Alex slipped under a punch and lashed out with an elbow, striking the soldier's chin and knocking him out of the fight. He rolled to his left and barely avoided a kick from another soldier, only to be tackled to the ground by a third opponent once he got to his feet.

Orsk shouted something he didn't catch, but Alex assumed it was a critique about situational awareness. His body flowed with the momentum of the tackle, turning it into a throw. He winced as the soldier was sent flying into a wall. The throw left him on his back, not a great position when faced with three pissed off trained killers.

A foot slammed to the ground where his chest was moments ago, Alex barely dodging it by rolling towards his attacker. He grabbed the woman's leg as he kept rolling, toppling her over made easy by her unbalanced position.

Gotta get to my feet, he thought briefly as he punched the downed soldier in the solar plexus, driving the air out of her lungs.

A kick slammed into his ribs and he flew halfway across the mat. Alex felt his ribs pop out of place from the kick and gasped in pain. Can't let that slow me down. MOVE.

Using the distance the kick provided, Alex shot to his feet, ignoring the searing pain in his side. It was nothing new in these spars. Two very annoyed looking sets of eyes glared at him.

Always take the initiative, Torval would say, so Alex shot towards them. He initiated a kick towards the one on his right, but it was a feint and his left fist shot out towards the other soldier. The first punch was deflected with a quick parry. His follow up hook wasn't and the man collapsed from a fist to his chin. The last opponent hadn't hesitated to attack, despite flinching at the feint. Alex felt a punch connect with the back of his head and he went down. He felt a series of kicks connect with the side as the soldier vented some of their fury. A particularly vicious hit landed on his broken ribs.

"Enough!" Orsk shouted, and the blows stopped, "The cockroach is probably done."

Cockroach. Alex hated that damned nickname. Torval had called him that when he realized it took more damage than it should to put him out of commission. It almost made Alex wish the soldiers were still scared of him. Almost.

The soldier that had just been beating him black and blue helped him to his feet.

"Sorry about that, Alex," he said.

Alex gingerly assessed the damage to his body, broken ribs and what would normally be lots of bruises. Fortunately his insane regeneration would get rid of all that in a few minutes time.

"No worries, Asyall, Orsk and Torval are the real monsters here," he finally replied with a chuckle and a wince. Talking hurt.

"Hey," Torval shouted from the side of the room, "what did we ever do to you? Asyal is the one treating you like a punching bag."

"And you're the one that runs them ragged if they don't!" Alex said with a scoff.

The last few weeks had passed by in a blur for Alex. The constant training and cultivation, coupled with lessons on alien cultures and language were surreal experiences to say the least. His cultivation was proceeding along rapidly, according to Torval and Askren at least. He’d started viscera training and found it to be a slower process than marrow transformation. On average it took him several days of cultivation to saturate each organ. For reference on how to proceed, he wasn’t a doctor after all, he’d asked for general information about the human body, to which Vill showed him a console in his room that held the entirety of Earth’s internet, as well as a large database from the Empire’s own version of the internet.

From what he’d read there were dozens of distinct organs in the human body. Most of the articles he found included muscles, skin, and bone marrow in that list, which opened up questions on whether or not the different stages of body cultivation actually needed the distinctions they were typically given, but he’d decided to not dig too deep into that. Based on the amount of new information he was taking in daily, largely from the language lessons, he’d decided to focus on his brain first.

Saturating his brain had been another surreal experience. He’d immediately felt more alert than he ever had before in his life, like he’d drained several cups of coffee in one go, but without the jitters. He also shortly found out that his memory had improved substantially. It wasn’t quite perfect, but he found he was able to memorize things much more rapidly than before. It had taken him twenty minutes to memorize the Arrhician alphabet of 46 characters and sounds, and since that time hadn’t needed any refresher on them. He didn’t have an eidetic memory though, as he couldn’t instantly recall anything he’d ever seen. Focus was still needed to take down information.

