With the event starting tomorrow, the students were free to do what they wanted for the rest of the evening. There were no strict requirements and even no curfew for the students, which was a first; it truly did feel like they were on a week trip to watch a grand event. Never had they ever, been treated like this before.
The only rules that were put in place were for students to not leave the arena. Not that it was possible anyway. The arena was located in a separate part of the city, and the only way to get to it was via train, which would go through several different barriers.
When stepping off the train, they all noticed the mass amount of security. Leaving this place seemed to be a lot harder than breaking in. However, after living in luxury, they really felt like there was no reason for them to try to leave anyway.
The three boys, Quinn, Fex and Vorden had left the hotel room and headed down to the top of the arena. Just like the guide had said, the top of the arena was mostly flat and filled with all kinds of stalls manned by staff. There were coffee stalls, food places, Vr games and all sorts. But what interested most of the students was the equipment stalls.
Some of these sold different types of beast gear and armour, as well as items that would go hand in hand with certain abilities while fighting. The boys decided that they would walk around the entire circle, looking at all the shops before committing to buying anything. It was always horrible when one would see something they liked in a shop, only to find something better or cheaper in the next one.
“Go on then,” Fex said with his hands behind his back. “What do you think of the sudden change?”
“What do you mean?” Quinn asked, confused.
“What? Do you mean you can’t tell? All of a sudden they’re pampering us up, nice hotel rooms, shops, equipment and no curfew.” Fex replied.
Quinn hadn’t really thought about it before. He just felt like the group were currently on a school holiday like they used to have at school. Near Christmas times and other holidays, schools tended to be more relaxed. The world, even the military world, couldn’t be all work and no play, could it?
“Looks like you figured it out.” Vorden said and motioned around, “The whole thing is a ploy for the students. They show and give them a taste of what life is like at military base one. Some of the students will start to think maybe choosing to join the military, rather than the faction isn’t so bad, especially if they can have a life like this. I hate to say it, but there’s always a motive behind everything.”
The three boys stopped to take a break and were looking over the edge, down at the arena floor. There looked to be thousands and thousands of seats, but none of them were for the students. The students would be watching the fight, either from the top platform they were currently on, or from their hotel rooms. There were multiple large display screens every once in a while, so it wasn’t like they would miss anything.
The seats themselves were for all the different factions from earth and other planets. They had been invited to see the future generation display their power. It was a good chance for the military to show the world that it was necessary to continue to draft teens into the army. As well as for factions to try to get future talent.
“Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not fighting,” Vorden said. Although these words were spoken quietly, with Fex and Quinn’s hearing, they both had heard him say these words and were wondering what he meant by them as he looked at the crowd of empty chairs.
Unlike them, Vorden was a talented individual. An original from a good family but not one of the top four. If he were able to display his strong skills and abilities, he would easily be scouted into a top faction, Quinn thought. His life would be set, and he would have nothing to worry about.
So it was strange to see Vorden kind of relieved that he wasn’t fighting.
The three of them continued walking and having already done a full circle, they had decided which shops they wanted to stop by. For Quinn, what he truly wanted was a strong or better set of gauntlets to use. His intermediate pair wasn’t good enough.
However, when looking around, there was barely anything above the intermediate level. Most equipment at the advanced level or higher would have to be hunted for, or one would need to hire travellers to gather the materials for them. There were a few items, but none that matched what Quinn was looking for.
Still, with only boots and gauntlets, there was no harm in increasing his equipment in other areas, one of these being defences. The best piece of equipment to get would be a type of chest piece. This covered the largest area, and when using his inspect skill, Quinn also found it gave him the most defence points.
When walking around this time, they noticed a lot more students around than before. This was because all of the other military bases had arrived by now, and they too had left to explore.
They entered a few shops and Fex was the first to buy some items. He purchased very small knives that were as large as a finger and had a little ring just underneath the handle. Knowing that he had a string ability, Quinn could imagine Fex being able to do great things with those weapons.
While Vorden didn’t purchase anything but instead stared at two short swords on the wall, seeing this, a memory came back for Quinn. He had asked Vorden a long time ago if he was to use a weapon, what type of weapon it would be, and he had replied with a pair of short blades.
Vorden didn’t use beast weapons much, as he seemed to favour elemental abilities and most elemental ability users didn’t really use beast weapons, but still had plenty of beast gear.
After inspecting the stats of the swords on the wall, and looking at the intermediate blades in Quinn’s system shop, he realised how much better the weapons in his shop were.
“Don’t buy those,” Quinn said. “Don’t worry; I’ll get you something nice soon.”
Vorden smiled, and the three of them left the shop to head off to the next one. The next shop was a place for Quinn. A shop that mainly focused on armour. A piece had caught his eye before. An intermediate piece that was dark blue in colour and had a silver trim going around the edges.
After selling his crystals from the last portal expedition, he now had a total of 4440 credits to spend. The intermediate piece on the wall was 4000 credits so he had enough to spend, but was hesitating whether he wanted to clear his bank like that for one piece of equipment.
[Inspect]
[Intermediate Geo rock Chest armour]
[No active skills]
[All stats +1]
[Defense + 20]
There were similar priced items in the shop, but this was one of the only ones that increased all stats. Other pieces of equipment, improved strength more, while giving no stat points to other areas. But this was well balanced. On top of that, it had the most defensive points of the lot.
Quinn still hadn’t figured out what defensive points really did. His gauntlets gave him eight while his boots gave him four. If he had the chest piece on top of that, he would have 32 points of defence. Even if he didn’t know what to do, the higher number was always better right?
After thinking about it for long enough, he finally had decided to go through with the purchase, reaching out his arm. As his fingertips pressed against the right chest plate, another hand was seen pulling it from the other side.
The student to his left, turned and looked at Quinn. The first thing that he noticed that stood out to him was the wristwatch, indicating he was a level one ability user after seeing this the boy immediately let go.
“Please go ahead and take it.” The boy said. “You grabbed it first.”
“Actually, you were a little faster than me; you go ahead.” Quinn said. With his eyesight he was able to tell the boy to his right was only a fraction of a second faster at grabbing the plate. He had no right to claim he grabbed it first.
“No please get it instead of me, I insist I don’t need it.” The boy replied back once again.
The two of them continued on like this, while Vorden and Fex stood back and couldn’t believe what they were watching. “I guess this is what happens when you have two nice people,” Fex said. “Nothing gets sorted.”
“You think Quinn’s nice?” Vorden asked him.
Fex thought about it for a while, most of his interactions with Quinn were nice ones, and after saving his life, he had no other reason but to think he was a nice guy.
“You don’t?” Fex replied back.
Vorden didn’t reply back, but he didn’t agree about Quinn being nice. He didn’t think he was a bad person, but didn’t think nice was the right word.
Eventually, after going back and forth, Fex was fed up with watching, and snatched the chest piece handing it over to Quinn. “Just take it man, I want to continue shopping.”
The boy smiled, indicating he was happy for Quinn to take the piece of armour, but before purchasing for the item, Quinn wanted to get the name of the student, hoping maybe he would return the favour back to him one day.
“What’s your name?” Quinn asked.
“The name’s Sam.”
****
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