Chapter 35: Preliminary Test
When Cillin arrived at the training division, Knight had already talked to Huo Neil about Cillin’s participation. However, Huo Neil only allowed Cillin to enter the preliminary list. He wasn’t the only one; all ten Seven Light students must participate in the preliminary test, and if they failed they would be barred from this operation. They were just students and not soldiers after all; it was necessary that their overall qualities reached a certain standard. A real battlefield was nothing like a usual examination.
The ten students – no, wait, it should be eleven, because Pride had run over and passed his communicator to Huo Neil with an excited look on his face when the test was about to begin.
At the time, Huo Neil already had a bad feeling about this, and when he received Pride’s communicator and walked into his office to listen, he soon came out with a constipated look on his face. Huo Neil felt that his future was bleak as he watched the chin-lifting Pride and Knight denouncing each other.
And so, Pride joined in the test as well.
The first subject on the test was shooting. The guns handed out to each person were different from the ones normally used during training. The bullets were slightly bigger, and their firing speed was slightly slower. Moreover, not only were their targets not slow, they were also very aggressive as well. Everyone had put on a protective suit. These protective suits all had sensors on them, and they were set at a maximum 10 points. If anyone’s points fell below 5 after the test, they would be eliminated.
Therefore, this preliminary test challenged a student’s shooting ability, responsiveness, adaptability and more. Moreover, the students had also realized that this operation was different from norm and guessed vaguely the reason behind it. As long as they held fear inside their hearts, their reactions would become less calm and crisp. Their shooting abilities would be noticeably affected. The soldiers would be able to see their results on the screen outside the test field displaying the number of hits, accuracy and deducted points within the given time limit.
This was a group operation. No soldier would acknowledge you if your capabilities weren’t above a certain standard. They would not feel safe fighting together with you, much less trusting you their backs.
All ten people were scattered at ten different locations within the test field, and every test field had a total target score of one thousand. Their first priority was to eliminate all targets within the time limit.
On the test field, Cillin walked to the entrance after he had finished adjusting his equipment. The lighting of the test field was dim, and the simulated environment was a dark and humid atmosphere. He could clearly sense something moving about restlessly within the darkness.
Whoosh——
A medium dog-sized black shadow charged towards him. Cillin raised his gun, bang, and took it down in one shot as the black shadow shattered and disappeared. Then there were two black shadows, four black shadows, eight...
After he got used to the bullet’s speed and recoil, it could be counted as smooth sailing despite the increasing number of targets. The longer the test continued, the more black shadows there were, and the stronger their offensive power became as well. There were a few times Cillin was barely able to slip through the attacks. He would’ve been hit if it wasn’t thanks to his swift reactions. He would open fire and attack his targets while he was dodging a number of sudden attacks at the same time. As long as he kept his targets from closing on the him en masse, he would have the space to avoid them, and as long as there was such a space, Cillin would be able to perform the quickest and most convenient response.
Strangely enough, Cillin was astoundingly calm. He felt neither fear nor worry. It was like he was eating a bowl of noodle; watching them disappear into his mouth as he ate them with a pair of chopsticks little by little. That was all.
At the same time, the crowd was observing the ten participants’ performances from the display outside the test field. There were two students who were affected by the interior environment and atmosphere, feeling a hint of fear the moment they entered inside. Adding to that a change of firearms and the miscalculation of the bullet’s speed, it didn’t take long before they started to get hit, and five minutes later, both the sensors on their protective suits had fallen below 5 points and looking to drop further. Huo Neil had them pulled out immediately from the test field. There was no longer any need for them to continue.
The two people who were disqualified when the preliminary test had barely started took off their helmets while appearing defeated and very dispirited. An instructor counseled them at the side.
As the test continued, three more people were eliminated. There were only five people left inside the test field now.
Knight was still the first person to eliminate all targets within the specified time limit. He appeared calm after he walked out of the test field. He had performed exercises like these since he was young, and Pride was probably in the same situation as well, which was why Knight was only looking at Cillin’s display after he came out. Before long, Pride had come out as well. He appeared somewhat dissatisfied upon seeing Knight’s figure, but still he lifted his chin high and humphed once.
Cillin was the third to walk out of the test field. He had gathered all the necessary data, and at the same time, he also predicted that Knight and Pride should’ve completed their respective tests and were waiting outside, so there was no longer any need to drag this any longer. He walked out after swiftly executing the remaining dozens of targets.
Other than the trio, there were also two students who hung on until they exceeded the time limit. However, the points on their protective suit did not fall below the cut-off line, so they were considered to have passed as well.
Knight, Pride and Cillin’s grades were excellent, whereas the other two students were passable.
After the preliminary test was over, the next was an antibody allergy reaction test. The five students who had passed through the preliminary test were injected with a small amount of antiserum. If their body could adapt to the serum and not trigger an allergic reaction, then they would pass and be able to join the other comrades ready and waiting on the transports.
So it would seem that the targets we are to eliminate this time not only have incredible offensive power, but also poison. Cillin thought while analyzing the antibodies injected into his body. After the antiserum was injected, Cillin then deduced its antigen from the antibody, and after combining the test field’s environmental conditions and relevant data on their targets, Cillin dare said that their targets this time were rodents.
And what kind of rodents had powerful reproductive capabilities, loves to live in dark environments and were widely used in biological tests?
Mice!!
If they were really as big as the targets at the test field, then Cillin really hadn’t seen seen such a big mouse in his life yet.
The good news was that none of them were allergic after the antibody allergy reaction test was over.
It was an emergency situation, and there was no time to provide the five students with any additional orders at all. All the equipment was readied just as the five students completed their tests, and they were sent directly up the transports by a very reluctant Huo Neil. The relevant information would be explained on the warship.
The transports transported the soldiers and students onto the warship parked at the spaceport.
When he saw the warship, Knight let out a whistle, “A military warship armed with heavy weaponry and high-end ‘Sentinel’ defense system. It looks like this incident is pretty serious after all. Still, the garrison wasn’t alerted, so it can’t be that bad.”
After entering the warship, every man and woman on the warship, be it the operation members or the warship’s pilots, were injected with a lot more antibodies than during the allergy test. After the injection was over, every member was even given two antiserums to be used in case the injected antiserum did not work.