22. The First 5%

It finally came after 6 months of waiting and getting my ass kicked; the system finally woke up once more.

Possibly in the most anti-climactic way too, it happened when Vance had us re-run the six-miles to see just how far we came. I wasn’t the rabbit this time; there was no rabbit. Just a flat six-mile sprint where I finished last.

All this buildup and waiting for a damn six-mile run to trigger it, I’ll never get how this system works.

The connection had sat at 4.7% for an entire week and refused to budge; I eventually stopped checking. Thinking that was it, that four-point-seven per cent was my limit, but at the very end it came on in waves.

It started as a warmth behind my eyes — the familiar sensation of the interface updating. I almost ignored it entirely. But the warmth transferred from heat to pressure to nothing.

My vision blurred at the edges, and I fell into copper once more.

Stars that are eyes, wheeling overhead in patterns spelling meanings I can’t read. My hands are wrong, too old and too scarred with battles never fought. Armour fused to my chest, pulsing with a foreign heartbeat.

A silhouette at the edge of everything.

“Again?”

It was holding something. A blade? A star? A heart? It kept changing, and I was dropping it, always dropping it.

A woman made of ice, crying tears of purple. “Stop…” she begged, “Please…” she pleads.

Every nerve ending screaming copper, every thought coated in metal, my entire existence reduced to that taste, that right, bright taste.

Then every star blinked shut. Everything reduced to null, leaving only a dream of what once was.

A pressure surged one final time, but this time from within.

“Marcus? Hey — Marcus.”

I could hear Tomás calling my name from the periphery of my consciousness. My vision swam, and I came to. I was face down in the gravel; a few of the other greenies chuckled under their breath, a few looked confused, and even fewer looked concerned.

The copper taste was gone, there for a fleeting moment after six months of nothing. Though I could still feel that armour on my chest, the phantom pain of scars that I never had, and an all-present feeling of hunger.

“You alright Marcus?” Another voice echoed. I looked up and found Jin and Park standing over me.

“Just a cramp,”

“Bullshit,” Park cut in.

“It’s a cramp.”

I gave the group a wink and a crooked smile; they seemed to catch on and smiled back. They didn’t push it from there. Though behind my eyes I could feel a headache coming on, waves of silent pain that pulsed in rhythm with each of my heartbeats.

Taking a moment to myself, I stood from the ground, brushing gravel and dirt off my uniform. Resisting the urge to check my interface, I carried on and walked off to breakfast.

The mess-hall was its usual busy self, people huddled around tables hoovering up any ounce of protein they could. A few people were even licking their trays to get even an extra gram of the good stuff. Our advanced constitutions were becoming black holes of calories and nutrients. It had gotten so bad that they stopped handing out skipping meals as punishment.

Though despite the chaotic rabble of the mess hall intertwining itself, I couldn’t shake my mind from the System. It was doing something, and I couldn’t quite tell what it was. I tried checking it a few times, but the interface refused to respond. The only answer I got was silent pressure. The rest of the day was patchy; whatever the system was doing, it was massively distracting.

It lasted until the evening, half-way through a cultivation session with Kael. I’d been minding my own business trying to feed the system Ether when the pulsing sensation finally stopped. Whatever had been restructuring had finished.

I quickly opened the interface, eager to see what I’d gained from six months of nothing.

Level 1. Rank 0.

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Everyone in the barracks was at Level 30 at minimum. Miller was closer to 35. Six months of cultivation and rotation drilling — a third of the way through Rank 1.

I was at zero. Thirty levels behind on day one, with the exhibition less than a month away.

Three stat points to distribute, I stared at them for a long time. Finally getting free stat points with clear progression was liberating; being able to place them wherever I wanted.