Whooosh
Voro came back in a flash of light and with utmost carelessness, went to take a bus while all the guards starred at him and reported his return to earth.
Exit gate only checked his ID, and didn`t ask any questions.
"What up ?" Voro called Thorne as soon as the bus arrived
"Nothing much, good job on being dead for 2 days"
"Yea well I was closer to that than I wanted to. You finished that important business?"
"Yes we have. And the Sanity team finished checking out your place so....umm...some things might be missing"
Voro didn`t answer for a while dumbfounded by the fact, that somehow , someguys entered his apartment and took somethings .
"And you just.."
"Let them? Yes I did, cause I`m not risking martial court over your tiny apartment"
"Cool. Any thing else I might have missed during that time?"
"Iron lung came out but I might be too little for your taste"
"..."
"Fine, yes there is, come by tomorrow, I`ll send you the address"
ends call
Voro entered his apartment with a slow creeek of opening the doors and the first thing he saw was plastic wrap.
Lot of clear plastic wrap on furniture, lamps, shoes, the TV - basically anything that seemed 'suspicious' in the mind of Sanitation team. So everything they could.
".....great..." and he went to the kitchen.
Also in wraps, but the fridge was at least openable. And inside - more plastic.
Now this one was normal, since Voro himself lead a very sanitized life when it came to his meat. Everything was tight and clean, packed into the fridge in individual containers
And the military scientists must have thought they got the meat already and left it, with the normal food being under presumption of 'normal'.
Oven, bake, get a glass of refreshment with some % and fire up the news. The quality was a bit off with the plastic cover, but manageable.
The hot topic of course - Towers and Hunters. Apparently what Thorne was doing making the biggest deal of the new laws, and well he made it very incredibly well.
No one knew what exactly they were, what they did BUT people clearly wanted to be them. Ads depicting medieval heroes, monsters and gamers for some reason were basically every other one played.
Titles like - "Game on Towers" or "We want you, to join the Hunters" - were a common show now. And honestly, this wasn`t that bad for Voro.
'More publicity never hurt anyone right? Besides If more people be like me, the less they`ll call me a freak'
And he finished the meatloaf over a distorted TV commercial.
--------------------
Thorne welcomed Voro to the training facility ,a large hall repurposed from a show stage to a covered gym with "extra spicy" equipment .
"Welcome to the official FBAM Hunter Training and Acquisition Central Gym and Hospital Building. Beauty isn`t she?"
The building was mostly white concrete walls.
"Your boss can`t name shit"
"Whaaaaaat no, It`s great. Anyways you got the gym clothes"
Voro showed a plastic wrapped gym bag.
"Nice. Session starts in 10"
After changing and filling up his cup with unexpected free creatine, he went to a wide open part of the hall with WEIGHTS. So many weighted plates, bars, dumbbells and just massive jugs of water.
Voro came to a sizable group of gym clothed people. Mostly lean or muscular men but a few muscle ladies were found too.
"Listen up everybody. If anyone doesn`t know why they`re here....GOOD"
"This here is a first look at your new abilities. Anyone doesn`t want to participate - prison"
"Anyone gets cocky - prison"
"Anyone kills or injures another Hunter, or civilian for worse - prison. ONLY permitted if I say so. UNDERSTOOD"
mostly head nods and quiet yes man
"Good. Get to work then"
A swarm of note taking interns came to each of them and went with them towards various machines and weights.
"With me 009-1 " a small guy with glasses beckoned Voro towards a bench press.
"What`s your maximum load before entering the Tower?"
"mmmmm...something like..70, 75 kg...maybe"
"Load 75 then. Do 10 repetitions"
And he did. With ease.
'This is ...too easy'
Voro expected something like that, but not an increase of 200% of weight in like 2 weeks.
He just put on another plate, and another and another.
"mhm mhm "the intern kept noting that "And your strength stat is at what number right now"
"umm let me check "Voro had to sip some water after a few series "STATUS"
A small blue window with his info showed up on his right
[Challenger : Voro Vane]
[Tower : ???????? Tower of ???????????]
[Class : None]
[Level : 5]
[ Statistics ]
[Strength 11]
[Agility 11]
[Stamina 7]
[Wisdom 11]
[Intelligence 8]
[???? 0]
[???? 0]
[Skills : Basic Dagger Arts 2, Knife Throwing Technique 2]
"11" he replied after a while
"MMMMM okey" the intern was clearly not expecting that number "Come here now"
Then they went through a treadmill, rope climbing, dead lifts, cardio session, swimming, vertical and horizontal jumps to more interesting exercises
"Please load...45 kg on this bar and swing it"
"Pardon?"
"Swing. The. bar" he mimicked a sword strike
'okey, sure, why not'
Voro obeyed and put on the plates. When he picked it up with its end, the weight was really pulling it down. But, why stop now. He was already in here for 2 hours, and with some strength left to spare. And all the other exercises where boring, now it was at least fun.
He put it up high, then brought it down onto the floor
BOOOOOOM
The mattresses he smashed jumped up with the weight
"you.....can go now..." he fixed his glasses
Voro was sure he mentioned other tests, but if they say he can go, he can go.
On his way to the locker room , a few people caught his attention.
A group of mismatched personas sat on a bench near the exit.
"Oh shit, there`s more?" A buff, very buff, shirtless man spotted Voro on his way to them.
"Of course there are more than the 3 of us here, there`s like 200 new hunters here" Lady with a long black ponytail scoffed and continued to look the other way
"Yea but ... look at him." A guy laying head down on the bench chimed in while his glasses almost fell to the floor.
"Look at me? Bitch look at you" Voro was close enough to hear that at least
The 3 of them looked finally at him normally, then at each other
"You can sit"
"Why would I do that?" Voro was a bit confused
"Because, they only let the most...problematic ones go. The normals are having talks, and chats, and papers... you know" Glasses was starting to talk faster and faster.
"So, we just watch them from here. It`s fun to watch some guys struggle"
"Struggle? I saw a guy lift 100kg while looking like he never left his basement"
"Yup. And then the same guy can`t run a 100 meters. It`s really weird"
Voro looked over the hall. Before he saw actual gym members, swole and fit. But when he looked closer, most of them were in bad shape with weird muscles visible, unshaved beards, crooked postures. Some of course were still good looking people, and they were performing good. Throwing weight and breaking equipment once every few minutes. So the sight was...
"actually funny" Voro said quietly while he sat down
"Btw your name?" the lady asked him only when he put down his butt cheeks.
"Vane, you?" He asked the group in response
"Maya Castillo, nice to meet you" She shook his hand finally.
"Sup, Im Carl." the big fella reached over the other 2 guys with his massive hand.
"Burt" and glasses reached from below.
After a brief moment of awkwardness Voro asked "Are we all insane?"
"Yes/yes/no" only the lady refused to admit that
"Good" and they continued to watch the Hunter Gym from above and laugh at them.