens your attacks as well as your defense. Never mind the fact that sending mana through a weapon that has an elemental core compatible with your own element boosts power without consuming excess mana."

"I'll have to think about that more later on," I shook off some of the exhaustion my mind was buried in, "How much sleep did I get on the bus?"

"A couple hours," Savannah stopped looking at the sword in her hand to glance at me.

The look on my face probably said it all. Even if it was my normal blank face. There was no way my exhaustion didn't show in one way or another.

"You look like you're about to collapse," Savannah gave me a sympathetic look, "Are you sure you don't want them to check you out?"

I gave her a dirty look as I went up for my turn. She was probably going to push that the whole time we were here. I groaned internally as I looked at my options for weapons. There really wasn't much to choose from. A sniper rifle, an assault rifle, machine gun, single pistol, and duel pistols.

I stared at my options for a while before just deciding to go all in on the assault rifle. It was a mid to long range weapon. I figured it suited my up close, and personal fighting style while taking advantage of my accuracy with a gun. Choosing just the one weapon got me three extra clips to work with. I really hoped going all in on one weapon wouldn't backfire on me.

After that we were given free time to do whatever we wanted. I went to bed. Knowing Goliath he would wake us early. No one bothered me. I was glad for that.

I wasn't comfortable in my human body. I fell into a fitful sleep. I didn't want to switch forms in my sleep, but lucky me that fear at the back of my mind coming from Ethan kept me aware of my transformed state. Ethan being afraid all the time wasn't ideal, but to a certain degree I needed that fear. It kept me on edge enough to do keep at least part of my mind focused.

I slowly moved in, and out of awareness. Some of the other club members were belittling me while I got a little sleep. I didn't care. I didn't want to deal with them so even when I was awake I ignored them until I went back to sleep. I wanted to go back to my real form, but life wasn't fair at the moment.

I had to deal with what was in front of me, and right now the best thing for me to do was keep what I was hidden. When I came back to uncomfortable awareness I started alternating between practicing mana control within my body, and sleeping. I had practiced internal mana control before when it was just me, Savannah, and Ethan. She'd shown me the technique Thursday when she was grilling me. I hadn't had the chance to try it before now, but from the way that no one was reacting to me I was doing it right.