Chapter 16 - The Physical Test

“I see you that all participant schools have already arrived…” these words could be heard from afar as the student returned with an aged man following behind her as they both left the side metallic door...

“Indeed…” the white-haired man, Crow, Confirmed.

“Ah, it’s really nice to see you again, old man… hahaha…” the aged man stroked his short yet colorful beard as he said.

“You are not that much younger, are you?” Crow once again revealed his sharp eyes as he glared back at the aged man who threw the half insult…

“It’s all jokes, all jokes, my friend… haha… everyone, follow me, we ought to start the examination already…” The aged man quickly dismissed the subject as he gestured to the three groups before pushing the third metallic door in the room as he went in through the opening…

The three groups didn’t hesitate much as they followed without questions, only to be greeted by another spacy metallic room, this time not completely empty, as it was full of various machines…

“This is where we will be conducting the first test for you, the special enrollment candidates, the ‘Physical Aspect’ test,” the aged man said calmly after all the students entered the large room…

"You should have already been told a summary about the details of the examination, so I will only talk about the test which I will supervise and will be held here in this room…

"The 'Physical Aspect' test will pretty much be a simple test of your fitness, mostly concentrating on your strength and endurance, with speed being a secondary value…" the aged man explained…

"Just remember that the 'Physical Aspect' test is the easiest test to get a passing mark on, if you do your best and give it your all, it shouldn't be a problem for all of you to pass it, so there is no need to mess up from stress, just relax!" the aged man reminded as he went ahead and sat on a chair that was connected to the wall as he proceeded to follow up…

"There is also no need to bother with results! You just have to go through every machine's required performance and you will receive the result at the very after everyone's done, so once again… Just do your best!" the aged man finally said as he closed his eyes to show that he was done… Before he opened them back again…

"Ah right, I almost forgot to tell… There is an instruction panel that is either at the side of the front of every machine, so you needn't ask me about it, unless it's something that you fail to understand… That's all," the aged man added as he fully closed his eyes this time…

'Hmmm, this looks like some sort of an advanced gym…' Chrome thought.

The number of machines wasn't high, but most of the machines looked similar to gym machines which Chrome had seen before in one of his useless visits to the gym that mostly ended with failure…

The machines consisted of a treadmill look-alike, a punch strength machine, an advanced orbit machine, a 'how high you can jump' gauge, and other minor machines, with some that seemed to even gauge the strength of a person's finger…

Chrome observed this as he watched the other students as they raced to try the machines as they followed the instructions entailed on each one…

'This looks fairly simple…' Chrome contemplated…

As he watched the other students take turns doing their own tests, Chrome noticed that most of the machines didn't require body breaking efforts or impossible physical feats. in fact, the whole machine set seemed like a simple exercise schedule…

'I'm in no hurry…' Chrome relaxed himself as he continued observing...

Thankfully, 4 identical machine sets were set up in lines, which made it so that the total number of 31 students wouldn't wait too much for their turns, as it merely took one 15 minutes to finish his examinations in total…

Not being in a hurry to finish, Chrome didn't race into the early turns as he waited for almost one and half an hour, being in the batch before last to start his own cycle.

'Let's see…'

The instructions on each machine were indeed simple, the first machine being the punch-strength testing machine, only requiring one to do three punches to move over…

The next machine, being the 'How high you can jump' gauge one, also only required three jumps and so on… 

As such, it didn't take Chrome more than 5 minutes before he found himself at the last machine...

In all these machines' tests, Chrome simply tried his best and gave it his all like the aged man had said, after all, he himself knew his own physical status the best, as he could view them through the scroll, he was only slightly above average due to the constant work that he had to do every day to maintain his livelihood and savings, so he didn't expect to get an excellence mark or anything, he was just simply aiming for a passing mark if possible…

The last machine, being the treadmill look-alike, was the hardest machine of the whole set, with its instructions indicating that one had to push the start button as he got on, and continue running till he couldn't do so anymore, which was quite a challenge considering that its speed increased automatically as a certain amount of time passed…

Beep.

"Hah… Hah…"

As Chrome panted for breath, he looked at the recorded time as he had just pushed the stop button, only to see that he got about the same average that most others got till this point, 10 minutes and 14 seconds, which was about 3 seconds higher than the average the machine showed…

'That should be alright…' leaving the treadmill look-alike, Chrome thought as the last one in the line's queue started his own test…

On the other hand...

"What monster…?"

"Is he a 'Physical Aspect' Awakened?"

"Woah…"

Chrome noticed that there was a commotion gathering at the last line of the four as most students seemed to be concentrating on a slim but tall student who was still using the treadmill look-alike, acting as if it was nothing even though it could be easily seen that he had passed 20 minutes by looking at his machine...