Chương 31: In the Army Now

Breakfast took place in a crowded mess hall. Food was served from a hole in the wall, manned by a sturdy-looking lunch lady sweating profusely from the heat of her kitchen. As recruits lined up at her window, she plopped down for each of them a sloppy confusion of preserved meats and porridge. With the steaming bowls in hand, the soldiers took their seats at a long stone table, in the exact same order as their bedrolls.

If Jordan thought he'd get a chance to hash things out with his new friend, he was sorely mistaken. Everyone in his platoon, including the now somewhat subdued Pewter, acted like they were in a speed-eating competition. Bowl after bowl disappeared within seconds. The only sounds that could be heard were slurping, gulping, (no chewing!), and desperation. This was one custom Jordan couldn't quite emulate, especially not when the porridge was hot enough to burn his tongue.

But he soon found out the reason for the urgency." Form up!" What, already? It felt as though they'd barely sat down. Yet the whole platoon obeyed the command without a single complaint. They filed out of the mess hall in two orderly lines, with one senior recruit beating a drum at the front of the group. Jordan did his best to keep up, still feeling rather hungry and regretting his overly conservative turn at the dining table. Clearly, the platoon had been drilled to follow a tight schedule.

Everyone seemed to know what to do, moving in perfect synchrony as they made their way to the center of the courtyard. There, they were joined by the muscular frame and utterly neutral face of Finch Quiverwing—their drill instructor for the day. Under the younger Ranger's silent guidance, the platoon rotated through some vigorous exercise routines. Jordan was a step slower than everyone else, made worse by the fact that Finch refused to speak a single word of explanation.

Thankfully, the exercises themselves were simple enough if perhaps a little unconventional by Earthling standards, allowing even a complete novice to catch up soon enough. Wind sprints. Bunny hops. Rope climbs. As well as what turned out to be Jordan's favorite exercise: rolling a boulder across the yard, all while onlookers yelled out the seconds it took to finish a run. Here, he put his extensive practice to use, somehow managing to post the fifth best time in the whole platoon.

At some point, Jordan came to an incredible realization. Namely that he was having fun. It felt good to be on a level playing field as everyone else, freed from the yoke of impostor syndrome. More than that, it felt good to exert his body and push it to its limits, all under the professional, watchful guidance of—" Form up!"' Form up' was quickly becoming the new, much more finely incremental city bell. A punctuation to convey Jordan from one scheduled activity to another.

On this occasion, he was about to find out that 'fun' had only been an accidental byproduct of this here training arc. The recruits were split into fifteen pairs, each made to stand facing each other at about an arm's length. Still no spoken instructions from Finch Quiverwing, but it didn't take a genius to figure out what was about to go down. Jordan should've expected it. But he was still dismayed to be paired up with Pewter.

The somewhat out-of-shape Tetherer looked absolutely miserable: drenched in sweat, panting heavily, and still raw where his hands had been beaten this morning. Jordan suspected that he himself didn't look much better off. Which didn't stop him from filling with guilt and sympathy. In other words, exactly the wrong kind of attitude to bring to a sparring match." Begin!" Pewter moved first… and much faster than a drenched, panting, out-of-shape fella had any right to.

He stepped toward Jordan with a firm fist into the midsection, before the latter had a chance to dodge, brace, or indeed react in any way, shape, or form." Oof!" JORDAN YU lost: 3 HP. The damage was almost nothing. But the pain certainly didn't feel like nothing! Pewter wasn't done, smoothly transitioning into a low kick to sweep Jordan's legs. This Jordan managed to avoid with a timely backstep, but rather clumsily at that.

He lost his balance and fell backward anyway, his butt hitting the hard-packed earth for some fresh misery. Strength DC 12: success Zhurong:"Pathetic! Weak and soft! You, manling, are bumbling about as if you've never been in a fight before!" This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Classic. Zhurong giving their unsolicited opinion on Zhurong's Day. The God of Strength was wrong about the manling never being in a fight.

