Cannon fodder in the Interstellar

Yesterday, the senior from the Mecha Combat Department who accompanied Ruo Manni seriously told her that at Xuan Gu First Military Academy, academic credits are extremely important. Therefore, she should not miss any opportunity to earn credits.

At Xuan Gu First Military Academy, aside from food, almost everything else requires credits, especially resources related to cultivation. For example, access to the academy’s state-of-the-art training rooms, which are far ahead of any other military academy, requires credits.

Since she didn’t have a student card yesterday, much of the information was locked. Now that it’s unlocked, the first thing Ruo Manni did was check the information on the academy’s training facilities.

The training center information was prominently displayed on the homepage of the school’s internal network. When Ruo Manni clicked on it, a detailed description immediately popped up.

After quickly browsing the details, Ruo Manni understood why the senior emphasized that this was a must-visit place for Combat Department students. The training centers are the best environments for cultivation.

In short, if Combat Department students at Xuan Gu First Military Academy don’t regularly train in these facilities, their cultivation progress over the years will lag far behind those who do.

The training facilities at Xuan Gu First Military Academy encompass almost all cultivation activities necessary for Combat Department students.

The training facility is divided into five main areas: the Swimming Training Center, Martial Artist Training Center, Psychic Training Center, Mecha Training Center, and the Holographic Simulation Training Center. Each of these areas is further subdivided into more specialized categories.

These five training centers occupy three-fifths of Xuan Gu First Military Academy’s total area, which alone highlights their importance. Just looking at the massive, ultra-modern buildings on the screen is enough to make one’s blood race. Ruo Manni was eager to go there.

She was no longer the inexperienced girl from over two months ago. During her night training on the island, she had experienced firsthand the benefits of training in a proper facility.

However, unlike on the island, where training was free, here at the academy, using the training centers requires academic credits. To train there, one must have credits.

The senior had mentioned that every new student receives a certain number of initial credits when they first enroll. Since her personal information had been locked yesterday, Ruo Manni didn’t know how many credits she had.

Ruo Manni accessed her basic information and first looked at the credits section. To her delight, she discovered that, even before classes started, she already had 70 initial credits.

Next, she looked at the second section, which contained her baseline data from her entrance assessment, followed by her updated stats after completing the special training.

Ruo Manni compared her two sets of data and noticed significant improvements, especially in her physical fitness, which had doubled.

Additionally, she reviewed the training evaluation given to her by Instructor Dudley after completing two and a half months of special training.

Each score had a maximum of 100 points.

For her Psychic abilities, all of her training scores were above 90 points. However, her Martial Artist scores were much lower, with her highest score being only 85. Her overall physical fitness score was just 75, and her worst was swimming, with a score of only 60.

Although Instructor Dudley expressed dissatisfaction, Ruo Manni felt much better about her progress. After all, in the entrance exam for Xuan Gu First Military Academy, her physical fitness score had been only 45. On the first day of training, Instructor Dudley had bluntly said she was just an empty shell.

Thinking it over, Ruo Manni couldn’t tell if her scores were good or bad, so she sent a message to Dean Atchison to ask about his training scores.

Dean Atchison replied within ten seconds. When she saw his physical fitness score of 93, Ruo Manni couldn’t help but feel a bit envious.

Ruo Manni recalled how seriously Dean Atchison had told her that at Xuan Gu First Military Academy, there was a multi-day field training exercise at the end of every month.

Ruo Manni searched the school’s internal forum for information about past field training exercises but found that much of it was locked. All she could see were comments like “It’s exhausting,” and “Without good physical fitness, it’s impossible to complete the tasks.”

Ruo Manni thought about it and speculated that the school locked information about field training exercises to prevent students from gaining too many details, avoiding shortcuts or easy ways out. The purpose of the field training was to improve the students’ overall combat abilities, and taking shortcuts would defeat that goal.

Thus, she decided not to overthink it and focus on improving her physical fitness as much as possible.

If there was a field training every month, then there would be at least seven or eight sessions per year, likely covering all types of terrain. Swimming would undoubtedly be unavoidable, especially if the training took place at sea, where swimming could dominate the activities.

Considering Ruo Manni’s current swimming speed and stamina, it would be disastrous. She feared she might either be eliminated halfway through or end up dragging her team down, causing the group’s overall performance to suffer greatly.

Ruo Manni absolutely refused to let herself become that person.

Therefore, she resolved to significantly improve her swimming speed this month.

The school even had a dedicated swimming training facility, indicating just how important swimming was as a skill.

Ruo Manni looked up information on the swimming training center and saw that training for an hour there would cost 1 credit. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Before school even started, Ruo Manni already had 70 credits. Since swimming training only consumed one credit per hour, she wasn’t worried about running out of credits and being unable to train in the facility.

After swimming training, her stamina would likely be mostly depleted, so she planned to move on to telekinesis training next. When she checked the information about the telekinesis training facility, she found that it consumed twice as many credits as the swimming facility—two credits per hour.

By the time she finished telekinesis training, her stamina would usually recover about 70%, and she would then finish her training in the gravity training room, focusing on physical techniques. She could improve her combat skills later in the virtual war realm.

Ruo Manni discovered that the gravity training facility consumed even more credits—three credits per hour.

According to her plan, Ruo Manni would be consuming at least ten credits a day, and she suddenly realized that the 70 credits she had didn’t seem like much.

However, she understood that gains came with sacrifices, and nothing was more important than improving her abilities. In a military academy where strength ruled, power was everything.

With that in mind, Ruo Manni, though still unsure how to earn more credits, believed that once her strength improved, she would be able to earn plenty of them.

After setting her training schedule for the next few days, Ruo Manni returned to her dorm.

Although her stamina wasn’t heavily drained after running for over two hours that morning, she was hungry. Not wanting to rely on nutrition supplements, she returned to her dorm to eat something and changed into her waterproof training gear.