Melbourne followed the group and the holomap on his watch to the university's Physical Training department, Building P. The building was a twenty story building with multiple levels for similar types of training. The size was designed to accommodate two thousand students at once from the first and second years.
Melbourne followed his watch to the eleventh floor where he and the rest of his homeroom class were scheduled to be. One hundred other students quickly filled the room, the fifty from Lavender's class making up one half of the population on this level.
A bodybuilder entered the room from an office who looked like he probably took steroids. He wore a marine uniform and had first sergeant insignia patches on his shoulders. Following him were nine heavily muscled regular sergeants who still looked scrawny compared to the first sergeant even though they could probably hold their own in a professional wrestling match.
"Good morning, boots!" exclaimed the man. He had no microphone, but one would think otherwise if they didn't know any better given how loud he was able to naturally make his voice. "My name is First Sergeant Zach Lioni, and I will be conducting your PT test today! If you are strong enough, I will also be your physical training instructor throughout the year. Your training bracket will depend upon your results today! You will conduct the standard enlistment PT Test and be evaluated on your performance. Top performers will join me on the 11th Floor. Those in lower brackets will find themselves in higher floors and will be expected to run up and down the stairs each morning to get to training. This building has no elevators. Now, the nine sergeants with me today are going to help me in dividing you so that we can finish these PT tests before noon. I would have you all stand in a single file line and we will personally point at ten of you each. You will follow the instructor who taps your shoulder and assemble around him. He will then instruct you one by one to do various workouts. Alright, form up!"
The cadets formed a long line and the sergeants began their rounds. Melbourne was tapped by Lioni himself, as was Logan to his frustration. Jeremy was tapped by another sergeant.
"Alright, form around your respective testers!" announced Lioni.
The students dispersed and formed multiple circles with their instructors acting as a nucleus to their formation. Melbourne positioned himself as far away from Logan as possible. As soon as Lioni's ten cadets surrounded him, he spoke again.
"Alright, maggots!" exclaimed Lioni like a drill sergeant. "Welcome to your PT Test! We are going to start with push ups! The minimum requirement to avoid being expelled immediately is fifty push-ups within sixty seconds! Now, I'm going to select you each one at a time and you are going to get in front of me. You will each have two minutes to pump out as many push-ups as you can. If your knees touch the floor, you are done and your total score will be tallied on the basis of how many push ups you have already achieved. First cadet, Tony Karesi!"
A black man with a shaved head that showed remnants of recently shaved off dreads walked up and assumed the push-up position as Lioni's watch displayed a holographic timer beginning at 120.
"Ready! BEGIN!"
Cadet Karesi pumped out seventy push-ups in the first minute before fatigue slowed him down. At the end of the series, his knee hit the ground ten seconds before time up.
"One hundred and five!" exclaimed First Sergeant Lioni without emotion. "Next! Melbourne Acliate!"
Melbourne Acliate hit the floor and pumped out one push-up per second at a perfect rate without slowing down.
"Time up!"
[Stamina: 20/25]
The Aclito read a minor stamina deduction as Melbourne got up and returned to the circle of cadets. Five points of stamina would recover in five minutes without any injuries.
"One hundred and twenty!" exclaimed First Sergeant Lioni, a faint shred of proud surprise appearing in his voice.
Compared to many of the cadets, Melbourne was still relatively scrawny looking. Melbourne, however, was stronger than he appeared because of the rigorous daily training his system had forced him to do for the last two months. His respirocytes augmentation also increased his endurance which related to an increase in stamina. He had deliberately held back in his performance to avoid attracting suspicion, so he wasn't very tired at all.
"Next up, Logan Indri!"
Cadets immediately began whispering rumors among themselves.
"Indri?"
"Yeah, I heard that's the son of the famous General Indri, the war hero."
"Did I give you whelps permission to speak?" demanded the booming voice of First Sergeant Lioni.
The crowd immediately shut up.
"Cadet Indri, hit the floor!" commanded Lioni.
Cadet Indri performed one-hundred and thirty-four push-ups before getting up and glaring triumphantly at Melbourne.
"One-hundred and thirty-four!" exclaimed Lioni.