After his brain, he’d started hitting all the major organs. Heart, lungs, stomach, large and small intestines, kidneys, eyes, and his liver. The changes from these hadn’t all been quite as stark as his brain, but he was noticing some substantial benefits already. No matter how hard he pushed his body, he didn’t tire or get winded. His eyesight was better than an eagle’s, and some minor bowel issues he’d had from the alien cuisine had completely vanished.

Combat training was proceeding along pretty well, too. In hand to hand combat, he was able to wipe the floor with most of the lower ranking people in Askren’s unit. In total, there were 25 people in his unit. Askren, two lieutenants, four sergeants, and eighteen corporals. They were divided into four squads, two squads of 5 and two squads of 6, with each lieutenant leading two squads. The corporals varied between second and third tier. Alex found he had no problem beating the tier 2 soldiers, but tier three fighters posed more of a problem. Corporal Vill, despite being the newest addition to the unit, was tier three and could still wipe the floor with him despite his rapid progress. Due to the disparity between the two tiers, Torval and Orsk had him sparring with individual tier three soldiers, or groups of tier two soldiers. Obviously the group fights were still a bit of a struggle.

The tier two soldiers tended to grumble whenever they had to fight him, saying he wouldn’t stand a chance if they were allowed to use magic. Alex didn’t know how to take those comments, he hadn’t actually seen anyone use magic since the start of the journey. The closest he’d see was the ECD blade demonstration, but they hadn’t started weapons training yet. Orsk and Torval kept telling him he wasn’t ready yet, despite admitting they didn’t have much more to teach him from a hand to hand fighting perspective.

The lessons with Askren had been enlightening. He’d learned a lot about the Empire proper, specifically the several factions that fought for the scraps of power the Emperor allowed them. Apparently the Emperor ruled his domain with an iron fist. He was known to be incredibly harsh to those that didn’t follow his laws, though the laws were, as far as Alex could tell, incredibly fair. Things like no murder, slavery, or theft. Unfortunately due to the massive size of the Empire, which took up approximately two thirds of the milky way galaxy, law and order were difficult to fully enforce. Most places only followed laws out of fear of retribution from the Emperor. He had a history of personally tracking down and slaughtering anyone involved in slavery rings or other unsavory enterprises.

Alex learned that the current biggest threat to the Empire was invasion by the Beast Hordes in a neighboring universe (he was still trying to wrap his head around how the multiverse worked.) Apparently the universe neighboring theirs was home to massive waves of magical creatures that bred and spread rapidly. The greater powers of that universe would send out massive numbers of younglings to give them battle experience, while also attempting to steal resources. Fortunately the Empire had ways to detect rifts from other universes, and so were able to fight off the threat of the beasts for the most part. Unfortunately, the beasts were great enough in number that the Empire struggled to keep up with the massive waves of creatures.

“Command Askren has requested your presence on the bridge."

Alex looked up, broken from his thoughts, to see Vills green eyes staring at him.

"Did he say what he wanted?"

Vill shrugged, "Not really, I'm just relaying his request. You look like shit by the way, did anyone ever tell you you're supposed to dodge when your opponent attacks?"

"Har har har," Alex mock laughed in response then turned to his training partners, "I guess that's the end of our session. Sorry about the bruises everyone."

They all just waved him off and Alex limped out of the room, heading for the bridge. A short while later, he found Askren once again staring at the star map. This time the silver line had changed slightly, about a sixth of it had faded to a dull gray color. Alex watched as Askren zoomed in, showing a small golden roc symbol hovering directly over a rust red planet.

"U38XZ47, a small mining colony. For the few people that know about this place, its known for its large iron ore deposits. Essence concentrations on the planet are half a standard deviation above galactic average as well, so they have a fair number of more rare ores they produce as well," Askren said, "This is our first resupply stop, and an opportunity for you to see part of the Empire if you are interested."

Alex felt his ribs pop back in place and gasped in shock.

"Are you ok?" The commander asked, concern flashing across his face.

