Chapter 45

Earth
Spectre Base, Canadian Rockies
August 21, 2019
06:33 PDT (09:33 EDT)

“LET’S GO, LADIES. MOVE IT! MOVE IT MOVE IT!,” our taskmaster yelled as he walked beside us.

Remember when I said that I was excited for our training to begin? I take it back. Training fucking sucks.

Well, not all of it sucks, just the stuff that we had to do in the early mornings. Two days earlier, my mom had introduced us to the man who would be overseeing the first few weeks of physical training. He was Tas Dymith, and was one of the few Scyftans who seemed to stay in their natural form the majority of the time. He did switch to his human form a few times to show us some techniques, but otherwise the small Scyftan man ran us ragged.

His job was to get us in proper shape. It wasn’t something that I thought was necessary since our attributes make us faster, tougher and stronger, but apparently that isn’t the case. There had been a number of case studies conducted over the years, taking pairs of people with the exact same stats and putting them through trials. The only difference between the two was that one was fit and the other one was obese. They weighed the exact same, but that’s because muscle is heavier than fat.

The two would have to do various activities over the course of months, testing their Strength, Agility, Endurance and Constitution. The tests included many of the same tests used in dungeon evaluations, but a bunch of them were also quite similar to boot camp training, with obstacle courses and other drills. In every case they found that the fit participant always had the edge over the obese participant. They were stronger, hit harder, were able to take more damage and had noticeably higher stamina. All around, they were superior to their counterpart.

Before the case studies, armed forces across the galaxy didn’t care if you were fit or fat, as long as you were high level and followed orders. When the news came out that a fit man always out-performed one that wasn’t fit, they began changing things, however.

The problem with working out when you have high attributes is that you need to work harder, meaning that every person has to work out a different amount to get the desired result. That set the armed forces off on trying to figure out how much people should train, depending on their attributes. After a few years of testing, they finally came up with a regimen that would get people into shape in the least amount of time. The Spectres used the same regimen, though they tweaked it over the centuries, taking some inspiration from their time on Earth.

Since my friends and I were all over the place in terms of stats, each of us had a regimen tailored to us. While people without many points in Endurance would be fine just running a few kilometers, it wasn’t the same for us. Every morning before breakfast, all five of us had gathered together and ran a literal marathon around a track. Only after we finished the forty kilometer run would we be able to eat breakfast, and even when we were done, we would immediately continue with the regimen.

The marathon wasn’t all that bad for any of us, though Ben did have a bit more difficulty than the rest of us did. Mason and I were both pretty fit from playing football, as were the twins from their love of martial arts. Ben, however, was the geek of the group, and as such, would be found reading or working at his computer rather than working out. Still, he finished the marathon like the rest of us, it just took him a little bit longer. He did get faster with every marathon, and he would probably be able to keep up with us in a week or two.

After eating breakfast, weight training would be next, though it wasn’t the normal weight training as you might expect. There was squatting and bench pressing, though Tas seemed to prefer other forms of exercise to the normal ones. There was one that was much harder than the others, designed to exercise the lower body

“PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT!” he yelled in my ear as I lifted the thousand pound tire and flipped it over. After waiting for it to settle, I bent down and grabbed onto it, repeating the process.

My mom had given him permission to work me hard, and he seemed to enjoy doing that at every opportunity.

Each of us had to bring our tire from the starting line to the marker five hundred meters away and then bring it back, at which point we would be allowed a quick break before continuing on to other things. It wasn’t easy for any of us, as each of us was working with tires of different weights. They were absolutely identical in size and looks, though they definitely weren’t all the same weight.

Ben, being at ten Strength for example, was working with a tire weighing a measly two hundred thirty-six-point-five pounds, while Mason, having two hundred seventy-nine Strength, was working with a tire weighing nearly five and a half times as much. The rest of us fell somewhere in the middle, with the weight we had to lift being determined by a literal mathematical formula, looking something like this:

((Base Strength x 40) + ((Max Strength - Base Strength) x 3)) x 1.1

The one-point-one on the end was what made it a struggle to lift the weight, but without it, working out would be pointless; we wouldn’t gain anything. It was a ten percent modifier which required us to exert ourselves, but without trying to lift so much that we would strain and injure ourselves at the same time.

