Ultima was left alone for a good long while, given time to recover from his state. While he recovered he was monitored by a team of scientists, including the one doctor who he coughed blood on.

The doctor was named Arron, and he had worked on the concepts and theories for The Ultima Project for many years. It could be said to be his life's work, along with the other scientists working under him. He was just the biggest contributor to the very idea of a forcibly evolved super soldier.

Ultima had gathered as much from the way the other doctors talked about Arron and how Ultima was “the first successful subject” among many failures and thereby proving his work may have merit.

It was the first day Ultima was led out of his room and not escorted to the bathroom or to a medical room where he was checked for far too many things such as blood pressure and even breathing patterns.

In the few days since he arrived in the new world, he understood a little more, well, he understood a little more about what was going to happen to it. He still knew next to nothing about the actual state of the world. He had gained access to a few different menus after selecting his class however.

First was his status menu, which also happened to double as his ability menu where he could select what abilities to use quickly and easily. 

The second menu was one that at first he thought was broken, it was named 'Relationships' and it didn't seem to work at all, while he could open it, the window was totally blank. This was until he learned about how involved the doctor was in his ‘creation’ and then learned that the strong evil looking Gareth, was his direct commander apparently. 

From this he assumed two things, one being he would 'rank up' once he filled up the meter. The second was that he had to learn the name of the person and have a very clear idea of the relationship he had with them before he could see it directly. 

He decided to keep this menu in the back of his head for the time being, as the other two he had were far more intriguing to him. One was named 'Server ' and the other was named 'NPC Functions'. He could select them, but while NPC functions did nothing currently and just opened to a blank screen, Server opened up into a real time countdown. When he first opened it it was exactly 480 hours, twenty days. It was down to the millisecond, he had an idea of what would happen. He was secretly truly terrified about the implications of this simple number ticking down.

It was now sixteen days before that countdown would be up. He had decided to deal with that when it came to it, since it was out of his control like most things were now in his life.

"Halt Ultima" he froze in place the second he heard the command from Gareth, straightening and waiting. His eyes did not wander but instead stared straight ahead, he was in a pretty empty room, with mats on the ground and covered walls. 

Very old, almost frighteningly distant memories filled his head. The remembrance of going to the gym, fighting at the dojo, his failure to ever progress beyond the bare basics due to his stunted growth. It was the first time he had memories of his past life, but he buried them as he continued to listen to Gareth.

"You have permission to look at me and continue looking at me" Officer Gareth said, and he watched when only the head of the smaller man moved and those cloudy eyes stared directly at his own. Boring straight into his soul and judging him was what it really felt like. He really didn't like how unnaturally Ultima always moved. "For the past few days Arron has been observing you, and I think that you’re ready to give me a good look at what you can do," he explained, walking around Ultima.

Ultima followed Gareth with his eyes as he talked, but did not ask any questions or interject in any way. "Ultima! This came from the higher ups, you are to engage in a spar with me and we will see how you do. Any clarifications?" Gareth asked.

Ultima stared at him, only nodding in response to the question and not getting into any sort of fighting stance. 

The fact he didn’t move worried Gareth somewhat that he wasn’t going to be a good fighter. Ultima continued to stare at him "You may begin fighting me now" Gareth said, while getting into a defensive stance.

Ultima mechanically moved into a pretty bog-standard fighting stance, keeping his arms up to guard his face and planting his feet down into the mat, while taking a deep breath.

Time slowly ticked by, and Gareth actually grew more nervous when the soldier didn't make any move to attack or even seemed to let go of his breath. He began to say "Ultima, you need to attack fir-" before he finished talking, the smaller man moved and stepped in, going for a body jab with his right hand. He had time to react to it, catching the fist with his own hand. He felt the thud, it was a good punch, but it felt like it had totally no real strength behind it. 

Ultima was then that much closer to him, and stared at Gareth's blue eyes with his cloudy ones. There were no words from him, no emotion other than a cold and unfeeling stare. It felt uncanny.

Gareth eventually spoke when he realized that the man wasn’t going to attack more "Right, okay...Ultima? I want you to attack me until I say the word stop. Got it?" he asked, and Ultima answered by throwing his left hand up to try and hit his cheek.

Gareth moved away from him quickly, stepping back a few feet while the soldier moved back into a standard fighting stance. Gareth stayed on the defensive, because he thought the soldier was looking for an opening. 

