Chương 6: Pay to Survive

As soon as the roar of fiery streams outside the window died down and the orange glow in the night sky finally dissolved into darkness, I felt the silence in the apartment become almost deafening. Mom was still standing by the window, mesmerized as she stared into the void, while I was already sitting at the computer. A cold passion burned in my chest. Danny had given me more than just information, he had handed me a key to survival and growth. If the army loved paperwork, I would bury it under a mountain of it.

But first, I needed to verify how much the curator's words matched harsh reality rather than his childhood memories. My fingers began tapping across the keyboard. I dove into the depths of army forums, archived regulations, and discussion threads for the awakened. The information checked out, but with significant caveats. It turned out that this tradition, granting ranks for certificates, traced its roots back to the Vietnam War.

Back then, under conditions of severe personnel shortages and mass conscription, recruitment offices clung to anyone who could at least solder microchips or apply a tourniquet. The army is a massive machine, and it needs not only those who pull the trigger, but also those who repair, heal, and build. However, there were two major catches. First, the ceiling. You cannot rise above sergeant with course diplomas alone, officer stars required full graduation from a military academy.

From what I could tell, the same rules applied in the Awakened Corps. Second, the easy-rank gravy train in the regular army had ended long ago. There is no longer a shortage of personnel, there are plenty willing to serve for benefits, and recruitment offices turn their noses up even at master-level athletes. But my situation was different. Because of the portals, awakened individuals were catastrophically scarce, each of us was a rare commodity.

Here, the army became surprisingly flexible and generous, trying to lure us with any incentives just to keep us from drifting into crime or freelance mercenary work. Once I finished the historical overview, I mapped out my progression path. The army valued three pillars: survival, combat training, and discipline. Bonus points for medical skills and technical competence. I opened a tab with shooting clubs.

Before, I would have strained my eyes comparing prices and hunting for discount coupons, but now, looking at the five-digit number in my banking app, I allowed myself to be demanding. I was not looking for just a range, I needed an elite training center. I wanted everything at once: handgun fundamentals, carbine tactics, shotguns for close quarters, and the basics of sniper work. My choice landed on a prestigious club with a Tactical Intensive program. The price stung, five thousand dollars for the full course.

Expensive? Insane. But whenever I remembered how Danny had flown out the window wrapped in flames, the question of cost vanished on its own. He is a flying fire platform. And me? I am just a guy who works fast. To stand on equal footing with people like those Supermen, I need to hit the target before they can snap their fingers. I am not Batman yet, but I intend to become his most efficient version. Next came hand to hand combat.

My ideal was a black belt in three or four disciplines, but reality was brutal, that would take years of competition, which I did not have. I came across private courses from a former special forces operative. He promised to teach not flashy spins for movies, but real survival in the clinch and knife work. The reviews were glowing, but he did not issue official state-recognized diplomas. That meant for the recruitment office his lessons were worthless.

A bureaucrat behind a desk would not care how I break a dummy, he needed an official seal from a prestigious licensed institution. I had to choose the gold standard option, a flashy accredited martial arts academy. Another two thousand dollars gone. Next, medicine. An emergency care course at a medical university. Field surgery for beginners, bleeding control, resuscitation in field conditions. One thousand dollars. Survival in extreme conditions.

A group expedition into desert and forest environments, training in finding water where there is none and building shelters from debris and branches. The website proudly stated: "Program recognized among rangers." I am in. Another thousand dollars. Driving school. Here I decided not to cut corners and enrolled in licenses for all categories, from a nimble motorcycle to a heavy truck. On top of that, an extreme driving course to learn how to evade pursuit or ram through obstacles. Three thousand gone. Parkour.

It sounded unserious for a recruitment office, and they were unlikely to award any stripes for it. But for me, the ability to vault over a high fence or climb onto a roof in seconds felt critically important. Survival is not always about fighting, sometimes it is about disappearing fast. Five hundred dollars gone. Finally, I added swimming and lifeguard rescue courses. Overkill? Maybe. But Danny had said nothing about what awaited me inside the portals. What if it was nothing but ocean or endless swamps?

Another five hundred dollars. By the time I finished clicking the Pay buttons, my budget had shrunk by thirteen thousand dollars. And that did not include ammunition, uniforms, and gear, which would cost at least another thousand to fifteen hundred. Training was absurdly expensive, especially if you chose the most prestigious schools just to get those gold standard certificates. I leaned back in my chair, staring at the remaining balance, seven thousand. I needed to stop.

I still had a mortgage to pay off, and my salary from my main job had been delayed for some reason. Accounting usually worked like clockwork, but now there was nothing but silence. That was worrying. It looked like I would have to drop by the office in the next few days and figure out what was going on. The thought of returning to the gray office walls after a conversation about plasma flights and twenty-thousand payouts made me feel almost physically sick.

But debts would not pay themselves, and the curator was not going to cover my house. Maybe I was overdoing it, maybe it was just paranoia talking. After all, the army is a state machine, and there was probably a system for free training from scratch. But first, the mere possibility of getting sergeant stripes before I even put on combat boots warmed my soul too much. And second…

damn it, I just did not want to look like a helpless noob compared to my future colleagues, thirteen-year-old brats who by the time they reached adulthood would already have combat experience that even special forces veterans could only dream of. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. I glanced at the clock, the hands were relentlessly crawling toward midnight.

Information overload was taking its toll, my brain was boiling as it processed numbers, addresses, and tactical schemes. Normally, I would have been doomed to toss and turn until three in the morning, staring at the ceiling and replaying conversations with Danny in my head. But now I had a new tool in my arsenal, [Special Command]. I lay down, closed my eyes, and gave myself a mental order: "Instant sleep." The night passed like a single short cut in an edit.

