The fourth bell of the day rang, signalling the start of the gym period. Heading to the first floor, all fifteen students reached the gym and went to their separate locker rooms. All eight boys were expected to change into their gym uniform, be it in front of each other or in separate stalls. Most of them changed in front of each other, but Kezner was a very insecure person, he didn’t feel comfortable with others looking at him or his body. It wasn’t that he was out of shape, it was a feeling that couldn’t be put into his words, it felt like his skeleton scratched at his skin, telling him to leave.

The gym uniform consisted of a black t-shirt, and navy blue sweatpants, very simple yet expensive since they were only allowed to buy it from the school. Walking out of the stall, everyone took note that Kezner’s body frame was broader than they originally noticed, as it was more apparent with the thinner clothes. Kezner received a lot more attention and appraisal than he normally would as they were wondering if his current appearance was just a mask for his true noble personality. Though he seemed externally aloof, in his mind he felt nervous and self-conscious like a cornered rabbit about to be ravaged by a ferocious pack of wolves. To him, they were silently teasing and insulting him, while in reality they were hesitating to go up and befriend him.

Eventually everyone trickled into the gym as they got changed at different rates. When the girls entered, most of the boys had their eyes glued onto their bodies, the thinner clothes had brought out more of their shape than the thick blazer and button-down shirt. Kezner was one of the few who didn’t as he saw it as disrespectful, but many of the other students saw it as Kezner unimpressed as if he had seen better. These misunderstandings were starting to pile up to strengthen their belief of his true status, this further hardened Arlean’s resolve to approach him on her own.

The gym teacher was a beast of a man as he was about 7ft tall with huge and muscular arms covered in scars and tattoos, his eyes carried the sights of war and blood, holding a sharp yet experienced glint to them. He was also wearing the gym uniform to set an example, though his was custom made. Deciding to start his class by asserting his dominance he barked instead of talked, “I am Mr. Flanigan, but all of you will refer to me as sir, do you understand?!”

Startling everyone, Mr. Flanigan’s voice reverberated throughout the large gym, forcing everyone to pay attention, “Yes, sir!” Not even Gareth wanted to mess with the new teacher, this monster would probably eat him alive if he tried to mess with him.

“From now on we will be starting Educational Military Training, you will all be trained in the ways of warfare as infantrymen, do you understand?!”, Mr. Flanigan’s words caused everyone to be shocked, especially Kezner as the thought of being drafted reoccurred to him, “Fuck, it’s too late, they probably already have my name registered…”

“Yes, sir!”, although everyone had questions, they didn’t see Mr. Flanigan as a person who enjoyed talking more than action, so they kept their mouths shut.

“To train you in your venture into the battlefield, we will start class immediately by testing your individual strengths and weaknesses, and then you will work on covering each other’s weaknesses with your strengths as a collective! Do you understand?!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Two equal single file lines, five seconds, start!” Mr. Flanigan blew the whistle on his chest, signally the start of the simple looking activity.

Kezner somehow managed to get into the front of one of the lines. As two lines formed of 7 students, while one husky student named Britt was too slow and couldn’t enter a line in time. Though the activity seemed simple, the sharp students realized that there were 15 students so there couldn’t be two equal lines unless someone was kicked out.

Mr. Flanigan walked up to Kezner and a girl who was at the front of the other line, “Both of you are now the leaders of your two groups, do you understand?!”

“Yes, sir!” Somehow, Kezner still managed to keep a bland and neutral voice while raising his voice, though he still looked aloof, he was quivering on the inside.

Pointing at Britt, Mr. Flanigan barked back, “So which one of you will take him into your groups?!”

“I will, sir!” the girl of the other group spoke out, causing Mr. Flanigan’s face to darken at her while Kezner could only slightly shake his head in pity. Her line of thinking was that if they outnumbered the other group, they would be able to beat them. It was only logical for Mr. Flanigan to have the two groups against each other in the future.

“This is your first failing mark in this class, stand in the middle now!” Mr. Flanigan berated Olivia, the girl that was originally the leader of that line.

“Wait, but why?! I didn’t do anything wrong!” Olivia complained to Mr. Flanigan’s face as she felt wronged, she was still ignorant to what had happened in a mere second that changed her position.

Staring wide-eyed at her, Mr. Flanigan almost snapped with a vein popping off his forehead, “Did I give you permission to speak?! I said stand in the middle, you’re not the leader of this group! If I have to repeat myself, you’re gonna fail this class, no questions asked. I’m not gonna deal with a baby who can’t listen to instructions, I said two equal lines, if you add him, how are your lines equal?!” This finally caused Olivia to understand her mistake, and faced Mr. Flanigan’s harsh tolerance.