"I'm fine," he said with a grimace. He hated the feeling of his bones resetting. "What about the quarantine procedure?" Alex asked, moving back to the subject at hand.

"I contacted Lady Skaya not too long ago, she agreed it would be beneficial to start exposing you to your new world. As long as you stay with some of my Marines, there shouldn't be any issues of exposure. We'll dress you in civilian attire, and people will just assume you're spending time with friends in the corps."

"Wouldn't it make more sense to dress me up as one of your marines?"

Askren laughed at that, "You don't have the bearing of a marine, boy. I'm not trying to downplay your combat abilities. You've improved faster than I've ever seen anyone in that regard. Yet you are still very much a civilian, through and through. Understood?"

Alex nodded.

"Good, hopefully this will be an educational experience for you then. I think you'll find our worlds aren't too different from yours. Wherever I've traveled, I've always found people to be more or less the same. You'll find good and bad wherever you look. The scenery just happens to change drastically.

“You should return to your quarters and get a bit of rest. I'll have someone bring your outfit to you."

After that, the Commander turned back to his screens and Alex knew he was dismissed. He quickly exited the bridge, only to be confronted by an excited Corporal Vill.

“So, what did he say?” she asked as the door to the bridge slid closed.

“We’re heading to a plant, U38XZ47. You guys have terrible planet naming conventions.” Alex started walking towards his quarters, and she followed.

“You try naming billions of planets without resorting to an alphanumeric naming scheme, my home planet is 87622V7. You get used to it. Besides, all the major hubs have actual names. They just reserve the lame naming convention for mining, farming, and manufacturing planets. Did he say if we’re doing anything besides resupply?”

“Yeah,” Alex replied, “I’m going down to the planet to see what an Empire controlled world is like.”

Vill squealed in what Alex had learned was her characteristic enthusiasm, “Alex, you have to convince the commander to let me come. We’ve been cooped up on this bucket for weeks, and I’m going crazy. I joined the Roc corps to see the Empire, not endlessly drill and stare out into the void.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Alex said, “But I prefer to stay out of the chain of command. I’m still a little leery about abusing my station to get what I want.”

“Please, this would be a harmless request,” Vill said, she batted her eyes at him seductively, “Besides, don’t you want to take this beautiful damsel out to see the rustic mining colony?”

Alex coughed. He and Vill had spent a fair amount of time together since they first met, but this was the first time she’d indicated any sort of romantic interest in him.

“Relax,” she said with a laugh, “I’m just messing with you. The most you could get out of me is a few fun nights. I’m not actually looking for anything serious, even if you’re almost a prince. I just want to get off this ship.”

“Right,” he said awkwardly, “I’ll bring it up with the Commander.”

They reached his quarters shortly after that, and Alex eagerly bid her goodbye.

He immediately collapsed onto his bed and stared at the grey ceiling above him. He was about to visit an alien planet and Vill was hitting on him. He didn’t know what to think of either of those two things.

Alex lay there for a few minutes, mind wandering aimlessly, before he heard a knock at his door. He sighed and got up.

He was greeted by Corporal Serus with a set of blue robes and a brown belt.

"No pants?" Alex grumbled.

The man laughed, "Not the local style. Sorry."

Shortly after putting on the robes, Sergeant Torval came to collect him. She led him to the barracks where her squad was getting dressed in simple golden dress uniforms. They appeared unarmed except for a pistol at everyone’s right hip, and a dagger on their left.

Vill grinned at him from her bunk as she slid a dagger into her belt.

"We will accompany you as your honor guard," Torval explained, "At all times you are to be in line of sight of at least one of us. Refuel and resupply should take a few hours, so we've planned to have two hours to explore.

"You and Vill seem to get along, so she’ll act as your translator. Under absolutely no circumstance are you to attempt to speak with the locals. Not with your broken attempts at our language. You’re learning fast, but you still sound like you barely know the language. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Alex said, “When do we land?”

She laughed, “We already did. Get ready to disembark.”