The rest of cadet training remained the same. Each day going from one class to the next they were all starting to get more proficient with their weapons. Andrei had been using his "Overlord" skill each class and soon it leveled up allowing Andrei to select a new skill.
[Skill leveled up: "Overlord" LVL 2]
["Overlord" now gives a 25% increase to Spirit as well as Stamina. Skill buff lasts for 2 hours]
[-2,000 Spirit per use]
[New Skill unlocked: "Field General" LVL 1]
[Allies within 50 yards of you will get a 25% boost to their Strength. This skill is always active.]
Death Squad had become accustomed to Andrei pulling his longsword out at the beginning of class and them all feeling a boost of energy, this time the elemental cadets could tell they could attack longer than before while sparring.
[Level 5 now achieved: +1 stat point alotted +1 HP +5 Spirit]
He also started using the "Portal Home" each night in hopes that it would level up. Instead it unlocked another skill that would come in handy.
[New Skill learned: "Squad Portal"]
["Squad Portal" allows the user and teammates to port to the destination user has selected.]
Andrei was becoming a one man army with this new system and the military was none the wiser.
The last day of cadet training was upon the young men and women and some in Death Squad were already starting to feel down. They knew they would all be going in separate ways and probably would never see each other again.
The typical celebration of winning the Cadet Squad challenge would be happening right now but Death Squad had such a massive lead after the hunt that the celebration never really happened.
The last tradition of the Cadet training had all the cadets leave the Assembly hall and to take a 15 minute walk to the MA Arena. This is where they would hold the annual MA Challenge where all the MA's that wanted to would send their representatives to take part. Hathin was one of 5 that had the Arena built on the MA campus.
The Arena was a massive building that had been decorated with depictions of all the greats to take battle in Hathins Arena. To those that were enthusiasts of the MA Challenge they could recite who was depicted with each. Andrei was mostly impressed with how lifelike the artwork appeared with the way the material constructing the building popped the statues out.
Entering one of the many gates the drill sergeant and others that were leading the cadets entered a tunnel with stairs leading to below the arena. The hallway was well lit and as they walked it there were most pictures of previous champions. MA Challenge was a 5 day event held at the end of each cycle. This cycle's MA Challenge was held in Elryn's homeworld of Elondinonin.
Andrei was thinking about where that possibly would be and his galaxy map came into his view but was transparent to let him continue to walk with ease. The galaxy map zoomed in on the Elryn homeworld and then it displayed the option to take the Portal. Andrei dismissed it as he did not want to miss out on this whole arena experience.
When they made it to the end of the tunnel their only guess was that they had to be below the center of the arena. The area they entered was filled with the same tubes that Andrei had become familiar with playing Duel before he joined the MA.
Before leaving they were told the assignment and the captains were in charge of who would participate in the final challenge. Everyone technically could participate but were given different assignments and there were multiple events.
The format was 2 groups of 5, 4, 3, 2, and finally solo. This totaled 30 of the squad then 2 groups of 10 which filled in the last of the 50. Posse Loco would simply not make enough teams and participate where they could. Essentially one group of beast mode and one group for player vs player mode. Andrei and the other captains had to decide how to best utilize everyone in order to win the most possible.
To top this off the player vs player was more like a cooperative experience where they weren't attacking each other but on the same side advancing on simulated enemy situations. So when teaming up the groups had to quickly adapt to each other as well as accomplish the mission that was set in front of them.
The one stipulation was that all five captains were assigned to the 1v1 co-op. Their test would be all five of them working together on a simulated new portal experience. Everyone moved around and grabbed an open pod and soon everyone was inside of the VR.
The groups that had been assigned were then formed in the virtual lobbies and they were given five minutes to discuss any plans as well as get all the relevant information on their next mission. Seeing Julia in his lobby Andrei realized he had not talked to her in quite some time. She seemed to have distanced herself or maybe it was because they were so busy, Andrei really did not know.
"Poco and Loco you two will lead in on the portal drop, Julia in the middle and Edwin and I will be in the back. Establish a perimeter as quickly as possible and once we establish our surroundings we will move out. Our mission is to scout the surrounding two mile radius from the portal drop. We are to stay alive first and foremost is that understood?"
"SIR YES SIR!" The four of them responded to Andrei's question. He had not planned on saying what he said he just let it flow out and getting the response he just received he figured he was on the right track.
"Once we have scouted and scanned the 2 mile radius we are to fall back to the original drop zone to set up our own portal back. Julia, you have that in your inventory correct?" Andrei continued his line of thinking and inquiring to make sure that everyone was set for the mission. Julia nodded and Andrei continued.
