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    I was so tired after the next day''s workout that I wanted to scream.  Jessie''s energy had been burned off pretty quickly. It was pushing our  contract to even use it, since it might theoretically give us an unfair  advantage by healing us while we worked. Only the fact that exhaustion  soaked most of it before we even started made it just within bounds. Of  course, by the time we finished exercising, it was completely gone, and  we were all left even more tired than we started.


    There  were, in my experience, levels of tiredness. There was basic tired,  where you were about to nod off. There was extremely tired, where you  were somehow TOO tired to sleep, despite needing it badly. And then,  there was PAIN tired. Pain tired was what happened when you were so  tired that your body was basically trying to shut down. Where your skin  was one big bruise, and touching anything felt like sandpaper.


    Mixing  pain tired with exercise was a one way trip to hell, and we had already  been on our way there yesterday. Now we were on the express route, and I  was really missing all the pleasant stops from before as I hurtled  headlong into the burning abyss of misery that was military training.


    "Now."  Said Hamill as he escorted us to a particularly large section of  training ground covered with large equipment. "Yesterday, we took things  easy. Since it was your first day, you were only expected to do basic  calisthenics and conditioning exercises. Now that you''ve had a night to  acclimatize we can move onto actual training. To that effect we  have...this."


    He gestured at that stacked high mess of  wood and ropes and any number of other equipment. His pride in  the...thing, was obvious, and at our blank looks, he puffed up further.  "This." He said patronizingly. "Is the century course. It''s a devlishly  complex and useful device. In essence, it''s a multi person obstacle  course. You begin at the bottom, doing challenges and physical obstacles  to reach the top. However, you''ll enter it in groups of ten, and should  one of you get further ahead by too large a margin, the obstacles  behind will become more difficult."


    One of the other  cadets, a tall harsh featured man named Crallus, raised a hand. Nodding  to him, Hamill accepted his question, something he did regularly and one  of the things I liked about him best. Crallus cleared his throat. "Sir,  does that mean that it''s a pass fail exercise? That all of us have to  make it through or none do?"


    "Exactly so." Beamed the  instructor. "Battle as a soldier, whether formation or pitched, depends  entirely on the person next to you. Learning to adopt the pace of your  weakest link, to remain cohesive and stable, is invaluable. We''re not  training warriors here. Being the best and getting ahead won''t serve you  well on the battlefield, it''ll just make you an easier target. One  soldier, no matter their talent, can''t make a difference against an army  of the same rank."


    That was...kind of a good point. Even  Abel, monster that he was, couldn''t fight ten thousand F-rankers.  Quantity had a quality all its own. The philosophy was interesting  enough that it almost helped me focus past the agony I was in. Almost.


    And  so the training began. Ten at a time. I''d hoped that we would all be  together, but we were clearly expected to reach this level of cohesion  with any of the others, not just our friends. I did get lucky enough to  get paired up with Benny, who nodded to me tiredly as we each climbed up  onto the huge contraption that was the century course.


    Stepping  into the wooden...hallway, I guess was the best word, I followed it  down the course to the first room. There were ten entrance corridors  made of slatted wood with gaps between, and once I got into room one, I  could see the others through the walls, able to spot flashes of them as I  looked at the first obstacle. I couldn''t see them well, but it was  enough to pace myself a bit.


    The obstacle itself  was...weird. A large wall covered in multi colored protrusions, with a  huge series of buckets at the top. Periodically, the buckets would tip,  spilling scalding water down over the handholds. The sequence wasn''t  random, not after taking a few minutes to map it, but it was  complicated.


    I wanted to wait longer and figure out how to  do it safely, but through the slats I saw some of the others already  partway up. Grinding my teeth, I bolted to the wall, hopping up to grab  some of the handholds and begin climbing. It wasn''t so bad to start, a  bit hard to pull myself up, but not terrible. At about the quarter way  mark, I realized I was going to be under a bucket. I scrambled sideways,  straining hard to get out of the way, and just barely managing to get  to the next segment before the water poured down the face of the wall.


    Flecks  and droplets of hot water splatted onto me, my current armor not  covering enough to prevent it from burning my skin. It wasn''t enough to  blister or anything, but it was fucking HOT. I gritted my teeth,  climbing faster to try to avoid having to do that again.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Scaling  sideways to avoid the buckets was about ten times more exhausting than  climbing up. I didn''t know why, but it was. Finally, after getting  burned and almost letting go twice, I managed to reach the top, slumping  onto the ground and panting in pain. Looking around, I saw a few others  through the slats. "Hey!" I shouted. "Can you guys see if the people on  either side of you made it up?"


