"If you all consider our knowledge so easy to learn, then we'll make a deal," Rik said with a pleasant smile that instantly made several people nervous. The evening wind blew through the archery field as all the recruits stared at him in confusion. "For the next two weeks, you will undergo practical examinations based on what our family considers the minimum standard for mastery. If even one of you scores above ten points consistently, we will admit that we were wrong and adjust the training according to your wishes." His tone remained calm and polite, but anyone with functioning instincts could tell something was very wrong here. Unfortunately, most of the recruits were still too arrogant to notice the trap closing around them.
A wave of uneasy murmurs spread through the crowd. Even the people who had complained earlier were beginning to regret agreeing with Lukas. Sure, they disliked the insane schedule, but they had also watched enough movies to know what happened whenever a military instructor smiled like that. Sadly, before anyone could back down, Lukas Richmond stepped forward with all the confidence of a man who had never truly failed in his life. "We accept," he declared loudly while crossing his arms. "Let's see how difficult your so-called mastery really is." The moment those words left his mouth, several recruits looked at him with horror. Lukas himself did not realize it yet, but he had just condemned all of them.
From that point onward, Lukas became the most hated man in the entire training camp. Even worse for him, the instructors developed a very personal interest in his education. Every time he made a mistake, they corrected him with terrifying enthusiasm. Every time he complained, the entire group suffered alongside him. The worst part was that the first five days honestly were not that bad. Aside from waking up at four in the morning and sleeping in hammocks, the training resembled an expensive summer camp. The instructors were polite, the lessons were interesting, and many recruits even started believing the Sonnebergs had overreacted about the difficulty of ranger training.
Then came Day Six.
The morning began normally enough with endurance exercises and conditioning drills. By now the recruits had grown somewhat used to running through forests while carrying heavy equipment. After lunch, however, instead of attending theory lessons, they were guided deep into the forest by Rik and the other instructors. The atmosphere immediately became tense. "Today's lesson will be practical," Rik announced while standing in front of the group. "Your task is simple. All of your instructors will attempt to cross this forest. Your only objective is to spot us before we pass your defensive line in the middle." He paused briefly before smiling again. "If even one instructor crosses unseen, you lose."
Before anyone could ask questions, the instructors vanished into the trees.
At first the recruits remained confident. There were nearly 2000 of them against only twenty instructors. Surely someone would notice movement. Surely someone would hear footsteps. Surely trained adults could not disappear that easily. Thirty minutes later, Rik casually walked out from behind the recruits and announced the exercise was over. The expressions on everyone's faces were priceless.
The scolding that followed was brutal.
"Luckily we recorded everything," Rik said while activating a projection screen. "Otherwise you idiots would never believe how badly you failed." The footage began playing immediately. The recruits watched in absolute horror as instructors casually moved through the forest completely unnoticed. One instructor literally walked across branches directly above Lukas before dropping small twigs onto his head. Lukas looked up several times during the recording and still somehow failed to see the man standing above him.
Rik paused the video and pointed directly at Lukas. "You especially should pay attention. This is the level you mocked." His smile vanished completely. "And stop laughing," he barked suddenly at the other recruits. "You are all equally pathetic." The projection resumed, revealing instructors standing openly every ten meters throughout the forest while the recruits walked past them without noticing a single thing. By the end of the review session, nobody felt smug anymore.
"And this," Rik concluded calmly, "is why the real training begins now."
Day Seven somehow became even worse. The recruits were given three hours to track a single instructor through the forest using clues left behind on purpose. Most groups never even found the correct direction. During the review session afterward, the instructors verbally dismantled them piece by piece. According to the Sonnebergs, the recruits stomped through evidence like wild animals. Broken branches, footprints, disturbed moss, bent grass, displaced stones—there had apparently been clues everywhere, yet none of them noticed. Several recruits actually started crying during the critique.
The physical training also intensified dramatically. Every flaw in their archery stance was corrected immediately and mercilessly. If someone released incorrectly, they repeated the shot until their fingers bled. If someone's posture weakened, they restarted the entire drill. The instructors no longer acted kind or welcoming. They acted like craftsmen furious that amateurs dared insult their life's work.
Day Eight focused on search operations. Teams of ten recruits were assigned sections of forest measuring one hundred by one hundred meters. Somewhere within those zones, an instructor hid himself. The recruits had ten minutes to locate him. Lukas immediately took command of his team and ordered everyone to spread out aggressively. According to him, speed mattered more than caution. His squad spent the entire exercise running through bushes, yelling directions, and searching randomly.
They failed spectacularly.
During the review, the hidden instructor calmly stepped out from behind Lukas himself.
The man had apparently spent the entire ten minutes standing less than two meters away while Lukas shouted orders in the opposite direction. Watching the realization hit Lukas nearly made the other recruits pity him. Nearly. Instead, he was assigned toilet-cleaning duty for three days while the instructors openly questioned whether he possessed functioning eyesight.
Day Nine attacked them mentally instead of physically. The recruits entered the classroom expecting another lecture and instead found massive test papers waiting on their desks. The exams contained hundreds of plants, herbs, fungi, insects, and animals they needed to identify. Worse still, nearly half of them were poisonous. After most people failed miserably, the instructors calmly informed them they would receive another chance. Then they revealed a second exam containing over a thousand toxic species. The only objective was identifying which venom would not kill them if injected into their bloodstream.
Naturally, nobody volunteered to test their answers.
By Day Ten, morale had completely collapsed. That afternoon the recruits were led onto a massive practice range where moving targets flew through the air at extreme speed. Their task sounded deceptively simple: hit a fist-sized moving target from one hundred and fifty meters away. Not a single recruit even came close. Most arrows missed by over fifty meters regardless of what technique they used. Meanwhile the instructors demonstrated the shot casually, splitting moving targets in half as though it were effortless.
Afterward the guild finally granted the recruits two days of reduced activity because several people were apparently approaching physical collapse. Even the Sonnebergs admitted dead trainees learned very little. Still, "rest" mostly involved additional theory lessons and lighter exercises instead of actual relaxation. By the end of the twelfth day, everyone looked like war survivors.
And now came the final test before the Earth's expansion.
The recruits stood at the edge of the forest while Rik explained the rules with obvious amusement in his eyes. "You may hide anywhere within the forest boundaries. Twenty instructors will search for you. If even one recruit remains undiscovered after four hours, you pass." For the first time in days, hope returned to the group. Surely twenty instructors could not locate nearly a hundred people hiding throughout an entire forest.
Lukas especially regained some confidence.
Using the last scraps of pride he still possessed, he rallied the exhausted recruits together like a battlefield commander preparing for war. "Listen up!" he shouted passionately. "There's no way they can find all of us. We just need one person to survive!" Surprisingly, people actually cheered. After nearly two weeks of suffering, the recruits desperately wanted victory. More importantly, they wanted the brutal schedule to end.
The moment the starting pistol fired, everyone sprinted into the forest searching desperately for hiding spots. Some climbed trees. Others buried themselves beneath leaves or squeezed into bushes. A few even attempted primitive camouflage. Anything was better than continuing the nightmare schedule the Sonnebergs had created.
After all, these poor recruits had reached a truly horrifying state.
For more than a week, not a single one of them had touched their phones.
Not because the devices stopped working.
Not because they were confiscated.
But because they were simply too exhausted to care anymore.
And honestly, the recruits were fairly certain that made them the first modern teenagers in human history to willingly ignore functioning phones for an entire week.