A click, and I opened my eyes, flooded with morning light. I immediately checked the clock. Eight hours of uninterrupted oblivion again. This was a side effect of hyperfocus, in exchange for the ability to skip exhausting training or tedious processes, I paid with extended rest time. Two extra hours of sleep in exchange for not feeling my muscles burn and my breathing break during a marathon gym session? That sounded more than acceptable. Breakfast turned into a ritual of calorie consumption.

I devoured food with a disturbing efficiency. After eating, I checked the fridge and noticed with annoyance that the shelves were almost empty. Because of my insane metabolism and rapid muscle growth, my body had turned into a bottomless furnace. It needed not just cheap pasta, but quality protein, vegetables, and vitamins. A quick mental calculation gave a disappointing result, food alone would now cost me at least another five hundred dollars a month.

"Mom, please go to the store. The grocery list is on the table." Yeah… just last night I had felt rich. It seemed like those army payments would be enough for a luxurious life where I would not have to deny myself anything. In reality, not even a full day had passed, and I had already spent more than half my reward investing in myself. With expenses like these and elite course fees, I would need to find an additional source of income very soon.

Twenty thousand a month is a huge amount for an ordinary office worker, but for a future operative who wants to survive in the portals, it is only starting capital. I walked into the gym at exactly nine in the morning. It was my favorite time. Rush hour had already passed, office drones were suffocating in their open spaces, and students were sleepily staring at boards in their classrooms. The gym was wrapped in a blessed emptiness.

Aside from me, there were only a couple of lucky individuals, the kind who could afford not to work or whose income was not tied to a schedule. I stood in the center of the hall, took a deep breath, and as usual activated the command: [Full body workout. Maximum intensity]. The world around me collapsed again. Peripheral vision vanished, leaving only a narrow corridor of focus.

I could see only my hands, as if in a sped up YouTube clip: here I was methodically pressing dumbbells, here my legs hammered the treadmill belt at a furious pace, here I froze in a complex stretch, forcing my ligaments to become elastic like rubber. The best part, I did not feel the burning in my lungs, did not count agonizing seconds in a plank, and did not force myself to do one more final set. I was a machine.

Suddenly, system notifications appeared before my eyes, semi transparent and bright: [Strength +1] [Agility +1] [Endurance +1] [Your familiar is growing. Keep it up and you will level up the Trainer] Whoa, so that is how it works! That means the levels of the Trainer itself directly depend on my familiar's physical progress. To grow mentally, I have to develop my vessel, my body. Honestly, I liked this kind of grind far more than if the interface forced me to run around the city killing rats in basements or mobs.

Becoming a better version of myself and getting game bonuses for it? Perfect. When the hyper mode shut off, I walked up to the full length mirror in the locker room and froze, unable to suppress my amazement. It was incredible. The layer of fat on my stomach that had annoyed me for the past couple of years had practically vanished. The definition of my abs was clearly visible under the skin, my shoulders had grown wider, and my chest muscles had taken on a sharp outline. I did not look like a contender for the Mr.

Olympia title yet, but the progress over two days was simply phenomenal. On every fitness forum, experts foam at the mouth insisting that the first visible results appear after a month, and I… I had done it in forty eight hours. Yes, an enhanced metabolism is the greatest gift. I quickly changed and took a shower right there at the club. I decided not to take risks, what if some unexpected guest showed up again while I smelled like a marathon runner at the finish line?

My intuition did not fail me, although it manifested in a different way.

"Oh, hi, Tom!" I was standing in the lobby of our building by the elevator, lost in my thoughts, when a neighbor stepped out of the apartment on the first floor. A girl in her early twenties, with a mass of bright pink hair and full sleeve tattoos. I was not very familiar with that kind of thing, emo or some other subculture that, in theory, should have died out ten years ago. Damn, what was her name? Christina? Melissa?

The last time we spoke was about three years ago, when I had just moved into this building and tried to be friendly. Since then, all our interaction had been reduced to polite, almost automatic nods during random encounters. I remembered only two things about her: she lived on the first floor, and she had an old Labrador that she walked at dawn. Usually, my mom handled diplomatic relations with the neighbors. Me… well, I am not the most sociable person on the planet.

These meaningless rituals of politeness on the street always weighed on me: "How are you?", "How is work?", "Wow, what weather!" I am not interested in what is happening in their lives, and I genuinely do not understand why they need to know anything about mine.

"I have never seen you here during the day," she said, stepping closer as she waited for the elevator. Her gaze slid curiously over my gym bag.

"Why are you not at work at this time?" Why though? The elevator was already on the first floor, she did not even need to go upstairs. Why this interrogation? What did she care about my schedule? I was not asking why she was not in an office herself, because frankly, I did not care. But my mom had drilled manners into me too deeply, so instead of an honest "None of your business," I gave the driest version possible:"I have a day off today."

"Oh, I see…" she dragged out, and there was clear disappointment in her voice. Apparently, she had been hoping for something juicier or at least a longer story.

"And what are you doing?"

"Stuff."

"What kind?" she did not give up, tilting her head slightly.

"Important." The elevator finally opened its doors with a soft chime. I quickly slipped inside and immediately pressed the button for the fifth floor. Fortunately, she had enough tact, or maybe my coldness was enough, not to follow me in just to chat. The doors closed, cutting off her curious sight. Most likely, I now looked like an arrogant jerk in her eyes. So what. I had not signed up to be friends with everyone who owned a key to this building.

I had a goal, and the neighbor's pink bangs did not fit into it at all. Now I would quickly drop off my sweat soaked clothes at home, grab something protein rich, and head out to my first lesson at the shooting club. Every minute of this day had to be paid for with my progress.