"If you have any questions now is the time to ask, otherwise when we arrive its all focus. No one dies today, do you get me?"
"Hoorah, Hoorah, Hoorah" the four of them chanted in unison. Moments later they were transferred to what looked like a standard portal room in most cities or military bases. Then something caught Andrei's attention and he walked over to a computer console that had "Interact" on it. Andrei knew he needed to do this right away as they were scheduled to depart in just a couple seconds.
He took a few long strides to reach the console and his hand hovered and glowed after "Interact".
[New Portals unlocked: Forbidden Planets]
[Galaxy map will now display in purple rings the planets that the SPRU have deemed Forbidden. Explore to find out their secrets]
Andrei didn't quite know what to make of this new discovery but he quickly returned to the four others and grabbed onto Edwin's shoulder. They all marched through the portal and exiting they were in complete darkness.
"Clack, clack…clack, clack" a loud distant but echoing sound was the only thing they could hear. Andrei pulled out his longsword using the glow of the elements on it; they could now see their surroundings and to their surprise they were actually in a massive underground cave.
In fact they were looking around and were wondering if two miles would even leave the cave. When thinking about going to a planet they weren't expecting to be inside of one. Julia, who had been only able to work on fire, turned her own scimitar to flame to add to the light. Poco followed suit with dual Sai weapons. Any light source would help at this point as Loco and Edwin pulled out their weapons. Edwin had a morning star mace that he lit up and Loco had a dagger that had a recall ability so he could throw it and then recall it back to his hand instantly over and over again.
"Clack, clack…clack, clack" the noise had not stopped and was slowly getting louder. Andrei figured it would be best to speak now since visual queues were not going to be easy. "Lets move toward that sound, might as well get whatever we need to fight over with."
Poco and Loco looked at each other and shrugged and headed in the direction of the weird clacking sound. They moved out in unison and Andrei was quite impressed with the fact that they all knew the severity of the situation despite it being VR. Struggling to see they were not moving quickly but the sound was getting much louder.
They came to a wall that had a couple different tunnels to go down and before they could decide which one the clacking stopped. All five of them felt the hairs on the back of the neck lift and something told them they were in trouble. "Fan out now" Andrei yelled, realizing the noise had been above them not long ago.
The five of them in unison dove out of the middle of the area and were shaken while rolling on the ground. They had narrowly jumped out of the way from being attacked by an enormous spider-like beast. It had razor sharp claws on the end of 12 multi-jointed legs, then on the top of its back were spikes that had some skeletons of deceased victims impaled on them. Some of them had fallen off from the previous attack as the spider had landed with the spikes first into the ground.
It's face had pincers like a spider but there were 6 of them and it also only had 1 giant eyeball.
Poco and Loco both started attacking the closest leg to them. Their initial attacks did nothing to the protective shell that the beast had on its legs. "Attack the joints!" Andrei yellowed at the twins and Loco threw out his dagger and hit the joint. The beast screeched in pain.
Edwin joined in on the fight after seeing the damage to the joint and quickly he hit the four closest to him causing the spider to start to stumble. The coordinated attack at its joints was doing a number on the beast. Julia had chopped off the two closest legs to herself and the face that was pointed at Andrei was chomping at the air screeching as more of its limbs were removed.
Andrei pulled back his longsword and with all his might he swung down on the head of the beast. To his shock the pincers on the face of the beast stopped his attack. Then letting go with its remaining strength in its working limbs, it leapt up to the wall and frantically tried to crawl back up. A different sound emitted from the beast and soon they could hear more "Clack, clack" but in the hundreds.
Andrei yelled "Form up circle defence" and the five of them put their backs to each other in a circle and waited for whatever was coming. After several seconds the offspring of the beast they had just been fighting came pouring out of the tunnels that they had just walked up to. In no time there were hundreds of them surrounding them.
"I mean this with all my being, hold nothing back for they only want to feed on you. They will kill you if you let them. I won't let them, who's with me?" "Hoorah, Hoorah, Hoorah" and all five attacked.
The spectacle was one to behold. Poco and Loco had done their twin power and made their weapons ice/fire which would go right through the spiders like a hot knife through butter. Edwin was smashing them left and right with the morning star. Julia's scimitar danced from one spider to the next as she was chopping away legs and stabbing the faces, killing a spider on each thrust.
One thing Andrei had seen was that the spiders had only come out of two of the tunnels. He started fighting his way to each of those two tunnels, the first one he arrived at he erected "Stone Wall". There were sounds of clanging as the spiders were trying to get through the barrier but were unable to do so. He moved closer to the second one and did the same thing. The first stone wall disappeared and that is when he realized his plan wasn't going to work.