“Remember, you are all here to obey, not command! To me you’re nothing, only ants that I get to chew and step on, so put your superiority complexes away! I don’t care if you live in a box or a mansion, if you eat out of cardboard or gold, in my eyes you are nothing! Do. You. Understand?!” This finally gave everyone a wake up call to the severity of this class, “He’s trying to kill us!”

Pointing at Britt, “You, you’re gonna be the leader of this line from now on, do you understand?!”

“S-sir, I-”, the poor guy was trying to get his words out until he was interrupted by Mr. Flannigan.

“Do you understand?!” Now with his eyes almost popping out of his eyes, and his spit drowning Britt, Mr. Flanigan was looking down on Britt like an enraged god judging a man.

“Sir, I’m not cut out for it! I can’t, I can’t do it!” Britt almost fell down to his knees sobbing, he couldn’t handle Mr. Flanigan’s insane intensity, especially this up close.

“Good, get to the back of the line, it’s important to know your limits, you should always obey commands, but only if you’re able to carry them out!” Mr. Flanigan was a lot more calm as he was teaching a lesson. When teaching he was calmer, but when testing, this man would tear into you like you were a piece of wet paper.

“Y-yes, sir.” Britt could only hobble back to the back of the second line as he wiped his tears.

Kezner was slightly depressed as he didn’t want to be the group leader, but he didn’t want to show any weakness to this new teacher, he still had his own pride. Since he was already on this suicidal bullet train, there was no need to jump off to his doom.

“Now we will test your strength, endurance, agility, and dexterity! Seeing as how you were too weak to be assessed by nanobots, you will all be put through a set of tests!” Cultivation Data was only recorded through the usage of nanobots throughout your body, the problem was, your body couldn’t handle the influx of them all at once, so you would usually die if you were too weak. You could only see Cultivation Data when you enter the Avatar Stage, as your body would be able to handle it.

Mr. Flannigan tapped something on his holo-watch, which caused a target to slowly ascend out of the ground. “We will first test the strengths of your abilities, I don’t care about the ranks of your abilities like those losers that just sit behind desks all day, I only care about raw output! The damage done will be indicated with a points system on the top of the dummy, let me show you!”, as he finished his sentence, Mr. Flannigan punched the target with what seemed to be barely any energy behind it, with a *ding*, “50 points” appeared at the top of the target.

Pointing at Olivia, he continued to bark, “You, you will be recording the scores for each team and adding them up for the total and you will be going first!”

Olivia stepped behind the indicated line and used her ability, it was a normal water ability which she turned into ice and threw the shards at the target.

*ding* “20 points” appeared above the target. A lot of students gasped at how little the points were, that attack was able to kill most of them, meaning Olivia was one of the strongest in the class.

While Olivia went, the first team, obviously voted for Arlean to be the group leader, nobody else had as much prestige as her in the entire class, maybe in the entire school.

“Group leaders will go last as the deciding factors.”, Mr. Flanigan decided to come up with this new rule, as usually group leaders were chosen since they were the strongest, while everyone else was about average, meaning that the scores should be about the same until the group leaders acted.

Everyone slowly went up one by one except Arlean and Kezner, and just as Mr. Flanigan anticipated, the scores were neck to neck, with 90 points to each team, in other words, the average was 15 points per student, that is if we exclude the group leaders.

With a nod and a move of his head, Kezner nonchalantly looked at Arlean then at the target, silently allowing her to go first. Knowing she already lost, Arlean could only ruefully go up to the line and give it her best, who knew, maybe Kezner would let her win to keep his guise. Mr. Flanigan noticed this but didn’t say anything, things took an interesting turn in his eyes.

Raising her palm towards the target, lilac colored lightning coiled around her arm like a sleek serpent about to pounce on its prey, then a ball of lightning started growing in her hand until it reached the size of her palm, where it finally blasted from her hand to the target and then…

*ding* “35 points” It was met by gasps of surprise and worship as that was the highest score yet, Mr. Flanigan didn’t count as he was not only the teacher but a monster. Speaking of which, he was just as surprised since he didn’t expect someone this strong in such a talent barren planet.

Finally, it was Kezner’s turn at the target. Sighing, he walked up to the line and got settled. He then put his two wrists together with his claw-like hands building up gray flames. Pointing the room temperature gray flames in his hands to the target, Kezner let them go and attacked the target like a flamethrower, and then…

*ding* “0 points” This caused an outrage and a barrage of questions, “How is this even possible?!”, “Is the machine broken?”, “When does this class end?”...