We alternated what we worked on every day, but as soon as we were done lifting weights or flipping tires, we would be given another five minute break to cool off and grab a drink of water. After that, we continued on to the final part of our morning; the obstacle course.

It wasn’t one of those old obstacle courses that included tires and crawling under barbed wire with a weapon in your hands, but was instead one of the new-age ones that you might see on TV. It was incredibly hard, with rolling logs, warped walls, peg walls, salmon ladders and spider climbs among others. Thankfully, there were no pools of water if we fell, so we could get up and try it again right away.

Of the five of us, Mason made it the furthest but none of us made it more than a fifth of the way through. After three days of trying and not getting any further, all five of us claimed it was impossible. We were proven wrong, however, when Tas completed the entire course in just under ten minutes. In his Scyftan form.

After everything was reset, there was a surprise appearance: my mom. She too, completed the entire course, though she was quite a bit slower and there were a few spots where she almost failed.

My friends and I were amazed to see the least, having never imagined her capable of something like that. She looked over and waved as my friends and I cheered before turning to talk to Tas. After a few minutes of chatting, she walked over and joined us.

“That was awesome!”

“Thanks, Sonja,” she said before looking back at the obstacle course. “I’ve done it before, but the configuration is different than it was then. You could say that I’m rusty.”

“I still say that it’s impossible for people at our level,” Mason said. “None of us can get up the forty-foot warped wall and that’s preventing us from going any further. Both you and Tas ran up the forty-foot like all of us ran up the twenty-foot. It was effortless.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’ve seen people lower level than the five of you get up that warped wall. You’ll get it eventually. Anyways, the reason I came down here is that Tamara and Floyd will be taking you guys to see the wolves earlier today, so you’ve got the afternoon off. Go take a shower and grab some lunch, and then head down to her office when you’re done. Jonathan, Tamara said that you can bring Vixa with you, if you wish.”

“Really? Isn’t there a risk that someone will see her?”

“Not particularly,” she answered. “You’ll be in a pretty remote area and the wolves will know if anyone else is nearby.”

“Cool, she should enjoy that. This will be her first time outside since coming to Earth, right?”

“Yup,” my mom answered before grinning broadly. “I remember the first time I let Imuna go outside on Earth. It was her first time ever visiting a new planet, and she teleported all over the place, sniffing and digging. Keep in mind that this was over a thousand years ago, and the world was much less populated. Even though we were in a pretty unpopulated area, I was worried that someone would be drawn towards us by the noise created whenever she teleported.”

“I tried to pick her up so we could head back to the ship that we were living on at the time, but every time I got close she would teleport away, thinking that we were playing a game. Even teleporting to try to catch her wouldn’t work, as she would teleport away as soon as I appeared. After about ten minutes of trying to catch her, I had to call in Yuki, who snatched her up in seconds. At least you shouldn’t have that issue, what with two of you having Precognition and there being a bunch of wolf pups around.”

“Scyftan foxes live that long?” Anja asked.

My mom nodded, “Nedovis is a rather odd planet in that a lot of animals native to it have longer-than-average life spans. They don’t live nearly as long in the wild, but as pets they can live for about thirty-four to thirty-six hundred years. Imuna could be considered middle aged, a friend gave her to me near the end of 11102 on the Scyftan calendar. That was about fifteen hundred eight years ago, now. Alright, I’ve held you guys up long enough, you’d better get going.”

We waved Tas goodbye and each of us teleported to our respective rooms so we could clean off all the sweat from our workout. After greeting Vixa, I took out my phone to check the time. I noted that it was only 11:23, which meant that it would be a little more than an hour before food would be deposited into her dish. Not knowing what time we would be back, or if there would be anything for her to eat while we were visiting with the wolves, I decided to feed her early. Walking over to the feeder, I pulsed mana at the sensor near the top causing it to dispense her lunch. After verifying that the next feeding time was now 18:30, I headed to the shower.

Once I was clean and dressed, I had Vixa join me and we headed to the cafeteria. None of my friends had beaten me there, so I grabbed some lunch and turned to find a table. Normally the cafeteria is packed at meal times, but I must have just barely beat the rush, allowing me to quickly find a table and save some spots for my friends. Vixa hopped up on the bench beside me, and after tossing her a small piece of chicken, I dug in.