Edwin had noticed what Andrei was doing; he too erected a smaller version of "Stone Wall" at the original cave. The three others had been busy killing away when they realized they had cleared out the spiders in front of them. Slightly huffing and puffing they regained their composure. Andrei put the longsword on his back and then summoned a "Sledgehammer of Lightning". He looked at Edwin and gave him a nod, Edwin knew what the nod meant and released his "Stone Wall".
The moment it disappeared the sledgehammer came down and from everyone's perspective flatten the first spider beast out of existence. Andrei had also thought "Wind Hammer" and the surrounding spiders were all stunned.
Then Fluffy, Fluffy's clone and LaLa appeared out of thin air and started attacking the multitude of spiders in the tunnel. Andrei started moving forward in hopes to give support but it did not appear to be needed. He then moved back to his own "Stone Wall" and gave the group a smile, this is fun he thought as he released his own "Stone Wall" and followed it with the same attack.
This time Poco and Loco charged forward right after the "Wind Hammer" yelling "Hey let us have some fun too, we get this tunnel!" Water and Fire attacks were seen appearing and disappearing as the three others stood in the original cavity that the larger beast had been hiding above.
The sounds of battle had stopped from both tunnels and Andrei felt a purr in his leg and he watched as notification after notification of his pets killing the spider beasts as well as the beast cores and apparently the one eye ball was used in forging.
The five of them were now gathered and Andrei decided to figure out where the "boss spider" might have run off to. He pulled out his longsword and held it up high and summoned "Fireblast" from it and the fire scales of 10 yards extended out and lit up the whole cavity. Not much further past the flame was the "boss spider" it was eating previously wrapped up prey. There seemed to be 3 thin balls of cocooned prey then one that it was currently eating was getting smaller by the second. There were many more cocoons being held even further up the cavity and the group could see the spider had all its legs back.
Then Andrei remembered he had a ranged weapon and a good one at that. He took aim and thought about lightning and the pellet was released. The lightning bolt pellet made direct contact with a leg and the screech from before was heard.
"That will take too long, go for its eye or mouth" Edwin commented on what he just saw.
"Take too long?" Andrei murmured as he then aimed and connected perfectly with the base of the mouth claw and the one broke off. Screeching again the boss spider moved onto another cocconed victim and started eating, the leg he had just shot off started growing back.
Andrei then aimed for the cocoon that the boss was eating and thought "Fire" as he released the next pellet. The cocoon lit up and started to spread and quickly the entire pile of cocooned victims were ablaze. The heat caused everyone to back up and they continued to back up as the boss spider came hurtling down at them with its back leading its fall again.
They were all watching it and moved out of the way in time but also noticed that the boss spider was no longer moving. "Fluffly fetch beast core" and Fluffy clone hopped right on top of the belly of the spider and took multiple bites digging in. Poco started to gag and nearly lost his lunch.
That is when Andrei thought about what he just witnessed. How did Fluffy get a beast core, aren't they in VR? He opened his inventory and all the cores from the spiders and eyeballs were still there. He looked at Julia and told her to build the teleporter here right now.
Julia, a little flustered at the sudden command and urgency that Andrei expressed, fumbled with the package. She entered the security code, entered the destination coordinates, gave it the 30 seconds self-destruct countdown and then the five of them proceeded to port back to Hathin's Military Academy.
Upon arriving there was a man clapping his hands "Well, well, well, seems like we have ourselves a smart one. Did you think that you were supposed to return?" The man had a massive tower shield and a short sword that he pulled out. To make it worse 10 more of them appeared identical to the first one.
"Defend yourselves!" Andrei shouted to his squad and they all assumed defensive positions reading their weapons. The 11 knights advanced with attacks all at different times and different types of attacks but had circled them. "Skill Sap" Andrei thought and he was rewarded with a new ability.
[New Ability tab unlocked: Multiply]
[New Skill learned: Multiply weapon Lvl1]
[Multiply any weapon up to 10 times. Lasts up to an hour.]
[Reserves 100 Spirit per clone]
Andrei looked at his longsword knowing it would also be helpful for Edwin, so he figured it was worth a shot. Looking at Edwin he yelled "Edwin catch" and thought "Multiply Weapon" and while looking at Edwin's hand the longsword appeared. Edwin gained his balance and the four colors appeared confirming Andrei's previous thought.
Edwin knew what was just summoned into his hand, he didn't know how or why but he was not complaining. The infinite ability through the longsword now made him even more scary of a foe. The two longswords radiating the many colors made the original multiplying man take a pause as to whether he understood why there was a difference to the two swords.
