Chapter 53: Frontline Combat 101 (Patreon)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11jv1U7mWn63ihOKsg0nNHGSpSX7rPjDm5a4XPC2FQJU/edit?usp=sharing

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“Welcome to frontline combat. This is not a class for those who refuse to get their hands bloody. This is not a class for those who are unwilling to face monsters head-on. This is not a class for those who will sit in the back and let their teammates take on the threat. This is a class for frontliners. If you think that you do not fit into this group, you are more than welcome to consult with Instructor Blyre to get your schedule changed.”

There was a beat of silence as the fifty or so young adults standing in the sand of the arena stared at the instructor, no one willing to move under his scrutinizing gaze.

The instructor’s stern frown morphed into a large smile, his teeth bared at the crowd of young adventurers. “Well then, I’ll take that as consent to everything that’ll happen in this class. So, with that…GET MOVING! TEN LAPS AROUND THE ARENA! GO! GO! GO!”

Attempted mental manipulation from [Intimidate].

The students scrambled at the instructor’s loud voice and suddenly much-more-imposing-seeming frame, moving into a slow jog around the edge of the arena. It was a different arena than the one that was used to host the trials, much smaller without the massive seating area surrounding it, and was the regular site for their Frontline Combat 101 class.

As the students naturally spread out along the edge of the arena, Cayden lengthened his stride and picked up his pace. With his [Inertia] increased, it took more effort to increase his speed than normal, but once he got going it felt just as easy to maintain his pace. Regardless of the skill, being level thirteen with his stats almost completely invested into the physical meant it was practically impossible for Cayden to get tired out from a simple run. Yet he still held himself back, unwilling to go all out on the first day when he didn’t know what else was coming.

That strategy changed, however, when the instructor started screaming at those in the back of the pack, his voice echoing off the walls of the arena around them.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A FIGHTER? KEEP UP THAT SLOW OF A PACE AND I’LL MAKE YOU CRAWL THE TEN LAPS LIKE THE WORM YOU ARE!”

Instructor Barry was a dullahan, a tall, imposing man whose head wobbled around on top of his thick neck like a bobblehead with each word he screamed. His voice was loud enough that Cayden imagined [Resistance] would probably see it as a ‘negative effect,’ so although Cayden was unlikely to draw the instructor’s ire from where he was in the middle of the pack, he picked up the pace simply to get away from the screaming man.

“Five copper that his head falls off before we finish the laps,” Jeremy murmured from where he was effortlessly running next to Cayden.

“I don’t think it works like that,” Cayden responded, but he had to stifle his grin at the image. It really did look as if it would only take a tiny nudge to send the instructor’s head rolling across the sands.

There was a strange-sounding series of thumps, and suddenly Instructor Barry was there, screaming into Cayden’s ear. “AND WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?? WAS SOMETHING FUNNY? PICK UP THE PACE!” And then just as quickly he was gone.

Regardless, Cayden and Jeremy ran a little faster, nearing Cayden’s top speed. Modifying his [Inertia] unfortunately wouldn’t have much effect on his speed – a lower [Inertia] would allow him to more easily change direction, but a higher [Inertia] was faster if he was moving at a continuous pace in a straight line, though pumping his legs and arms was more difficult. That was what he’d found in his testing, at least, and Elise had said it made sense mathematically.

But either way, even running at his top speed, Cayden didn’t think ten laps was enough to tire him out. His agility was low enough in proportion to his strength, endurance, and weight that it simply wasn’t something he’d ever get exhausted from.

That idea was challenged as he finished his third lap.

Jeremy had been keeping pace beside him since the start, which made Cayden assume he had a higher dexterity than his own, but after the second lap his formine friend started breathing harder and harder with each step. Cayden assumed Jeremy’s endurance just wasn’t one of the formine’s primary stats, but when Cayden started to struggle after the third lap as well, he had to reevaluate.

All around the arena, the students were slowing. Steps were heavy and plodding, breaths were labored, and sweat dripped down people’s temples. Even the fastest of the students, speedsters with high agility who had already lapped Cayden, were slowing down. He felt a strange pressure on his shoulders as if a heavy weight was pressing down on him. Yet the pressure wasn’t just on his shoulders – it seemed to surround him, pushing back against every motion that Cayden tried to make.

“You know anything about this?” Cayden asked quietly between breaths.

Jeremy chuckled weakly. “I was told…the training facilities…were good,” he responded. “Nothing else…though.”

And unfortunately, that was only the beginning. By the fifth lap, the resistance was strong enough that Cayden felt about as weak as he had ever felt in the last year, as if all his progress and stats were drained away, leaving him as he had been before the change and increased levels. With a thought and a surge of mana, his [Inertia] was returned to normal. Wind resistance would slow him down more, now, but with his slower pace that was much less of a factor than the increased inertia of his legs and arms swinging back and forth. And yet still, as he continued in what was now only a jog, the strange resistance to each step increased.

