Acadamy System

The next morning, Alexandre woke up feeling a little sore, but almost completely refreshed. His hand still hadn't completely healed and was quite small, but it'd be back to normal within another day.

Not that Alexandre was going to waste a whole day lying in bed!

He got up and approached one of the concrete walls of his hotel room, thinking about testing out the new strength of his [Steel Bones] skill. As the thought entered his mind, a window popped up in his vision.

╔════════Aurora Tactical System V0.23.1══════════╕

╟─╼Skill Activation

║ ╰╼[Name]: Steel Bones (Lv.1)

║ ╰╼[Duration]: 160 seconds

╚══════════════════════════════════════╛

"Ah, I see," said Alexandre. It's very helpful that I can simply activate the ability with a thought, rather than needing to use my Pip-Boy!"

Alexandre settled into a fighting stance facing the concrete wall and thought, "Activate Steel Bones!" A cold, tingling sensation filled his body and the window faded. During the 160 seconds, he punched the wall savagely as though it were a sandbag.

The flesh of both his good hand and smaller, healing hand tore and shredded under the punishment and red blood both splattered the walls and pooled at his feet. Nonetheless, Alexandre didn't relent until the time was up.

At the end of it all, another window popped up.

╔════════Aurora Tactical System V0.23.1══════════╕

╟─╼Skill Usage

║ ╰╼[Name]: Steel Bones (Lv.1)

╟─╼[Cooldown] 1 hour

╚══════════════════════════════════════╛

The concrete was somewhat damaged, but in honesty, Alexandre's own flesh had cushioned the blows somewhat, and the concrete seemed to be heavily reinforced so that Hunters wouldn't accidentally destroy the building. It would be quite a long time before Alexandre would have the combined strength and toughness to shatter a solid block of concrete like this!

But much more importantly, not a single bit of damage had occurred to Alexandre's bones during this time. Sure, his flesh had turned to a bloody pulp, that was true! But even the healing bones of his small hand, which were previously fragile, had hardened enough that they were perfectly fine after several minutes of punching the wall.

"Fantastic," Alexandre muttered. This would give him a solid advantage over other Boxers. So long as he was still able to move his skeleton, Alexandre would be able to keep fighting… at least while [Steel Bones] was active!

However, the 160-second timer was a problem. Alexandre opened up his Pip-Boy and examined the details that he could find about the [Steel Bones] skill. Though he was still having some trouble deciphering the menus and accessing all the information available, it seemed that upgrading [Steel Bones] would increase the amount of time he could use it. This didn't seem to be true for all skills, though. Others would simply become more powerful or could be used more times in a row before there was a "cooldown period."

There was still so much to learn about this Aurora system!

Alexandre thought about how best to evolve the [Steel Bones] skill. He'd need to get more Skill Points, of course. But the only way he could do that was by killing Zombies. Well, there was another way, of course… José had given Alexandre that bottle of experience, which he'd said cost $10K in any Hunter Shop. So with unlimited money, Alexandre could guzzle these down and keep leveling up.

But Alexandre didn't exactly have unlimited money! $10,000 was almost a whole year's salary, and on top of that, Alexandre knew he'd need to pay some school fees soon. "I should probably calculate how much those fees actually are," he said to himself.

So Alexandre went back to his computer and started looking for anything to do with school fees at the academy. He'd already known that basic tuition was free, but there were quite a lot of factors not bundled together in that basic tuition. Food, equipment, and lodging were all paid out of pocket, for example… and since they were Hunters, equipment wouldn't be cheap!

The whole academy was a capitalist pyramid with the peons at the bottom and the elites at the top. If you spent tens of thousands of dollars, you could get a magnificent room all to yourself with a view of the ocean. If you wanted the closest thing to free, you could share a "barracks" with almost a dozen other people for only a hundred dollars.

Alexandre was starting to better understand the academy's secondary motivations. It pitted staff and students against each other to encourage them to rise to the top and achieve high status. The academy operated a bonus ranking system in which the ten highest-ranking students received $5K a month, the students ranked from 11 to 100 received $2K, those ranked from 101 to 500 received $800, and everyone else received nothing.

Students who didn't manage to place in the top 500 by the end of the academic year had to pass a catch-up test, like those who had accosted the candidates in the final exam. Those who failed the catch-up test were expelled from the academy, which meant losing their monthly S.G.C. shot and returning the Pip-Boy which the academy had lended to them.

Alexandre finally understood why the students were so motivated even after qualifying for the academy. They simply had no choice! If anyone failed now, all the suffering they'd undergone would've been for nothing. Hunter Academy was a ruthless regime that didn't hesitate to throw its own students in the meat grinder if they failed to perform well enough.

Alexandre vowed to himself that he would never let Hunter Academy break him. If anything, he'd be the one to break Hunter Academy!