Kill the Sun - Chapter 563

Chapter 563 – Fitness

Nick started the first test of the economics group and immediately realized something.

'These questions aren't easy,' he thought, 'but that makes sense.'

'The tests are not made with normal people in mind but with the average trainee in mind.'

'I don't need to talk to the other trainees to know what kind of people they are. Since only one person per city can come here every three years, only the most powerful families can send their children here.'

'That means almost all of them have a high level of education but not that much experience.'

'If every test were created with the same complexity, 'unimportant' topics like math and physics would be unsolvable while everyone would get 100 points in economics. After all, all these people must have learned a lot about economics during their educations.'

The more tests Nick did, the more he understood how the tests were constructed.

'The first level checks academics and what you would learn during your education.'

'The second level checks the peak of academia. With that, I mean the peak of theory.'

'The third level checks if the person can actually use the knowledge in a real situation. In short, it tests someone's experience in the field.'

Nick answered the questions rapidly.

'91 points,' Nick thought. 'Once more, I don't know some of the terminology.'

After that, he took the second economics test.

'45 points,' Nick thought with furrowed brows. 'There is too much terminology, and there are way too many questions about avoiding taxes. I don't know a lot about avoiding taxes.'

'Well, let's see what the third level is like,' he thought as he started the hardest test of economics.

...or, as it turned out, the easiest.

Almost all of the questions were about how the populace would act with their money when laws changed or what the city should do in a given scenario.

These questions would be almost unanswerable by any of the trainees since people often acted counterintuitively in most of these situations, which often went against academia.

Yet, all of these questions seemed insanely easy to him, but that had been expected.

When Nick saw his final score, he raised an eyebrow. '98? I got one wrong? I'm quite confident in all of my answers.'

'Do they have a mistake in there?'

In the end, Nick just shook his head. 'Doesn't really matter. It's only one question. There's no reason to cause a scene over two points.'

'I got 98 points on the third level, which is already more than enough.'

As Nick went back to the menu, he looked at the last category.

Spectology.

Spectology was the study of Specters.

Their abilities, how they functioned, how they acted, and so on.

Nick had been a CZE for over a decade, and he had worked with over a hundred different Specters in his life.

Nick rapidly finished the first test and got a 96.

Then, he finished the second test and got an 84.

Finally, he went on to the third test.

'98 again?' Nick thought with a raised brow. 'Well, at least this time, I know which answer I most likely got wrong.'

The question established the attributes of a new Specter and asked the tester to classify the Specter.

The thing was that everything pointed to it being a Possession Specter but in the form of a human.

Nick hadn't seen a human Possession Specter yet, which was why he had gone with something else.

Luckily, Nick's ability hadn't been active ever since he entered Aegis' headquarters.

'Explosive speed is one of the most important things for me,' Nick thought. 'I need it to flee, to attack, and to quickly get from cover to cover.'

A moment later, the two lines disappeared, and some kind of treadmill appeared on the floor.

Nick jumped to its middle and started to accelerate.

The treadmill kept him perfectly in the middle of the room, and Nick sped up more.

After some seconds, he narrowed his eyes and jumped forward with all of his power.

This jump would have catapulted Nick over kilometers of distance, but he didn't move at all on the treadmill, making for quite a bizarre picture.

The speed meter shot up for an instant before slowing down again.

Nick landed on the treadmill and continued running since the treadmill was still moving at insane speeds.

After a while, the treadmill slowed down, and Nick could finally leave.

The treadmill vanished, and Nick saw a console with the points he received.

'Seven points,' Nick thought. 'Seems about right.'

There were five categories, and one could earn up to ten points per category, making for a total of 50 points.

One would expect that the average would be five points, but that wasn't true.

According to the book, every point represented a drop of 50%.

100% of trainees could earn one point.

50% could earn two points.

25% could earn three points.

And so on.

With seven points, Nick was in the top 1.6% of trainees or something like that when it came to speed.

That was about what he had expected.

After all, Nick's body was about as good as it got.

He would probably receive similar scores in the other categories.

The only way to get even more points was to reduce one's points in other categories.

In order to increase his speed, Nick would need to lose muscle mass to reduce his weight, making the strength test much harder.

The same thing was true the other way around.

Essentially, Nick needed to specialize in order to get eight or more points in a category.

"Agility Test," Nick said.

The next moment, the terrain inside the white world transformed, creating walls in random places.

There were tight corridors that zigzagged, walls that blocked almost the entire width of the room, round tunnels, and so on.

It was a chaotic world with many obstacles, twists, and turns.

Nick saw a timer appear, which counted down from 30 minutes.

At the same time, Nick saw a yellow light shining through one of the walls.

The yellow light originated from the goal he had to reach, and it could pass through obstacles and walls.

Yet, instead of running right at it, Nick inspected the entire room.

The timer existed so that Nick could get familiar with the room's layout.

In 30 minutes, the real test would start.