There was very little chatting when my friends did arrive. We were all ravenous and wanted to fill our bellies before heading off to spend some more time with the wolves. Normally it was only Mason and I who got seconds, but this time all five of us got up for another pass through the buffet line. Even Vixa was getting seconds as my friends seemed incapable of not passing her little bits of meat.

When we were finally done, we all got on the elevator and headed down to the floor that housed the gryphon enclosure and her office. The door was open when we arrived and we saw Gurok lying near her desk. He raised his head and opened his eyes, examining us for a moment before closing them as he dropped his head back to the floor. Not wanting to just barge in, I knocked on the door frame.

Looking up, she smiled when she saw who it was. “Ah, come in and take a seat. I’m just finishing up some paperwork and then we can get going.”

We took her up her offer, though none of us wanted to get particularly close to the massive Grizzly bear. While any of us would be perfectly fine against a wild Grizzly, I knew that none of us would stand a chance against Gurok. Vixa wasn’t nearly as scared, however, walking right up to Gurok and sniffing him. He opened his eyes again briefly, but closed them again, going right back to his nap.

We chatted quietly amongst ourselves, making plans for later that evening. After explaining how it worked, the ladies did end up joining us in Battlestate, though they wanted to go in another direction. Rather than pool our money together to buy a bigger and better ship, they wanted one of their own.

Unfortunately there wasn’t anything that stood out at their price range, so Mason, Ben and I decided to give them the majority of the money we’d earned so far. With the one hundred twenty-five thousand we gave them, and the thirty thousand of their own, they purchased two thirty meter Manticore-class frigates. They were about sixty thousand each, which gave them another thirty-five thousand to upgrade them however they wished.

The result was a pair of pretty formidable ships that could easily disable our cargo ship, and wouldn’t have any issues whatsoever against the smaller ships used by the pirates. In fact, the other two cargo ships and their escorts were the ones to flee when we jumped into the system, leaving us the entire asteroid field to ourselves, once again.

With the girls providing protection, things went a lot faster and smoother than it did on our first mining run. That was mostly the result of having an extra ship to find and mark suitable asteroids so all Mason needed to do was fly out and grab it. The girls had ended up finding a large amount of asteroids containing platinum, but Ben was worried about mining too much of it, lowering its value. Even so, the three crates we filled with platinum ore ended up being worth over three hundred thousand credits, all on their own. The other nine crates were filled with a mixture of titanium, tungsten, tantalum and iridium, the latter of which fetching a nice twenty-six hundred credits per ton.

When everything was offloaded, we were just shy of seven hundred thousand credits. That was more than enough credits to trade in our cargo ship and upgrade to something better, which is what we were debating now. We could upgrade as soon as we logged in for a few hours tonight, or we could go do another mining run to earn more credits, the end goal being to save up the ten million credits to purchase a battlecruiser.

There was a very steep increase in price after cruisers, which was probably because battlecruisers were much more capable. They had double the weapon hardpoints, and they were the cheapest of the large ships available that could have mass drivers as the main weapon. They were formidable weapons in the right circumstance, but also cost another two million credits.

The big draw for saving up for a battlecruiser would be that the cargo bay would be big enough to fit up to two one hundred meter frigates. Enemy ships would definitely be in for a surprise if they thought they were only taking on a single ship.

“Yeah, let’s wait, I like that idea,” Ben said. “Assuming future mining runs have a similar yield, that’ll take us another thirteen runs or fourteen runs. More if we need to upgrade our ships a bit between now and then, which is certainly likely if more groups show up. Maybe even wait until we can get twelve million credits and get one of the ones with mass drivers. The nice thing about those is that they’re loaded automatically so we won’t need a crew to load them.”

“We could reduce the amount of runs we would need to make if we go for nothing but platinum, couldn’t we?” Mason asked. “Just go drop off a few crates of platinum at one space station and then move to another one and drop more platinum off there.”

“Won’t work,” Ben answered, shaking his head. “I explored that idea, but the ore prices are based on sectors of space, not individual stations. We would have to go to one of the adjacent sectors and sell our ore there, but that’s a three day trip there, and another three day trip back. It’s just not worth it.”

