Hand to Hand Combat

The break was over pretty quickly and the kids gathered in their classroom in time. No one was late and Julie was already waiting for them.

"We'll begin out melee combat class now. Our melee class will be held in a special place. So, follow me."

She took them to another room on the ground floor which was quite small and it could barely fit a hundred and fifty people inside of it. But as soon as the kids went inside, they felt a difference. Every part of their body felt incredibly heavy. It was as if their weight was doubled inside the room. Even a simple task like walking seemed to be incredibly strained here.

"This is a gravity chamber. In here you'll feel your body weight double and your training speed would be way better in here. You'll be practicing your combat techniques inside here from today onwards."

Nathan was taught topics like basic science and maths by Luo at a young age so he understood what gravity was and his eye's shined when he looked at the gravity chamber.

"We'll learn unarmed combat style in these six months. I'll demonstrate some techniques and you need to repeat the techniques for specific times each day."

With that, Julie demonstrated a jab, a cross, a hook, an uppercut, a high kick, a roundhouse kick, a sidekick, and a blade kick one by one. Her movements were incredibly fluid and seemed perfectly natural.

"You have to perform a hundred of each of these moves for each arm or leg. So, one technique for a total of two hundred times. You have two hours to finish that. Begin!"

At this point, things turned out exactly as he predicted. More than twenty kids had overstuffed themselves and couldn't hold on. Most of them directly collapsed after some time and some even vomited all over the place.

Julie looked at the kids and said with an emotionless voice.

"Clean them up."

One of the two guards took a slim device out of his pocket and pressed a few buttons in there. A short while later a mechanical robot entered the chamber and cleaned up the place. The entire process was smooth and efficient and Nathan was completely stunned by that. Even though he knew that technology was one of the strong aspects of humankind, this was far beyond his expectations.

After the cleanup, the guards took the collapsed kids with them. No one knew where they were taken or what would happen to them.

The two hours that felt like an eternity finally passed and all the kids were completely exhausted. They didn't have a single strength in their body at that point when Julie's demonic voice rang in their ears again.

"You'll get a break for an hour after which we'll begin our language class. Don't be late for the class."

The kids pulled their exhausted bodies back to their rooms and simply lied down in their beds. The gravity room training was too brutal even for someone like Nathan. Nathan was just lying down on his bed and slowly controlling his breathing. Every part of his body hurt like hell and he just wanted to sleep but every time he thought of that, a smiling image of Julie would appear in his mind and he would shudder instinctively.

An hour passed quickly and he made his way to the classroom. He had recovered a bit but his body still hurt too much. There were a few students in the class but all of them had exhausted looks on their faces. Shortly after, Julie entered the room with the two guards and immediately noticed the lack of students. There were only about sixty students in the class and they were looking at her as if they were waiting for her to pass judgment on the absent students.

"Gather all the absent students in the ground and flog them ten times each with a whip. We'll continue the class after that."

The kids were so exhausted that they couldn't come to class but this demoness wanted to flog them ten times per person!

'At least twenty will die from over-exhaustion and the rest may not be able to attend the class later on in the afternoon. That means the chance of the rest of the students surviving this day is incredibly low.'

The other sixty kids followed Julie to the fields and realized that they were not alone. The students from the other classes were also going through similar circumstances. Nathan's class was actually one of the best with sixty students left. One of the groups only had forty safe students among the original hundred.

The kids were dragged from their rooms and tied into a pole. They were immediately flogged with a cruel whip and an incredibly piercing scream would follow after each scream.

Very soon Nathan realized a problem though. There were supposed to be exactly a hundred of them in each class but that was not the case. Every class had less than a hundred students and realization kicked in immediately for Nathan. The kids who didn't complete the melee training due to overeating suffered a similar punishment!

In that case, the casualties would be completely justified. Nathan observed the members from his class and realized there were only sixty-eight students alive after that violent episode. The teachers didn't say anything and simply headed back to class. The students took a while to recovered and followed the teachers as well. Nathan imprinted the bloody scene in front of him.

He would never miss a class and he would always finish the task from now on. There were no excuses.

The class started and Julie started teaching them the common tongue. Nathan already knew how to read and write but he still paid attention. He didn't want to brag his knowledge without any reason. The class lasted for an hour and the students were finally free. Julie said they were free to do anything till six pm and the kids immediately went to rest.

It was 1 pm now and they had five hours of time to rest. Nathan immediately went to sleep after that. He lived in the woods previously so he could maintain a little bit of consciousness even when he slept so he could react to any situation instantly. So, controlling his sleep time was not a big deal to him at all.

Nathan slept for three hours and took a bath right after. Even though his body was sore all over, he was good to go. The next was ranged training and assassinations, both of which were technical and didn't have intensive body training.

He wanted to train a bit more but he realized it was a bad idea. Even though both the assassination and ranged combat were highly technical, he couldn't risk it. He wanted to make the best use of the time spent in Asphodel so he needed to push himself to the limits every day. He would make a training schedule for this five-hour-long break after seeing the intensity of the upcoming classes.

Five hours passed very quickly to the kids. Most of them felt like they had just slept but that was all due to the intensive training.

Nathan arrived at the training site and saw Julie wasn't there yet.

He stayed with the rest of his classmates while waiting for Julie. Five minutes later, Julie took them into the shooting area and the sight immediately dazzled Nathan and the other kids. There were many different kinds of firearms present there. Pistols, ARs, Sniper rifles, SMGs, Shotguns, Machine guns, you name it.

Of course, most of the kids didn't know that. All they knew was that those weapons could be used to kill at a range and that was it. That was the knowledge that a person from the wildlands had about the firearms.