Underwhelmed

Kane entered the room.

It was surprisingly large, seeming more like a living room than a bunk.

There were 3 separate bedrooms and 2 bathrooms branching off the back end, with a TV, sofa, and assortment of games and books littering the main room. There was even a kitchen off to the side.

The commander spoke from behind, "You've got the finest military bunks in the country, courtesy of the Aetherian government. I've got things to do, it's a miracle I could even fit meeting you into my schedule as it is, go meet your squad kid."

The door shut behind him, leaving Kane with his new squad.

"Sup newbie," a red-haired boy called from the couch, not looking away from the TV in the slightest.

A girl with short black hair was glowering at him from the other side of the sofa, "You aren't gonna break down like the other guy did, are you?"

Kane was curious, "Was there someone in this squad before me?"

She nodded, "It was only formed yesterday, but the first dude in the squad couldn't handle all this and started crying, so he's in one of the trash squads now."

"That was hard to watch," the red-haired boy said sadly.

"Well, you don't need to worry about me then, I'm fine... maybe not mentally, but emotionally," Kane said while tapping on his forehead, garnering a laugh from the red-haired guy who still wasn't looking.

"Good, we're destined for great things here, so we'd rather you not mess it up," the girl sighed.

"You both seem rather calm considering the situation..."

The girl spoke up once more, "The military value mental strength as much as they do our mana, there are tons of guys here slightly stronger than us, but we're the ones who handled the situation the best," She gave a haughty grin.

"Which is to say we were both bored out of our minds and this is the coolest thing that's ever happened to us," the boy rolled his head back, looking at Kane from upside down.

"What's with the blindfold?" He said with a strange look.

"Ah, I'm blind. More specifically, born without eyes."

"Shit, that's pretty metal," the boy responded.

Kane got excited, "You listen to metal?"

"No," "Nah," both squad members replied at the same time.

Being a metalhead is hard.

The boy paused his game and stood up, "I suppose we should get introductions out of the way, I can't just call you 'blind dude' in battle or something."

The girl cut in, "I'm Layna, about halfway through 16, we're supposed to say our affinities but I haven't figured mine out yet."

"I'm Rick, I guess I just turned 15 last month, I've got fire affinity," He gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.

"My turn then. I'm Kane, I'm on the latter end of 17, and I've got the space attribute," Kane smirked as he said the last part.

"Oh, that sounds pretty cool," Rick had already gone back to playing his game, receiving a slap on the head from Layna.

"You dolt, did you not read the pamphlet on attributes? There's only one other space attribute in existence, we've got a potential god on our team."

Kane interjected awkwardly, "I think 'god' is a bit much..."

"No no no, once you're at a higher level, you can like, teleport us around and stuff right? We don't have to walk anywhere! That's pretty godly!" Rick cut in with his own stupid interpretation, receiving another light bop on the head from Layna.

"Rick, why are you always such an idiot. It's not 'just' teleportation, he can manipulate space itself! I'm not 100% sure on this, but wouldn't a really good space manalite be able to do basically anything?"

"Well, I'm not a 'really good' space manalite, so I've got no clue," Kane shrugged.

"You can teleport though... right?" Rick asked worriedly.

Kane smiled, "Yes, I can teleport."

Rick pumped his fist and let out an elongated "Yesss."

"Here Rick, pause your game for a second."

The moment Rick complied, Kane aported the controller into his hand from across the room, much to the shock of both squad members.

Before either of them could say anything, he teleported right next to Rick and handed the controller back.

"Oh my god! I know I saw stuff like this in Ember, but in real life, knowing how actual mana works and all that, that's just ridiculous," Layna's jaw dropped.

Rick was just laughing his ass off, "That was sick man, what else can you do??"

"I can accidentally chop off my finger, but I'd rather not do that again..." Kane wearily joked.

He got a very strange look from both of them.

Suddenly, a voice came from a speaker in the bunk.

"Squad 1-1, please report to the training center."

The first number is the squad's collective rank, the second number is their placement within the rank. In other words, they are the top squad of the first rank.

Rick sighed, "Worst thing about this deal is you can never be lazy for too long. C'mon Kane, you know where the training center is, right?"

Layna flicked Rick's forehead, "Of course he knows where it is, they had to test our mana before they put us in a squad, remember?"

"Oh right! You're so smart Layna," Rick said somewhat sarcastically.

------------

Arriving at the training center, Rick asked him a question.

"You're blind right?"

"... Yeah? I am," Kane could already tell where this was going.

"Then how come you walk around so normally, don't you need to like, stick your hands out for walls and stuff?"

Layna scoffed, "It's obviously because of the space magic Rick, how are you this stupid?"

Kane didn't have the heart to tell her that he didn't need to use his magic to move around normally.

A soldier walked up to the group and began explaining what they'd be doing, Kane mostly tuned the man out.

'I wonder what dad told Cassy?' He thought to himself.

"Understood, sir!" The two saluted the soldier in response, Kane hastily copying them as the soldier had already begun walking off.

Layna glanced behind her shoulder, "Have they not taught you military protocol yet?"

Kane raised an eyebrow, "I've only been here for a few hours, was someone supposed to teach me?"

"Ignore her, she's from a military family. For whatever reason she expects everyone here to already know all the fancy stuff," Rick complained.

"Pretty short temper for a military girl," Kane teased.