“That really sucks. How do prices not plummet when there are a large amount of people gathering resources in a sector?” Anja asked.

“Oh, that’s easy. Supply and demand,” Ben answered. “This is an area of space that was recently added to the game so there aren’t many players here spending money. As more players show up, demand will increase and prices will go up. Actually, that gives me an idea. We could rent storage on the planet below and store all of our platinum and other valuable metals there while selling off the rest. Over time, the prices will gradually go up, and we could sell it all off when prices are high. It’s definitely a long-term plan, but we’re probably going to be pretty busy over the next month or so, anyways.”

“You should definitely talk with my sisters about that. I’m sure that they would have some insight,” I said as Vixa hopped up on the couch and climbed into my lap.

“I’ll do that,” he nodded.

“Alright, sorry to keep you guys waiting,” Tamara said as she walked over to us, pausing to place the cube that held her own small, artificial sanctuary on the floor. Pressing the button on top, she stepped back as the portal formed. “Alright, Gurok, off you go.”

He got up and ambled over to the portal, stopping to rub up against Tamara before walking through. She closed it up behind him and then stored it back inside of her storage.

“That reminds me. I talked to Abi about making my Beacon work like your cube but she said that she would need to examine one to see how it works. Do you have one that I can borrow for a few hours?”

“Sure, give me a minute,” replied, walking to the door behind her desk and pulsing her mana at it. When she came back a minute later, she was holding a cube that looked identical to the one she used. “Here you are.”

“Thank you,” I replied, accepting it while I took the Beacon out of my storage.

I put the cube inside of Abi’s storage and then put away the Beacon while letting her know that she could start scanning it.

[Alrighty, I’ve got it, ] she replied. [It should only take a few hours and then you can give it back to Tamara.]

[Cool, I’ll let her know. Thanks.]

[No problem, Jonathan.]

“Abi has it now and will scan it over the next few hours. I’ll be able to give it back to you later today.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

Tamara’s husband, Floyd, and daughter, Bria, arrived a few minutes later and he opened up a portal to the very same hill that we had arrived on the first time. I made sure to tell Vixa not to go too far from us, and she yipped in reply, running a short distance away to sniff some bushes. Like the last time, Floyd shifted into his wolf form and howled into the air. There was a reply a few minutes later, so we headed down to the clearing in the forest while we waited for them to arrive.

Vixa continued to explore our surroundings, running around like crazy while she explored all the new smells. Thankfully she seemed to better behaved than Imuna, keeping her movement to running around rather than teleporting.

She made a sound I’d never heard her make before and then ran over to the rest of us. There were some rumbling bushes a minute or so later, and then both Arkus and Fenra poked their heads out of the forest. Cautious as ever, they also sent two members of their pack along the edge of the clearing, making sure it was safe before they called their pups forward.

They recognized my friends and I, so we didn’t have to go through the same routine that we did the first time, though there was one new arrival that they didn’t know. After greeting her companion, Fenra walked over as she inspected Vixa. Amazingly, Vixa stood her ground against the much larger animal and even raised her front legs off the ground to stand taller so Fenra didn’t have to bend down so much.

They both sniffed at each other for a minute before Fenra turned around and her mate took her place. While he and Vixa inspected each other, Fenra raised her head slightly and barked. More bushes started rustling and then the six pups and two older wolves made their way into the clearing.

The pups were a little shy, but they easily recognized us and didn’t need to be prodded like they did the previous time. Until they saw Vixa, that is. Vixa noticed them at the same time they noticed her, and Vixa’s tails started moving a little bit faster. She was only slightly bigger than they were, which meant that they were perfect playmates. She started running towards them which caused them to scatter, thus starting a little game.

Vixa was faster than they were so she easily caught up, but it was six on one. Any time she would jump on one and start playing with it, the other five would pounce. When she turned to the ones that pounced on her, they would scatter and she would have to chase them down. I don’t know if she knew that her playmates couldn’t teleport or there was another reason, but she didn’t teleport even a single time while they played.

It didn’t take them very long to get tired, and after fifteen minutes or so Vixa ambled over and climbed into my lap. The wolf pups weren’t very far behind, all of them having followed their new friend over. A few of them dropped into a pile on the grass, while the rest made their way over to my friends and I.