The following morning, Darion’s group was woken up very early once more and forced to go to the hell hike. There were some grumbles but the rest took it in stride. It was obvious to many that the sergeants will do this after the commotion last night as a sort of partial punishment and partly as a declaration that the day is just another normal day.

So all of them run the 12-mile hike and again, Darion broke away from the group. This time, however, he did not use his powers at the onset of the trial.

Instead, he started reading the information the system provided him. It was all so weird to Darion since he wasn’t exactly just reading the information, but he was absorbing it. He wasn’t sure if it was a symptom of his higher intelligence functions or just a part of how the system works for him. There is simply no way to find out at this time.

How it works is that Darion read content in his popup and after a few seconds, he feels the information and data are actually being transferred into his brain. At first, he wasn’t aware of this but as more time passes and that his brain became more sensitive, maybe because of his ability "Heightened Senses," but he could literally feel the information getting absorbed.

This all becomes possible after he woke up this morning and received a pleasant surprise.

Now, Darion can easily recite the entire content of the twenty seven-page descriptions about the attribute CONSTITUTION by heart without too much effort.

Even so, there are a lot of things he still did not understand about the system, it didn’t diminish his interest to learn, but he quickly realized that even with high intelligence, mastering the damn thing will not be a walk in the park.

Once more, Darion looked at his current status screen:

Name: Darion Libinski

Level: 2

Age: 17

Hero name: Not applicable

Class: Basic Tinkerer

Attributes:

Strength: 1

Agility: 1

Perception: 1

Constitution: 1

Mind: 1

Essence: 0

Abilities:

Telekinesis 5

Super Strength 1

Super Speed 1

Invulnerability 1

Accelerated Healing 1

Melee Fighting 5

Upgrades:

Heightened Senses 2

Hyper Stamina 3

Focus Mind 1

Available Hero points (HP): 2

Available Attribute points (AP): 0

Darion shook his head. He’d accumulated a whole list of new abilities and upgrades in a relatively small amount of time. Imagine what he can do in the future if this continues?

He noted the two remaining “Hero Points” or HP still available to him after he leveled up after helping the little girl and his stupid cat. Through experimentations, Darion knew he could apply that to any of his skills except for the one that reached a threshold which is TELEKINESIS and MELEE FIGHTING.

He cannot add another HP in those UPGRADEs until he improved his attribute points in MIND for telekinesis and both AGILITY and STRENGTH in Melee Fighting.

Even so, the list was pretty impressive for Darion and he can still upgrade it in so many other ways.

After his experiences last night, Darion has no intentions of using his super speed. Instead, this time, he concentrated on finishing the course first. He just realized that after multiple starts, he never even seen the finish line for this course and in some ways, it irked him.

So he carefully navigated the course as best he could and when it is a straight line, he sprinted at his normal speed. Given his passive upgrades, Darion’s body can cope much faster than it used to now that Darion knows what to expect and somehow he is still breathing normally despite the speed he is showing.

He barely even noticed when Akiko and the other enhancers overtake him. All he cared about was his breathing and the way forward.

Halfway to the finish line, Darion was surprised, as well as the enhancers who are resting on the side of the road, when he passed them by while they were taking a break. One or two were bypassed on the road when their powers ran dry and they were running normally and breathing ruggedly.

Darion overtook Akiko near the end when the girl was stuck in the final obstacle course. She is resting in a nearby shade of a tree when she watched Darion slow down and study the 9 feet wooden wall that stopped her own progress.

Darion looked around, noticed a sharp rock, and grabbed it. He walked towards the edge of the wall and wedged the damn thing deep using another blunt rock like a hammer. He took a few stepped back and ran towards the construction then jumped upward using the makeshift ledge as leverage before grabbing hold of the edge of the wall on top. Akiko gave a gasp of surprise from Darion's unexpected antics. By the time Darion shimmied his way on top, he was smiling at the Asian girl down below.

"Help me up!" Akiko shouted, and Darion sighed.

He lowered himself to the ground and offered his hand to the petite girl down below. Suddenly, he heard a loud throat-clearing sound just behind him. A Soldier holding a modified AR-15 was standing behind him. He wasn’t looking at him and he was instead looking at the horizon with a binocular.

“Best to move along, Civilian,” the soldier said nonchalantly. “This is not a team obstacle event.”

Akiko gave the soldier the stink eye. Sheepishly, Darion shrugged at the scowling Akiko, clean himself up, and started jogging away.

When Darion finished the course two hours later, he found out that he is only one of six others who finished the race.