“Did he let me win on purpose?” Arlean knew what he was capable of and how terrifying Kezner was when he was truly fighting, “Is it that he can only use it when he’s serious?”

Mr. Flanigan’s face grew dark as he looked at the “0 points” on top of the target, that was literally impossible, even Rank-F abilities did some form of damage. “You, what kind of wus are you that you can’t even attack properly?! How did your parents raise such a coward that you can’t-”

Kezner stared into his eyes in an enraged manner while they turned Inverted, as the black of his pupils and irises clouded into the white of his sclera, with both of the colors switching places. With a woosh, the neutral gray flames surrounding the target instantly turned into a pitch black as it ate the target almost instantly and ate all of the Natural Energy in the gym as it dug deeper until it finally faded, all while Kezner looked up stared into Mr. Flanigan’s eyes.

Mr. Flanigan could only squint his eyes into slits as Kezner’s eyes reverted back to normal and went back to their aloof states. Mr. Flanigan just walked back to his original position.

*ding* “150 points-MAX” The indicator at the top was just a hologram, so it wasn’t affected by the flame.

Everything happened in an instant so nobody saw or realized what happened but when they saw the points go from 0 to 150, they realized that Kezner must have activated his ability. This was the final nail in the coffin that proved that Kezner was a scion of some big clan pretending to be a high school student on some backwater planet.

Arlean wiped the sweat off her brow as she realized she not only dodged a bullet but a nuclear missile. If Kezner had hit her with his full strength, not even a speck of her remains would be found, she wouldn’t be cremated, she would have been melted. Plus the machine indicated that his power reached past the maximum it could record…

“Arlean’s group gained 125 points, while Kezner’s group wins with 240 points. Kezner’s group wins one point in the overall assessment.” Olivia read out the scores, this was only the strength portion of the overall exam.

“Back into your original lines, with your group leaders!” The second the words came out of Mr. Flanigan’s mouth, everyone scurried back to their original places in the lines. “We will now test your endurance when it comes to not only your body, but your ability!”

The Body Cultivators would have a very, very miniscule advantage in this situation, but at this point in cultivation, there was no real physical difference between Soul and Body Cultivators in the Foundational Stage, only differences in the kind of energy used.

“This test will deal with the pressure chamber, you will be locked in the pressure chamber while using your abilities at its weakest form, and you will only be removed when you reach extreme measures, or win! To win, your last team member will have to last longer than the other team! However your personal performance will reflect on your grades!” Mr. Flanigan’s tests were… eccentric to say the least, as the pressure chamber hadn’t been used for teaching in years.

Everyone quickly entered the chamber, but they all took in as much air as possible before the chamber got turned on, as to not have their body immediately crushed by the pressure. They all had the same strategy of sitting down and meditating in front of their ability, including Kezner, there was no feasible roundabout way to this.

When the pressure was finally turned on, it was 1.5 times the ES, Earthern Standard. Kezner had it the easiest, as his ability was either the most efficient when passive or the most gluttonous when aggravated. The gray flame sat there, uncaring about the pressure, while Kezner struggled a little, the pressure was slowly wearing him down over the course of 5 minutes. Then the pressure was increased to 2 times the ES, catching a few unlucky students off guard. This progressed the strain on Kezner as his gray flame flickered once in a while.

After 3 minutes in this torture, the pressure was increased to 2.5 times the ES. Natural Energy could only do so much for these youths who were only around the 2nd Stage, as most of them left leaving four, Kezner, Arlean, Olivia, and Gareth. Gareth and Olivia were also top of the class, but were outshined by Kezner and Arlean. But it was due to that they had to concede after a minute, leaving Kezner and Arlean.

Naturall, Kezner would last longer than Arlean but…

“Hey kid, how did your parents raise such a wimp like you?! You can’t even last such an easy test, I would be rolling in my grave if you were my son!” Mr. Flanigan was now treading on dangerous territory as Kezner’s flame had started to flicker between black and gray and it was slowly leaning towards black. It would have already burned through the floor again if it hadn’t been for Kezner knowing that this was just to bait him out. However, the grasp on his consciousness was slowly slipping as his flame started growing unstable.

All of the students who had already lost started frowning at Mr. Flanigan’s cruel methods as they continued to see more of Kezner’s history. Insulting a person would make you a douche but insulting a person’s dead parents would make you worse than scum.

“Oh, what’s that, is the baby starting to cry?! No wonder you don’t have a family name, your parents probably disowned when they saw how damn useless you are, you don’t even have control over your flame!”

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back as Kezner’s vision had gone black, losing control of not only his ability and pressure in his body, but his cocktail of energies in his Energy Routes and Aperture as well. Shit hit the fan pretty quick.