On his sixth lap, the first noble cracked.

“This is ridiculous!” a harpy shrieked, stomping his foot into the sand. “This is no way to treat the heir to the Fullwind Barony. My father will hear of this!” The young harpy struggled to walk out of the paths of the nearby runners to the exit, and the moment he entered the tunnel his back straightened and pace lengthened.

“HAH! TELL YOUR FATHER BARRY SAYS HELLO!” the dullahan responded with a savage grin before he continued at a slightly more normal volume. “One down already! Who else is ready to throw in the towel? You’re looking awfully tired there, ya little gorgon…what do you say? Hot shower could be waiting for you back in your room.”

A few of the students followed the harpy’s example and struggled their way out of the same tunnel, all of them nobles if Cayden had to guess from their mode of dress, and all of them enduring the instructor’s taunts as they fled the arena with claims of reprisals from their parents and relatives. Notably, the gorgon who Instructor Barry taunted and had been trailing the pack since the beginning of the exercise kept up her slow jog.

“Can they…really do anything?” Cayden asked between breaths to his jogging partner.

“Who?” Jeremy asked.

“Nobles.” Talking while wheezing for breath wasn’t exactly easy, but the distraction of conversation was helpful as they rounded the corner of the arena, completing their seventh lap.

Jeremy shook his head. “Like I said…nobles learn humility…at the academy.”

Cayden nodded. Though he certainly wasn’t enjoying his current circumstances – after so long training by himself to such success with [Personal Training], he had foolishly imagined that he was prepared for whatever physical training the academy might throw at him – but he was certainly pleased so far with the attitude the instructors seemed to have towards the nobility. With so many members of the nobility gathered in one place, he had been worried that the academy would be littered with nepotism, pride, and false praise. Yet it seemed that Instructor Barry, at least, was going out of his way to make sure that everyone knew they were on the same level.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly pleasant that the level he seemed to be trying to put them on was facedown in the sand, but it was better than the alternative.

Luckily for the students, the strange resistance steadied after Cayden and Jeremy’s seventh lap, and they were able to finish the last three at their same jog before collapsing to the ground after the finish line.

Cayden didn’t allow himself to rest easy for too long, though. The class wasn’t even a quarter of the way through, so after a few seconds of letting his muscles relax he pulled himself to his feet with a groan and held his hands on his head.

[Recovery] was useful, but practical methods of recovering still helped, and he needed to be ready for whatever other challenges Instructor Barry had in store. The run had been brutal, the strange resistance that still weighed on his shoulders making it harder than the most difficult of his self-managed workouts, yet it took less than a quarter of the time. Cayden wasn’t sure if the strange weight was a skill that Elise had warned Cayden could bypass [Resistance]. If he was getting a fifty-two percent reduction to the resistance the other students were fighting through and still struggling as much as he was, he had a LOT of catching up to do. Hopefully, his skill simply saw the resistance as a beneficial training tool rather than a ‘negative effect’, and so didn’t reduce it.

“Hah, didn’t have to put in a call to the medical team! It seems miracles do happen!” Instructor Barry said several minutes later as the gorgon pulled herself across the finish line marking her tenth lap before collapsing to the sand between two other students. “If you haven’t already noticed, we’ve got a special enchantment we can use during workouts to make them more…productive. Called the equalizer. In case you were wondering, that was the third setting on the equalizer. There are ten settings total.”

A few of the other students, including Jeremy, had mimicked Cayden and pulled themselves to their feet, but none of them had the energy to respond to the instructor’s words. Cayden ignored the notification of another use of [Intimidate] against him, [Mind is a Temple] having been spamming notifications of the same throughout the run.

“Unfortunately,” Instructor Barry continued, “Using the equalizer non-stop can be damaging for those with weak wills and bodies, and we can’t have you laying around for the rest of the class.” He reached into his coat and suddenly the resistance that had been sitting on Cayden’s shoulders like a several-hundred-pound weight was gone, and multiple students groaned in relief.

“Now we don’t cover much theory here. This class is more about gettin’ your bodies to the place they need to be before others spend more time trainin’ your minds. But get your ears peeled, 'cause what I’m about to say is important.” Reluctantly, the students laying on the sand looked up at the instructor. “You’re all frontline fighters. That can mean different things, depending on your build. Some of you are leaders, motivating and buffing your teammates from the front. Some are damage dealers, killing your enemies close and personal before they kill you. And some are tanks, absorbing the damage that your teammates can’t handle. But right now? In this class? None of that matters.

“You’ll all take classes that cater to your individual roles later. Here and now, you’re a frontline fighter. Nothing more and nothing less. And when the chips are down, there are two things that all frontline fighters need to be. They need to be in good shape, better than anyone else on the team, able to keep pushing when everyone else is dead on their feet. And all frontline fighters,” he paused, his grin widening. “Need to be able to fight.”

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