Poco had the one dagger he was proficient in so Andrei grabbed it really quickly and looked at Poco's other hand and the duplicate shown. The grin on Poco's face was infectious and Julia could not help but laugh. Andrei stepped over to his sister and touched her scimitar and the second appeared in her hand.
The multiplying man was confused about what was going on. The group of five cadets should not be able to take him on, he pondered. He also had never seen longswords like the two he was currently in battle with. He was used to tiring out the opponents, not the other way around.
That boost in weapons is what sealed the deal for the multiplying man. He had run out of Spirit to summon anymore and he was on his knees gasping for air as he had defended a constant barrage of attacks from Edwin and Andrei's longswords. He had an indestructible shield that had no other properties but that one.
The multiplying man thought he might have just been saved when another group entered the portal room. Unfortunately for him not even they could save him. LaLa got quite annoyed watching the man stay behind the massive shield so she slit his throat with her claws while he had his eyes closed holding onto his shield.
SPRU agents came rushing into the portal room as there had been an unauthorized entry and for some reason all guards were dismissed from the premises. This was the work of the multiplying man who gave different excuses to get the guards to leave the area for a long time. Knowing by the time the alerts of an unauthorized portal travel would have some delay since everyone knew there would be many guards posted around it.
Seeing the carnage to all the knights and seeing a group standing in a defensive circle that was standard to military tactics the SPRU agents started to figure out what was going on and let down their high alert. The first to speak was their captain; he looked at Andrei assuming he was the respective captain.
"Commander Freddy Ashton SPRU, give me a debrief" he spouted to Andrei.
"Cadet Andrei Ierdna. We were doing our final test at the arena in VR pods. Everyone entered my lobby then were transferred to a portal room similar to this one sir. We proceeded to port to our preassigned destination that was given to us in the debrief in our lobby. Taking the portal we arrived inside of a massive cavern-like area. There was no light at all and we had to use our weapons to guide us."
"We encountered beasts that felt much more lifelike than previous VR and to prove it we have the beast cores. That is when I realized we had never seen a beast core in VR as even the same beast can have the core in a different place. That is when I told Cadet Julia to teleport us back to here. We were greeted by the man you see dead in front of you."
That is when the Commander noticed that all the bodies were the same size and the few heads he could see were the same face. He let the cadet speak but when had first stated his last name the Commander had a reaction that each of the cadets picked up on.
"I'm sorry about Sam" The commander's first words puzzle everyone but Andrei. "We will have to look into this breach and how this man was able to pull off what you say happened. This has happened before, who knows you are here?"
Again the puzzled looks from the cadets except for Andrei who simply responded "My teacher Paul stated to involve less the better."
The Commander nodded in agreement and walked over to Julia. He lightly touched her chin with his index finger as if he was a proud father lifting his daughters face. "You have your mother's eyes, you know that right?"
"Eh, what is happening right now?" Poco nudged Edwin while whispering that to him.
"No clue" was all Edwin could respond with.
"This is your team then? Do you have more or is it less?" The Commander had turned back to Andrei looking for a response.
Andrei could only infer that he meant were there other cadets he would want on his team so he said "Yes there were others, do you want a list?" The Commander smiled and said "Good see you tomorrow at graduation I look forward to seeing how you all progress."
Andrei walked over to where the multiplying man had his last stand and thought "Identify" on the shield. He looked over at Edwin and seeing the morning star weapon he suggested to Edwin he should take this shield. After all they were the ones who were just attacked, they should get the spoils of the victory if there are any. Edwin hesitated until Andrei pointed out the "Indestructable" attribute it had on it, Edwin picked it up and pulled out his morning star doing a few swings with the combo and it looked natural.
They gathered themselves back together and headed out of the portal building. They had a bit of a walk back to the cadet building and the twins wasted no time on the questions.
"You two some famous people's kids or something?" Loco asked first.
"How did the Commander know your mom?" Poco inquired.
"How many more abilities are you going to get, big guy?" Loco inquired while looking at his dual daggers.
Andrei saw that Loco was looking at the two daggers and commented that in 25 minutes his copy would disappear which caused a slight frown on his face. "No worries man, you can do it again right?" Andrei nodded with a warm smile and Loco's usual vibrant face returned.
"Am I the only one who is wondering why we were just attacked?" Edwin broke his own silence announcing that to the group. Andrei did not want to say it but he figured it had something to do with himself. They should have been in a lot of trouble but were told to stay safe and enjoy graduation.
"I think the better question is who was dumb enough to only send one after us?" Julia quibbed trying to lighten the mood after the serious question.
"Both are good questions with no idea on the answer unless it's an enemy of Mom and Dad" Andrei blurted to his sister. The other three looked at each other clueless as to how to add to the conversation and continued on in silence.