Layna went over to punch his shoulder, being casually sidestepped by the blind man who seemed to understand what she was doing from the moment her muscles twitched.

She calmed down a little, being more intrigued by Kane than angry, "Was that also because of space magic?"

Kane smirked, "Sure, why not."

The group walked out into the center of a concrete arena, multitudes of slits being carved into its walls.

"What are we doing here exactly?" Kane helplessly asked.

"We're supposed to stay in here as long as possible without being hit 3 times, we can break or dodge as many disks as we want!" Rick began stretching his arms out with a smile.

"Oh, sounds fun!"

Rick sighed, "I hope you being blind won't get in the way, if all 3 of us don't last at least 10 minutes we have to retry, we get a reward if we all handle 20 though!"

"Who cares about some stupid group reward, if you can last 30 on your own you get special treatment, you two feel free to lose as soon as possible," Layna said arrogantly.

Kane's ears perked up as he heard a mechanical whirring come from one of the slits in the wall.

He moved just a little off to the side, feeling a rubber disk fly past him at dangerous speeds.

"Crap, it started early this time," Rick yelled.

It quickly became apparent to Kane that he was on a completely different level than these two, that wasn't to say they didn't have potential though.

Layna was using raw mana to launch small projectiles at the rubber disks, knocking them off course and causing them to just barely miss her surprisingly well-built figure.

Rick on the other hand was surprisingly more conservative, seeming to have a natural sense for battle. Rick rolled out of the way as a disk shot right where his feet were, covering his hands in fire while punching and whacking anything that came too close.

Kane had an extreme advantage, he could hear the mechanisms being used to launch the disks, allowing him to dodge out of the way before they even fired.

He was also acutely aware of any ripples in the space around him.

'So this is Rank 1 training? I hope Rank 3 will be more fun.' Kane chuckled to himself as he continuing to dodge and weave between disks.

Thanks to his chuckling momentarily overshadowing other sounds, Kane didn't hear a disk being launched straight at his back.

Feeling a ripple in the air as it got close, Kane immediately poured large amounts of mana into his hand, reaching behind his head as he whipped around.

He just barely caught the disk in time.

Quickly spinning on his foot, he threw it into another disk right before it hit Layna, who was already on her last strike.

13 minutes passed as Layna was struck in the shoulder, taking her out of the session. While Kane would've liked to aport the disks before they hit his teammates, he was a little preoccupied.

16 minutes passed, as Rick got nailed right in the forehead from a mistimed block.

The firing temporarily stopped, allowing Rick to leave the arena. Now all the turrets were focused directly on Kane, "Well this isn't good," he muttered to himself.

He was surrounded by sounds of mechanical buzzing from every single turret at once, it was too much information to take in, even for him.

He tried his best to dodge, but only a few seconds in, one had already struck his shoulder.

Kane immediately reached out and teleported to the other side of the room, providing him with a quick moment of relief.

He had to get serious now.

Pouring mana into his senses, he stretched out into subspace, now seeing everything around him in black and white.

Kane would have to pull out a trick he'd theorized during his previous week of practice, he couldn't pull it off back then, but now his mana-core had been formed and his abilities were more precise than ever. He decided to give it another shot.

During that little study craze Kane went through, he'd made sure to learn a lot about human anatomy, believing the knowledge would help him develop all sorts of skills.

This included information on the brain, or more specifically, how the brain perceives information.

Kane withdrew all of the excess mana he was using to protect his body, deciding his powerful physique alone would be enough to defend him.

He then poured it all into his dorsolateral prefrontal right cortex, the region of the brain that controls his perception of time.

He didn't have enough precision to send mana to individual parts of the brain before, but now he could pull it off.

His previous theory was correct, as his entire perception of time dramatically slowed, giving him ample room to process the sounds from individual mechanisms and react.

Doing this didn't cause a lot of mana drain, but he did need to use a decent amount to get it to work to this extent.

All of the soldiers overseeing the training noticed an immediate change, as Kane began moving rapidly.

Dodging every shot by extraordinarily small margins, with absolutely no stops between each movement, there was nothing the disks could do to hit him.

This process was a pain in the ass for Kane, while it undeniably helped him a lot, it stretched what should've been 14 minutes into what felt like an hour.

After the 30 minute mark, the machines stopped. A young man in a white-lab coat decorated in unusual medals walked out to greet Kane.

"So... what do I win?" Kane pretended to be physically exhausted.

The examiner smiled, "You win one of the qualifications needed to reach Rank 3, and a specialized combat instructor will be assigned to you."

"That sounds like a pretty sweet deal," Kane beamed.

"We've also deemed your unit fit to begin your first mission tomorrow," the man said while checking his clipboard.

"Oh yeah? What's the mission, taking out a hive of gangsters?"

"Not quite, you'll be transporting 11 tons of classified material from a bunker out in the forest to an underground lab. Without letting anyone interrupt, of course. Further details will be disclosed tomorrow."

Kane could already tell this would be a pain in the ass.

"Do you think there'll be anyone there to 'interrupt?'" Kane asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Possibly some spies from Treychla, if you encounter any, just knock them unconscious and radio us to take them in. You're free to kill them if you feel your life is in danger, but anyone there should only be lightly armed at best."

Kane put on a forced smile.

"Wonderful, exactly what I wanted to do tomorrow..." He said sarcastically.