The training battalion was back at swinging under Dominik's iron like gaze, they were all sweaty and tired; it was possible to see that someone was already at lunch break with his mind, Noah was amongst them. After one hour of forced march, shouts and scorching heat, lifting a sword again was something that he found hard to do. The few ones who were still concentrating were the envy of the other soldiers, but they also gave motivation to the ones that wanted to give up, it was now a group effort. After marching and having to shout at the unison every few steps, a feeling of membership and familiarity was beginning to form between them. Apparently, suffering together made camaraderie come to life; Noah exchanged a few words with his neighbor in row after the march ended and before it was time to swing the sword again.

‘So, Lawrence got dumped at the official soldier test after he was done with city duty guard, hope it won’t happen to me as well. Better learn what is the procedure to become an official soldier.’ But he had no time to ask such questions because the call to start swinging the sword again already came, it said that they should start now or, before night came, it wouldn’t be over with this simple strike.

Simple or not, he had difficulty at executing it correctly, and like Noah, every other battalion member found it hard to express a big burst of power with a simple swing. They endured none the less, keeping the swords slashing at the dummies. It was more than 30 minutes when someone started to make some loud noise amongst the usual ones; they were noises produced from a really hard hit against the straw of the training dummies; even Noah, after a few more pointers on his stance by the Head Instructor, started to express more power with his blows. It was an almost moving feeling, after almost 3 hours of both physical and mental efforts, some results were showing! His excitement got rapidly substituted by concentration and focus, it was only natural in that situation of loud and timed swings and shouts; like in a deep trance, they all continued to hit dummies concentrating every single strand of power they got, in a single swing.

After 20 more minutes, Dominik felt that his trainees were close to achieving a basic level of this focused blow. This skill consumed a lot of stamina though and he will have to make them stop and resume later, even the half assed focused blows that he was seeing started to consume these future soldiers fuels. Giving the command, they all stopped to rest before marching for the last 15 minutes before lunch break.

It was like an endless circuit training, hitting dummies, catching a breath and then marching. This may look hellish right now but it will greatly help them in the future, these are the most solid basics I can impart them, thought Dominik watching his exhausted marching students.

Due to the time dilation, in order for Noah to attend the morning training, he had placed an alarm to wake up in the night. Having slept only a few hours and feeling tired, he decided to log off for the time and log back when the afternoon session would start; it was a break of a couple hours in the real world but a short sleep was still better than none!

Taking his helmet off was a pleasant feeling after such a strenuous training. Noah quickly went to relieve himself in the bathroom and thought back to his companions that were enjoying a nice meal at the military refectory and then wondered what they were going to do for the next couple of free hours, especially that Lawrence who recently got engaged, as he learned while talking with him.

‘probably he will rush at his fiancée workplace to have some time together, he is really a simple minded guy. Since he told me that he used to sneak away during his patrolling duties, I bet he will do it again! I’m really curious. Definitely Going to ask it when I get back.’

Lawrence was really an amiable and simple guy, apparently without a care in the world except for his lover. Noah didn’t despise him, after all, people in this society were much like Lawrence. They lived day by day, enjoying free meals, being worried only how to waste time and accomplish the few assignments that the government deemed necessary. This was a situation common around the world, in each of the three countries the situation was the same. It could be said that the countries were formed more out of an administrative convenience than a difference in ideals, or whatever else; since they divide up the world in three equal parts, natural resources were almost equal amongst them and with the exponential increase in technology, as time passed, it was less and less necessary to rely on natural resources for energy purposes.

Thinking about the world population situation and enjoying once again his future adventure in Vesper, Noah slowly dozed off to get a small, restoring rest.