Melbourne returned Logan a stoic, absent-minded look as Lioni declared the results. Logan's eyes turned from pride into anger as he realized Melbourne wasn't successfully baited. What did Melbourne care? The fool had no idea what Melbourne could actually do. Melbourne couldn't wait to meet Logan in a martial arts arena.
"Next up, Sarah Jenol!"
A blonde haired lady with a ponytail walked up and hit the floor, performing a respectable one-hundred and fifteen push-ups, outperforming the first cadet by a small margin.
"Next, Timothy Faran!"
Timothy performed slightly worse than Tony, but still made a decent score for new recruits, enough to be in the top percentile. From there on out, the scores of the remaining five showed significantly lower results.
The next exercise each cadet had to perform were regular sit-ups with the hands behind the head. The same minimum of fifty within two minutes was required and the results were very similar.
The next exercise was pull-ups, for which a minimum of 10 was expected.
As Tony was doing his set, a large grunt interrupted him and made him fall off the bar in the middle of his second repetition.
"Cadet Jenol, what are you doing!" demanded Lioni as Logan Indri held his chest in pain from having been punched.
"First Sergeant, this man just grabbed my waist!" complained the best performing woman in the group.
"Cadet Indri, report to me at the end of this session!" demanded First Sergeant Lioni. "I will have you do some disciplinary exercises and remind you not to touch or sexually abuse your fellow cadets! Cadet Tony Caresi, take a break and recover. I will let you restart due to this interruption after Melbourne Acliate performs his set."
Melbourne performed thirty pull-ups, an impressive quantity he would not have been able to dream of doing a month before, but he wasn't tired. Still, he sucked down his pride and feigned exhaustion as he dropped from the bar and walked to the crowd before Tony came back to restart his set.
The remainder of the exercises included planks, five consecutive 50 meter sprints and a five kilometer run. The final two exercises were done as a unit. The five kilometer run included all one-hundred cadets and was recorded exclusively by First Sergeant Lioni who used an application with facial recognition software in his smartwatch to clock cadets that finished at similar times.
Melbourne and Logan were the first two to finish the 5 kilometer run, the two finishing at about the same time as Melbourne pretended to struggle to keep up.
Finally, every cadet in the massive gymnasium concluded their fitness test.
"Alright, that concludes your PT Test!" exclaimed Lioni as all cadets returned to their original line formation. "Now, your results will be displayed on the large holographic screen above!"
Lioni gestured to a holographic display that showed the mean score of each cadet. Two cadets outright failed the fitness exam and would be expelled tomorrow. The rest were divided into nine categories of ten students and one category of eight on the bottom with the expelled students left in exclusion.
"The top category will report to this gym tomorrow!" exclaimed Lioni. "Well done to each and every one of you ten! You have the greatest physical fitness of all cadets in your class this year!"
The top ten list included Logan Indri in first place, Melbourne Acliate in second, Sarah Jenol in third, Tony Caresi in fourth, Liana Reyes in fifth, Layne Shogoth in sixth, Timothy Faran in seventh, Ormil Benta in eighth, Kyleena Shamata in ninth and Jeremy Olan in tenth.
Melbourne felt an initial pang of anger as he saw that Logan Indri was going to be in the same physical class as him, but he knew it was going to happen. He was pleasantly surprised, however, when he saw Jeremy's name in the tenth place, just one point above the top performer in the second group. His friend had barely passed the bar to be in the elite physical training class with Melbourne.
"Alright, for everyone else, you will be going to gyms in floors above this one tomorrow morning. This is floor 11. Those of the first group will report here. Those of the second group will report to floor 12 and so on in ascending order. The last group will report to floor 20. If you want to come to a lower level, you will have to challenge someone in a higher position than you to another PT test to prove you deserve a higher position. Train hard and break your body of that weakness in you! Those two of you who failed, return home and apply again next year. You failed the enlistment test, so you will have to get stronger if you even want to join the military, much less join an academy as prestigious as ours. Good luck to you on your future endeavors. You may return to your dorms and pack your things at this time. As for the rest of you, it is now lunch time! Your HR teachers will escort you to the cafeteria and you will then proceed to further aptitude testing according to your own schedules!"
Melbourne looked at his personal schedule for today. His next aptitude test was in strategy. They had tested his body for today. Now they would test his mind.