It was 5:45 AM on Monday morning when I walked through the polished chrome doors of the Westwood arena. It was still dark outside, but the Ahmedabad air was already beginning to feel heavy, holding the promise of another sweltering August day . Inside, the air was cold, sterile, and silent.
I was the first one there.
I walked into the locker room, the cavernous space empty and quiet. As I started to get changed, the deep loneliness of my situation settled in my gut. It was a familiar feeling, the same cold shoulder I'd gotten my whole life, but it was different now. Before, I was a nobody they could ignore. Now, I was an intruder in their space, and the silence felt heavier, more deliberate. I had won the battle at the tryouts, but a new fear began to creep in: what if I could never be accepted into the army?
Slowly, the other players started to trickle in. When Jax and his friends walked in, the atmosphere became instantly colder . The whispers from the day before had been replaced by a solid wall of ice. Jax didn't even look at me; he just walked past as if I didn't exist, a more profound insult than any of his old taunts.
At 6:00 AM on the dot, Coach Valerius's voice boomed from the entrance. "On the court. Now."
We all filed out, the tension thick enough to taste. Valerius stood at the center of the court, his arms crossed.
"Listen up," he barked. "Tryouts are over. The time for showing off is done. Now, the work begins. Some of you think you've made it. You haven't. You've just earned the right to be torn down and rebuilt into something that can actually win. Today, we find your limits. Then, we push past them. We start with conditioning."
What followed was two hours of pure, unadulterated hell. It was a gauntlet of zero-g sprints and high-intensity agility courses designed to push our stamina to its absolute breaking point. I struggled. Badly. My base stats were still the lowest on the team. I was consistently the last one to finish every drill. As I stumbled across the finish line of the final sprint, gasping for air, a system notification flashed in my vision, its red text a stark warning.
[Warning: Stamina below 10%. Risk of muscular injury is high.]
With every failed drill, the fear grew colder. What if the coach was wrong? What if there was no engine to build? What if I was just… a zero, like Jax said?
Jax, who had finished first without breaking a sweat, jogged past me as I was bent over, trying not to be sick. "Still running, zero?" he said, his voice low enough that only I could hear. "Save your energy. You'll need it to warm the bench."
I didn't have the breath to reply. I just pushed through, my mind focused on the coach's words: "You will work harder than anyone else.". This was the price. And I would pay it.
After the conditioning, Valerius moved on to skill practice. "Line up. Shooting drills," he commanded.
My heart started to pound. This was different. My chance to show I wasn't useless. When it was my turn, the coach watched me like a hawk. I got into my perfect stance, remembering my new
Aether Control of 11 and the
78% Proficiency on my Power Shot.
I fired.
THWACK!
The sound was crisp and sharp. Not a whisper. Not a thud. The blue beam of energy flew perfectly straight and slammed into the dead center of the target. The players who were about to laugh fell silent. The shot was… respectable.
Valerius grunted. "Again," he barked.
I fired again. Perfect form. Dead center. I kept going, pushing myself to replicate the perfect form over and over, even as my stamina screamed.
At the end of practice, when the other players were trudging back to the locker room, Valerius's voice cut through the air. "Kai. Stay."
He stood before me, acknowledging the improvement. "Better," he said, which from him was high praise. "But still not good enough. Your technique is basic. Predictable. I'm giving you access to the team's pro-league archives." He gestured to a terminal. "Your homework: I want you to find and analyze the single most efficient Power Shot in the entire league's history. I want a full breakdown on my desk by tomorrow. Don't just learn a skill, Kai. Master it."
He dismissed me with a wave. I nodded, my mind racing, and walked over to the terminal. If I wanted the most efficient Power Shot, I didn't need to look at the flashiest players. I needed a specialist. I filtered the league database for 'Shot Efficiency > 95%'. Only one name popped up. A veteran player named Silas, known as 'The Surgeon' for his clinical precision. His signature move wasn't a fancy named skill. It was just listed as Power Shot (Perfected).
That was my target.