Entering the Forest

Entering the Forest

After the four kids put on their weighted battlesuits and adjusted the weight to their liking, Principal Smith started to speak once more.

"The distress button I just spoke about is also on your battlesuit. Look near your left breast area, and you should see a small red button. Press that, and the battlesuit will completely become weightless while also sending me a distress ping to notify me of your danger and also that you decided to quit the tempering experience."

"The suits already have a tracking system, so we always have your location, but you need to press the distress button for us to know you're in danger. If you don't, I and the other teachers monitoring your location won't truly know if something is wrong. Now, before I let you all go, are there any questions?" Principal Smith asked as he finished his words.

There wasn't much more for him to speak about, and he could see the students becoming excited, so he didn't want to delay them.

In response to his words, the students shook their heads in silence. Everything had been explained concisely and clearly, so they were able to understand it. They have no questions.

"Good. You can all enter. But do note. By the end of this week, I want all of you to, at the minimum, be able to withstand more than 150kg more weight than you started with. So, for example, Otto, you need to climb to 850kg." Principal Smith finished, bringing frowns to the faces of the kids.

But right before they could voice their protests, he continued to speak.

"You all are the top talents from our Sagittarius High School this year. This much should be nothing!" Principal Smith said with a snort as he waved his arm angrily, sending a gust of wind toward them.

After his shout, Adam and the rest stayed silent and simply complied with his order by nodding. Though 150kg was certainly a lot, it wasn't impossible. Perhaps Yan Xiaonan would struggle with it, but the other three students wouldn't have many problems.

So, after getting a few more words of encouragement and instructions, Principal Smith left, leaving the group of four by themselves at the entrance of the forest.

After being left alone, Otto and Yan Xiaonan didn't say anything but instead rushed toward the forest's entrance gate, ready for the tempering. Both of them were still activating their special talents; Yan Xiaonan left behind afterimages, while Otto sent tremors into the ground as his heavy footsteps left the ground shaking.

However, Sam and Adam didn't run off but stayed still at the same spot, conversing. Adam was still extremely curious about Otto and Yan Xiaonan's odd abilities and wanted to find out what exactly they were.

"Sam, what's up with those two?" Adam asked as he walked side by side with the class president.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked back, not really understanding the question.

"When Principal Smith told the two to walk over, Otto had extremely heavy footsteps, while Yan Xiaonan was super fast. Do they have special talents or something?" Adam clarified.

"Oh, that? That's simple." Sam looked enlightened for a moment before she continued to explain herself.

"Not only does Xiaonan have a high-grade cultivation talent, but she also has a high-grade speed talent. She probably activated it just then. But for Otto, I don't know. He never divulged his talents to the school; adding to the fact that he never comes to school, no one truly knows his strength. I don't even know his vitality index score." Sam answered.

Adam stayed silent for a moment after she explained that and started to think about its implications.

Though he only had a low-grade speed talent right now, he could still accomplish a great burst of speed when he activated it. Yan Xiaonan's burst of speed was extremely similar to his own, just much faster.

However, it was Otto's mystery talent that made him curious.

'What talent gives him those extremely heavy footsteps? It's not a defense talent.'

Adam had a middle-grade defense talent, and when he activated it, nothing remotely similar to Otto's actions happened.

When he did activate it, his bones hardened, and his skin tensed, turning his body into a steel-like shield, but it didn't make it heavier. His body weight stayed the same during that entire process.

However, the two times Otto activated his talents, he either gained a huge amount of body weight or strength, something that didn't happen with Adam.

He thought about it for a while, but eventually, Adam's mind came to a blank. He simply didn't have any clue about what it could be, so he simply stopped thinking about it.

Also, Otto wasn't an enemy that he needed to be wary of, but just a classmate with some secrets. There was no need to be so investigatory about it. Doing so could possibly gain the boy's ire, and Adam didn't want that.

While he didn't know how prestigious Otto's father was, Adam knew he was still someone with a lot of power. Living on the run after gaining the ire of such a person's son was not how Adam wanted to spend his next few years.

After Adam asked his question, he stopped and let their conversation finish. Walking in silence, the two eventually reached the entrance to the forest. Arriving at the gate, Sam didn't start another conversation but rather started a sprint.

"See you later, Adam!" Sam shouted happily and, without any pause, ran off into the forest, where she soon disappeared behind the lush forest trees and shrubbery.

Adam didn't pull the girl back or try to stop her. All he did was watch her disappear behind the foliage.

Other than building the forest and placing all the beasts inside of it, Principal Smith also built a large fence around it. This did two things. It ensured that no beast could escape and potentially cause a disaster, and it made sure no students snuck in.

The only entrance to the forest was almost always locked, and since the fence was too hard to climb or jump over, there was no way for students to sneak in.

This gate that served as the forest's only entrance was open today, though, so Adam was able to enter it casually. But because of this fact, it was only once he walked through the gate that he finally saw just how lush and great the forest looked.

Earlier, he could only see the forest's canopy. But now that he was fully inside the forest without the fence blocking his vision, he was able to see all of the forest's foliage.

"A nice forest indeed." 

Taking a deep breath of admiration, Adam activated his low-grade speed talent and charged into the forest.

—

Other than a few sparring sessions he had done with some fellow classmates over the years and the last forest excursion about half a year ago, Adam had pretty much never fought.

So, it wasn't much of a lie to say that he was currently feeling a little apprehensive about being stuck in a forest full of deadly beasts for a week.

However, though he was definitely feeling apprehensive about it, Adam felt an equal but not even greater sense of enthusiasm as to how it would go.

During the previous tempering that happened at the beginning of this year, Adam had performed extremely well, even doing better than Yan Xiaonan, who was a stage higher than him at the time.

The only person he lost to was Sam because she was already a half-step Martial Apprentice even then. If not for her, he would've been first or extremely close to it.

And during that tempering, Adam truly enjoyed fighting the beasts in the forest. It was much different than with people, and he liked that difference.

Fighting with people, especially during sparring, made Adam feel like he was doing an orchestrated dance. He didn't know if he had some special talent, but during every fight with people, Adam always felt like he could see through his opponent's movements and still be able to move toward them preemptively.

Adam wasn't able to become a doctor during his previous life, but he was close to it. So he knew a lot of things about the human body. And something he knew was that it was impossible to react to a punch and still be able to dodge it.

The human body's reaction time was too slow to do that. Humans had a reaction time of around 250 milliseconds, while some people were able to shave it down to about 180 milliseconds through constant training. But even then, this superhuman reaction time would only last during youth and would quickly fade away as one got older.

To dodge a punch, though, even the superhuman's 180 millisecond reaction time would be far too slow to dodge a punch, especially if it was in a close-quarters spar like what Adam usually fought.

However, animals are different. A lot of animals could dodge a punch very easily as well.

That was why cats could do their ninja-like movements, or a fly could dodge every single one of your flyswatters. The former had a reaction time of >100 milliseconds, with some even going as low as >50 milliseconds. Flies were even faster.

But yet, in spite of all of this, Adam was able to dodge punches like a fly. It was surreal and rather inhumane.

However, he liked it and assumed this new body of his had some special quirks he needed to explore slowly.

And this tempering session was the perfect time to do so.

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