    There was a pause, before  the guy on my right bellowed back. "Looks like mine is there. He was  about to start on the next leg. He says the girl on his other side had  already made it to the third section he thinks, he didn''t get a  response." I groaned. That meant the next section would be harder for  us.


    Letting myself rest for a  minute, I called out to the others to check if they were ready. After a  particularly irritating back and forth between everyone, we got nine of  us on board, and timed it so we''d all be going at once. Counting down,  we all launched ourselves forward at the next obstacle at once. This one  was a slightly different exercise, though in a similar vein.


    The  tilted wall we were climbing was lined with ropes and holes. We climbed  the ropes, and every so often blades would pop out of the holes at  random to cut the ropes (or us) and force us to fall. The only saving  grace was the slight click before the blade popped out, enabling us to  avoid getting pincushioned. Unfortunately, the blades did NOT pop one at  a time, and the mad scramble to get up was frantic.


    Avoiding  the stabs was only part of it, if a blade popped and severed the rope  above us we had to grab one of the nearby lines. The blades seemed to  follow us at least, so all the ropes didn''t get severed up top and make  the trial unpassable, but they did pop like a foot or two above us. I  had the sneaking suspicion this was the "making things harder" part that  Hamill had mentioned, and I mentally cursed whoever went ahead.


    Finally,  after reaching the top with minimal holes poked in me (three, two on my  arm and one in my calf) I called the others to check that they''d  arrived. Everyone had made it, though several of us were injured. A  small stab wasn''t the end of the world for an F-ranker, and I assumed  there was some scanning ability or something because none of us got  stabbed in the eye or face. Still, damage was damage, and we all needed a  minute.


    "Anyone  manage to get in contact with the one in the lead?" I called to the guy  next to me. "Maybe we can convince them to slow down."


    I  didn''t know how you could be stupid enough to ignore that big long  speech Hamill gave, but nobody ever got rich betting on the limits of  human stupidity. As Mad Scientists were fond of saying, there was no  point in trying to idiot proof an item, because even if you managed, the  universe would just Invent a bigger idiot.


    His  response was surprisingly positive. "Aye. Apparently the climber three  down from me managed to catch her before she got past this section. He  convinced her to wait at the top for us. He apparently said to pass a  message along to ''that dipshit Solomon'' not to ruin his hard work by  going ahead like a big wooden faced showoff. Is that you?" His attempt  not to burst out laughing was obvious in his voice.


    "Yes."  I said through gritted teeth. "And the moron in question was my best  friend Clockwork. I, however, am far more mature and self possessed, and  of course need not pass a message on to him through other people like a  five year old. We should take a few minutes to heal up before the next  section then. I''m Solomon, like he said, what''s your name?"


    "I''m  Bill." He said simply. I waited for some kind of addendum or title but  nothing came. Apparently some people just used normal names here. Weird.


    After a second, I finally responded. "Hey Bill." I said uncertainly. "Nice to meet you. You get stabbed on the way up?"


    There  was a second of contemplation. "Aye. I was stabbed." He said as if he  was talking about the weather. "Once in the meat of my thigh and once in  the ankle."


    "Ouch."  I said sympathetically. "You going to be good for the next section?  We''ll wait at the top for you if you want." I was pretty sure we were  losing points waiting. There was no reason to train cohesion if there  was no way to improve. Chances were good there was a timed aspect as  well, so cohesion could be refined by improving on your score.


    His  response was cut off by a call from the other side, where the other guy  had apparently gotten the message to go and was passing it on. I  shouted it ahead to Bill and got back at it.


    The  next section was harder. No stabbing or anything, this one we had to  jump from beam to beam, using wooden perches that stuck a few feet out  of the wall to leap further up. At random intervals they would be yanked  back in, and I''d miss my footing, usually smashing ribs first into the  next one down and having to scramble back up.


    Jumping  like that WAS possible for someone like me at high F-rank, or even for  the others at mid, but it was an exhausting full body workout that was  made even more difficult by our tiredness and all the exercises we''d  been doing.


    It  took about thirty minutes for me to finish that one, and when I called  around, several people hadn''t made it yet. Those not all the way up  could still hear us calling, as with those who had embarked on the next  level, though past that it seemed to isolate our voices somehow. Either  through magic or just distance, we could only communicate with each  other when we were one ahead or behind.


    And  so it went, test after test, section after section, until we finally  got to the top. Once we reached the peak, we were all in the same room,  and Benny and I were too exhausted to even rag on each other. We all  just silently dragged our battered bodies into a small wooden room in  the middle that appeared to be some kind of elevator. I dreaded doing  this again, but I was sure we would. Hamill hadn''t been joking.  Yesterday was the easy part. The real pain was just beginning.