This proved to not be what happened, as after a moment he rushed forward and began to throw punches and kicks. It all felt soft against Gareth’s grabs and hands, very little strength behind it. But as asked, he was totally relentless, likely waiting for the order to stop. 

Gareth continued to move back, still not breaking a sweat even with all the attacks the smaller man was throwing out. “Is this all you’ve got? Ultima, as your commanding officer I order you to take this seriously!” he barked out.

The order caused Ultima to stop attacking him, giving Gareth an opportunity to finally step back and catch his breath. It just took a deep inhale and exhale to steady himself again as he watched the so-called ‘super soldier’ as Arron decided to call him.

Gareth watched as the cloudy eyes Ultima had suddenly cleared, and then began to shine brightly with all the vibrant colors of the rainbow. He wasn't able to question that though, because once the last bit of color appeared the soldier practically exploded at him, throwing all of his weight into a haymaker. 

Gareth grunted when he tried to stop it with one hand like he did before, but he wasn't prepared for it to not only slow, but then speed right back up. His hand was pushed into his face by the fist, causing his head to ring. He stumbled back and looked at Ultima just before the man continued his assault by raising a leg to kick his knee. He could swear that there was an actual emotion in those eyes that had turned a deep red rather than the rainbow before, undying rage. The pure anger and rage behind it caused him to actually be somewhat scared of Ultima, dodging the fast kick

Ultima felt great, infact felt amazing, not tired at all or unwilling to fight. He still kept his face from showing any amount of emotion beyond neutrality, but he knew his eyes were probably seething with rage right now. He was satisfied with how this ability affected his stats too.

Ultima moved in again before Gareth could recover, throwing another punch, but as Gareth moved to block it, he jumped to his other leg and raised a kick up into the hand. The foot hit the flat hand, making a resounding thud.

Gareth sensed an opportunity and grabbed his leg and tried to unbalance the smaller man with a quick throw over his shoulder. Ultima was thrown to the ground with a hard thud, yet without losing any momentum from the throw he rolled along the ground. Without missing a beat he got back to his feet and flipped backwards, corkscrewing in mid air to slam his heel down into Gareth’s hand. Which he barely managed to block. The level of technique and showing off of Ultima was inhuman. 

The fight lasted only around forty seconds, every time Gareth was able to actually punch Ultima finally or throw him, the smaller man took that momentum and just continued his own assault. Full of flips and kicks, with the occasional punch that kept making his body sore with trying to block them. They both began to bruise and Gareth finally spoke again "Ultima Stop!" he said. 

Ultima froze, his foot was inches from Gareth's face again because he was talking. His eyes continued staring with deep seething rage, but he didn't move anymore. Gareth slowly moved back, panting hard now that he finally could breathe. His body was sore, and he looked at Ultima, still standing there in a totally frozen pose while watching him.

Ultima slowly came down from his rage, and immediately processed a whole lot of pain, as well as a splitting headache again when he began to think about everything in the room besides his opponent, like the shade of red on the mats, how many there were, how many breathes he was taking. He tried to stay standing in his pose, as his eyes clouded once again to Gareth, but once the color left them, the soldier collapsed panting.

Gareth slowly got closer, and picked up Ultima "Make it back to your room and you can rest, good spar today alright?" he said. Ultima simply nodded, before slowly walking back to the room with the escorts.

Gareth took a deep breath before looking at Arron, who was sitting in the corner and gleefully looking through footage on a video camera "What do you think Doctor?" he asked, walking over to him.

Arron smiled, his pearly white teeth showing "I think we just saw his actual strength now that he's become an evolved soldier" he said, watching it again. In the video Ultima was relentless and totally overcompensating in his attack, and didn't seem to yield at all until Gareth said to finally stop. At which point he froze like a deer in headlights, not a second later or sooner.

Gareth nodded "Yeah? Well, it's a lot, but I have a question. He shouldn't feel any emotions at all right? You haven't observed that in all the time you spent spying on him in his room?" he clarified.

Arron nods "Oh yeah, and that is the other thing, he looked royally ticked off didn't he? I'm going to estimate he can't fully control his emotional response even with all the drugs and work, but our hypnosis clearly still works on him. Still, I would use this power sparingly, you saw how he collapsed. Who knows, he may even end up breaking out of our control with that ability" he explained.

The officer sighs "Right, you're dismissed Doc" he said, going to the canteen while the doctor gladly left to more closely examine the footage.