Rapid Progress

Time flew.

Only three days remained until the Recruit Camp's first ten-day assessment.

For the tens of thousands of recruits on Floating Continent 17, those five days had been a hell with no chance to catch their breath.

Instructor One-Eye dropped the pretense of routine physical training and introduced the real Interstellar Military High-Pressure Body Tempering Method.

The Gravity Chamber, Electric Shock Alley, and Puppet Combat.

Each exercise had a passing mark, and those who met it earned points.

After five days, every bed in the medical ward was full.

Nearly a thousand recruits had even pressed the withdrawal button after suffering lasting damage or mental breakdowns. They were stripped of their military status and sent early to the lightless Mining Star.

The entire Recruit Camp reeked of blood and despair.

Yet amid that crushing rate of elimination, Jiang Yue had survived.

The high-pressure training brought exhaustion and mental strain, but the physical gains were real.

At five in the morning, the barracks lights came on right on schedule.

Li Tai crawled out of his capsule like a zombie.

He had lost a great deal of weight. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot.

Without the Muscle Relaxant Spray keeping him going each day, the Gravity Chamber would have broken him long ago.

He turned his stiff neck and looked beside him.

Jiang Yue was calmly putting on his gray training uniform.

His eyes were clear, his breathing deep and steady.

His joints made no strained sounds as he moved.

"You..."

Li Tai's voice was thick with exhaustion and numbness. "Are you some kind of cyborg wearing human skin?"

Over the past five days, Li Tai had watched Jiang Yue squat in the Gravity Chamber until his legs bled, get shocked black in Electric Shock Alley, and be pinned down and pummeled by an Iron-Skin Puppet during Puppet Combat.

But each morning, the bruises and injuries on Jiang Yue's body miraculously scabbed over and faded.

His once gaunt, thin frame seemed to be filling out, growing thicker and tougher before Li Tai's eyes.

Li Tai could not understand it.

He could not see how, late at night, the [Calm Spirit] trait forced Jiang Yue's brain to shut off the pain, letting just four hours of deep sleep accomplish cellular repair that ordinary people could not achieve in more than a dozen.

Nor could he see how the [Tough Skin] trait repeatedly shed the crushing force of the outside world during Jiang Yue's brutal daytime training.

The once-fragile outer layer of skin had peeled away. In its place was an extremely thin, dark teal membrane, dense as compressed rubber.

Jiang Yue had not come first in any exercise over those five days.

He never claimed the top spot, but he always held out until two batches after the passing mark before collapsing.

That "can't be beaten, can't be worn down" performance naturally caught the instructors' attention.

The military was generous with rewards.

Meeting the standards and setting endurance records in individual exercises both converted into basic military merit.

Each day, Jiang Yue steadily earned five to ten points.

After five days, he had accumulated thirty-five points.

On this Floating Land, where even a drink of clean water had to be budgeted carefully, that was a considerable sum.

But Jiang Yue was a madman with no concept of saving.

Every noon, he appeared at the District B mess hall on the dot and spent five points without fail on the most basic serving of bone-in Exotic Beast meat.

Five days, five points a day.

A full twenty-five points had become energy-rich flesh and gone into his stomach.

The [Food Digestion] trait worked at full capacity.

Jiang Yue went from wolfing his food down to chewing it slowly and thoroughly.

Nourished by the meat, his stomach acid grew stronger and his intestines absorbed more. Every scrap was wrung dry of its last bit of energy and fed back into his desperately hungry skin and bones.

Food and Body Forging formed a perfect cycle of improvement.

By now, Jiang Yue stood before the metal mirror in the washroom.

The boy in the mirror was a full size broader across the shoulders.

The muscles of his back looked carved from stone. As he breathed, a lean, formidable strength showed beneath his skin.

His [Behavior: Body Forging] proficiency had soared. Though it had yet to unlock a new trait, [Tough Skin]'s absorption rate had quietly climbed from its initial 30% to 39%.

He could clearly feel that his punching force had now passed five hundred kilograms.

Such progress was astonishingly fast!

"Jiang Yue."

A low voice came from behind him.

Jiang Yue turned. It was Xu Bo, with heavy dark circles under both eyes.

Xu Bo's constitution had been so poor that he had nearly been eliminated several times over the past five days. He had barely held on because Jiang Yue quietly took some of the pressure off him during group training.

In return, Xu Bo had used his Data Terminal to make exacting, microscopic corrections to every movement Jiang Yue used to exert force.

"Looking for me?" Jiang Yue asked.

Xu Bo glanced around warily, stepped half a pace closer, and waved his old Data Terminal. Behind his lenses, his bloodshot eyes shone with excitement.

"The model works."

He kept his voice low and spoke quickly. "Over these five days, I recorded that one-legged veteran's breathing rate and muscle-contraction patterns a hundred and twenty times while he performed the Thousand-Jin Stake. I've distilled them into a formula."

He turned the terminal screen around. It showed a set of extremely complex rhythmic curves.

"Breathe and tense your muscles exactly according to this pattern, and you'll resonate perfectly with the hydraulic pillar. You can shed at least 40% of its dead weight!"

Jiang Yue's gaze fell on the curve, and he committed it to memory in an instant.

The [Smooth Breath] trait gave him control beyond the reach of ordinary people.

After a single glance, his chest instinctively began to mimic the breathing rhythm.

"There's a big betting pool at the Veteran Barracks Area tonight."

Xu Bo swallowed. "Butcher Zhang is running it himself. And that one-legged veteran has won three days straight. He'll definitely compete again tonight. The odds for a recruit betting against a veteran have reached an incredible ten to one."

Jiang Yue looked away and down at his wristband.

[Current balance: 10 points.]

These were the last points he had deliberately saved over the past five days instead of spending them on meat.

But ten points spent on the cheapest bone-in meat in District B would no longer be enough.

Jiang Yue knew his body's condition well.

After five days of pushing himself to the limit, his [Skin Tempering] had reached a bottleneck.

The meager energy in ordinary Exotic Beast meat was not enough to support another major leap over the final three days.

He needed better resources.

He needed Fierce Beast Essence Blood brimming with violent energy, perhaps even a military-controlled Primary Genetic Serum.

And those cost hundreds of points.

There was no way to earn that much through regular training.

"Are you coming?"

Xu Bo watched him nervously. "If you don't go, I've stayed up all these nights for nothing. You're the only one who can execute the formula perfectly."

Jiang Yue raised his head.

A fiercely calculated madness now burned in his once-calm eyes.

Five days of lying low and taking blows, five days of scraping together points—none of it had been so he could remain an ordinary soldier struggling to pass.

He had done it to build a solid foundation and fight for a way forward.

He clenched his right fist.

His knuckles cracked in a rapid series beneath the dark teal skin.

"Tonight, after lights-out."

Jiang Yue passed Xu Bo and headed for the barracks door. His cold voice echoed down the corridor.

"Bring the terminal. We'll take another look at that Thousand-Jin Stake."