Body Repair

Beep—

"Infantry Medical Pod 074: bone healing at 62%. Minimum training standard met. Ending stasis. Forced discharge."

The cold synthetic voice echoed through the medical ward on the lowest level of Floating Continent 17.

Hundreds of cylindrical Medical Pods stood in neat rows inside the vast sterile chamber.

Every recruit whose bones had been broken or organs severely injured in yesterday's live combat without protective gear lay submerged inside one.

The air reeked of concentrated basic recovery fluid.

In a Federation military camp, medical resources were never meant to make anyone whole.

Once a patient's bones were sixty percent healed and he could run and move, the Mainframe deemed him fit and kicked him out of the pod.

"Beep—074: healing at 60%. Forced discharge."

"Beep—209: healing at 65%. Forced discharge."

Pressure hissed from pod after pod as more than a hundred doors slid open. Mechanical arms shoved a third of the wounded recruits onto the cold alloy floor.

Muffled groans and sharp intakes of breath rose all around.

Those hundred-odd recruits struggled to their feet, dragging bones that had not fully knitted and organs that still ached.

Behind them, the other two-thirds of the seriously wounded had to remain in their pods, losing the most precious hours before the assessment.

A scanning beam swept across the chamber and finally stopped on Medical Pod 330 in the corner.

The Mainframe's indicator light flashed twice, an unusual occurrence, before it emitted a brief electronic tone.

"Beep—Medical Pod 330: healing at 75%. Ending stasis. Forced discharge."

Stasis ended.

Jiang Yue opened his eyes.

He pulled the breathing tube from his nose and mouth, pushed open the door, and stepped out bare-chested.

Several nearby recruits who were dressing while clutching broken ribs turned toward him. Their gazes fell on his pod and froze.

After a night of absorption, the basic recovery fluid in their pods had merely faded to a lighter green.

The fluid in Jiang Yue's pod had turned completely clear.

Not a trace of the medicine's potency remained. Every bit of its restorative essence had been wrung dry.

Last night, with [Calm Spirit] holding his brainwaves in deep stasis and [Smooth Breath] steadily circulating his blood and energy, the new [Tough Skin] trait had intercepted and converted the fluid's effects with terrifying efficiency.

Its added absorption rate had trapped every bit of medicine that would otherwise have gone to waste inside his flesh and bones.

Jiang Yue glanced down at his right shoulder.

The spot that had been crushed and nearly caved in yesterday was now firm with muscle.

Apart from a faint white mark on the surface of his skin, no sign of injury remained.

Expressionless, he picked up the neatly folded new training uniform from the mechanical platform, put it on, and strode toward the lift.

Morning, Steel Plaza.

More than twenty thousand recruits were assembling. The atmosphere was heavy and oppressive.

After yesterday's combat drills, everyone bore at least a few purple bruises.

Jiang Yue left the lift, entered the formation, and calmly took his place.

To his left, Li Tai was grimacing as he rubbed the eye someone had blackened last night.

Catching sight of someone beside him, Li Tai turned. He went rigid, as though struck by lightning.

"Jiang... Jiang Yue?"

He looked as if he had seen a ghost, and his voice cracked. "Didn't Shen Qing break your right shoulder yesterday?!"

He reached out without thinking and grabbed Jiang Yue's right shoulder.

It felt solid beneath his fingers—firm muscle.

Li Tai snatched his hand back, his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets. He knew the rules of the medical ward. Basic recovery fluid could never completely heal a shattered bone in one night.

Jiang Yue ignored his reaction and looked straight ahead, maintaining the breathing rhythm of [Smooth Breath].

Not far away, at the other end of the formation, Shen Qing stood resting with his eyes closed.

As if sensing something, he whipped his head around.

The eyes of a lone wolf, cold for as long as anyone could remember, narrowed sharply the instant they fixed on Jiang Yue.

Shen Qing knew exactly how destructive his [Armor-Piercing Awl] had been yesterday.

That killing blow had drained a fifth of his blood and energy. Even someone raised on medicinal baths would have spent half a month in bed after taking that punch head-on.

Yet Jiang Yue stood perfectly straight, without the slightest hunch in his posture. Even his breathing rose and fell as steadily as still water.

Shen Qing's hands clenched inside his sleeves, his knuckles turning white.

As he watched Jiang Yue, he felt for the first time the absurd sensation that everything he knew had been overturned.

The boy he had used as a punching bag yesterday had not been crippled. Instead, like tempered steel, he now carried an edge that was sharper for being concealed.

"Attention, all recruits!"

An explosive round cracked skyward from a Supervision Team gun.

"Thirty kilometers! Move out!"

At the order, the thud of boots swelled into thunder once more. Tens of thousands began their relentless daily run under one and a half times normal gravity.

Jiang Yue leaned forward and broke into a run.

It was his first strenuous exercise since gaining the [Tough Skin] trait.

He soon noticed a profound difference deep within his body.

Before, every footfall during a run under this gravity had caused tiny tears in his muscle fibers. When his blood and energy struck his Skin Membrane, the pain had felt like a knife cutting through him.

Today, that stabbing pain was greatly reduced.

His blood and energy surged with the exertion. When they struck the inside of his Skin Membrane, they no longer battered against it and wore him down. A tough, invisible layer of inner armor gently rebounded the force.

As the Skin Membrane took the impact, it converted that force into energy that fed back into his body.

Jiang Yue adjusted his stride.

Three steps to breathe out, three steps to breathe in.

Ten kilometers.

Twenty kilometers.

As their stamina drained, the formation began to fall apart.

The hundred-odd recruits who had just been kicked out of the Medical Pods and forced to train while injured fared worst. They staggered along, faces pale as paper. One after another fell behind and collapsed.

Even Li Tai, who had kept pace beside Jiang Yue, now felt as though his legs were filled with lead. His lungs burned, and he gasped for air.

Only Jiang Yue remained unchanged.

From his first step through the twenty-five-kilometer mark, neither his stride nor his breathing rhythm had shifted. Even the arc of his swinging arms stayed exactly the same.

High on the platform, One-Eye gripped the metal railing with both hands and looked down at the long, winding column of recruits.

In his left hand was a military data pad. Its screen displayed a report sent from the medical ward below just minutes ago:

[Injured recruit: Jiang Yue.]

[Assessment: 100% recovery fluid absorption. No adverse drug reaction. Rapid bone reconstruction.]

The instructor looked up from the data pad and picked out the gray-clad figure moving steadily among the recruits.

He could see clearly that Jiang Yue still was not fast. He lacked the burst of speed those more gifted boys showed when their blood and energy surged.

But he was steady—far too steady for a recruit who had enlisted only days ago, let alone a patient whose shoulder had been shattered last night.

The muscles in the instructor's weathered, scarred face shifted into a rare and dangerous smile.

He was certain now that his judgment yesterday had been right.

This commoner had no connections, no talent, and only mediocre aptitude. Yet through sheer ruthlessness toward his own body and resilience beaten into him blow by blow, he had forced open a crack in the door to evolution inside this meat grinder.

The thirty-kilometer finish line drew closer.

"That kid..."

"Maybe he'll pass?"