But they were right about the manling's bumbling about. Jordan saw red, forgetting guilt and sympathy in an instant. The next time his opponent came for him, he was ready. A sidestep to dodge the punch and, in the same motion, round onto Pewter's exposed side. Here, Jordan could go a couple of different ways. If he were to conform to what was happening around him, the play was probably to throw a martial-artsy punch, perhaps by invoking his best Jet Li imitation.

Yet Jordan was a basketball boy who'd grown up in a hockey town. As such, his first instinct was to… … put his opponent in a headlock and start pummeling away! PEWTER SAPLING lost: 1 HP. PEWTER SAPLING lost: 1 HP. PEWTER SAPLING lost: 1 HP. … Jordan was out of practice. Not that he'd ever been much of a scrapper in the first place. A lot of his punches whiffed, and even the ones that did land hit like wet noodles.

But his unconventional tactic (by Stormvaster standards) did the job, far better than it had any right to. Tetherer Sapling clearly had never been in a headlock before, and he showed it by fumbling and flailing uselessly. Jordan was in the ascendancy. But he very quickly ran out of stamina, even before Pewter could put up an effective countermeasure. Lungs bursting, Jordan tumbled to the ground, dragging his opponent with him. The two men fell on top of each other in an exhausted, gasping heap.

And that was when Jordan made his fatal mistake. As he rolled off Pewter and sucked in great gulps of air, he suddenly found the whole situation desperately amusing. Because it was, wasn't it? Here he was, a 32-year-old former office grunt, mixing it up with a bunch of sweaty young'uns inside a video game. He got punched. He punched back. And now, everything was a wash. Jordan laughed. A wheezy chuckle at first, barely registering in between his labored breaths.

Then louder and louder until laughter filled his overworked lungs and his body shook, not with exhaustion, but with unrepentant mirth. He should've known better. Should've noticed how everything around him had gone deathly quiet." Jordan!" A terrified whisper from Pewter. That was how Jordan knew to open his eyes. And where he expected to see the open sky above the courtyard, he was instead met by…" Get up." Finch Quiverwing stood over him, expression utterly neutral.

But these were the first words ever spoken by the reticent Ranger, which told Jordan in no uncertain terms that he was in big trouble. Jordan obeyed without protest, though not as smoothly as he would've hoped. He took a stumble as he got up, and only managed to right himself with Pewter's help. He threw his friend a grateful nod, before turning to face his drill instructor. By then, the recruits had formed a rough circle around Jordan and Finch.

Their faces didn't betray much, but there was an undeniable nervous energy in the air. They knew one of their own was about to 'get it', and they were powerless to help. As for the Ranger himself, he merely stood with a perfectly neutral posture. Upright, shoulders squared, hands folded behind his back. Compared to Heron, he had more what Jordan would describe as an 'everyman look'.

In other words, not someone Mom would take any notice of, especially since the writers of the show had given him so few speaking lines. So ordinary-looking, in fact, that Jordan found himself being lured into a false sense of security." Yu," Finch said, continuing his record-breaking vocalization streak.

"Spar with me." Four words. No explanation, no rationale. Yet somehow, Jordan had known it was coming. He'd spent the last few seconds not only catching his breath but also trying to psych himself up. I mean, just look at the guy, he told himself. Everyman face, nothing posture. Barely looks any scarier than Pewter (no offense, Pewter). And come on, this is Vesselia for god's sake. I should know better than anyone that everyone here is a nerd wizard. Right? Wrong. Jordan made the first move.

Only because Finch wouldn't, and staring at the man's empty expression made him weirdly nervous. He adopted an imitation boxer's stance, both fists up by his chest like in the movies. He hopped this way and that as he approached, staying light on his feet as if he knew what he was doing. He feinted left, slid back right, then went in with a— Thwack! JORDAN YU lost: 7 HP. What?? As Jordan crumpled to his knees, he was more confused than hurt. He'd thrown the first punch. Whereas Finch had barely moved.

And yet, it was the Ranger's fist that had buried itself in Jordan's face, with enough force to squash the latter's nose like an aluminum can. The pain came later. At the same time as the confusion faded along with Jordan's consciousness. He dropped to the ground again, this time to indeed look up at the open sky. That's strange. Why are there two suns? And why do they keep spinning like pinballs on a roulette? One blink, two blinks, and he was out.