In the sports fields behind SIT, a beautiful, blue haired girl stands before me.  She wears the same blue tracksuit uniform I, and the rest of the juniors at SIT, wear. On her uniform are the words "Alice Thorn". She had an incredibly cool aura about her, reinforced by her sharp face and cool, grey eyes.

Actually, she was quite well known throughout S.T.I. She had overwhelming strength. In fact, out of the hundreds that attend SIT- including the seniors- she was thought to be maybe in the top ten or twenty. Rumors had spread that she had already received a personal system, captured several villians, gain superpowers and practically become a hero already.

"Alice?"

Blue hair isn't actually too uncommon. Just chalk it up to system shenanigans. Different hair colours were still rare-ish, but blues and pinks and purples all became natural hair colours as well as red and yellow and black.

She's slightly out of breath, and her cheeks have a faint hint of red, as if she had just done light exercise.

This is...

She breathes deeply, whilst looking into my eyes.

She takes another breath and takes a step forward- her mouth opens to say something.

All i can think in this situation is...

Scary!!!

I step back as fast as possible as her fist appears where my chest was a moment ago.

"Haa!"

This girl, Alice, is my current sparring partner. The only faint hint of red in her face is testament to her strength- looking around myself at other people. Many of them were panting with far redder faces.

Hmm? Were you expecting something else? Was my description misleading somehow?

Whilst half of the trainees at SIT are away on a task given by a system, the lessons have become joint to make up for the lack of students. Alice takes the same course as I do, but is in a different group. I'm not entirely sure why, since it's not like either classes were small after the task was issued. Perhaps its actually due to a shortage of teachers instead? After all, the task wasn't issued only to trainees.

Regardless, for the past few hours we had been going through basic unarmed combat, and now were currently sparring people in other groups with limited breaks between. Five minutes sparring, two minutes rest. Over and over.

I attempt to start an offensive, rather than just dodge and block the whole time. After tanking one of her punches, which fortunately don't hurt much due to my resilience, I throw a punch back.

Unfortunately, she immediately parried and kicked me in my exposed side for retaliation.

After a few more hits and some fancy martial arts that happened too fast for me to get a proper understanding of, I find myself on the grass face first. She picks up a water bottle a few steps away from her, takes a quick drink, and then directs her cold gaze back on me.

A toneless voice leaves her lips.

"Can you continue?"

She sounded bored, or disappointed, or even angry.

I pick myself up and go for a round two. Round two lasted less than round one, and I find myself face down on the floor a second time. She speaks again in the same toneless fasion.

"Are you okay?"

My back shivers slightly while she speaks. I decide to get up again and remain on the defensive instead of doing something like trying an attack.

I last a bit longer, but I'm still knocked down pathetically quickly.

As I acquaint myself with the ground a third time, I feel just a tinge of bitterness towards Kyte. How come the system he gets just lets him play around all day while I have to struggle with a system like the one I have?

Oh wait, that bitterness is just the taste of dirt in my mouth. I get up, spit the dirt out and assume a fighting stance again.

Alice starts to speak, but changes her sentence as I get up.

"Are you- ready?"

I nod. And get beaten up again.

After the five minute timer is up, a whistle sounds for the two minute rest period. I crawl to my water bottle, after just being thrown onto the ground yet again, and some water. I then start trying to wipe excess sweat from my forehead away- which fails because my arms are equally sweaty and I don't have a towel or anything else to wipe my forehead with.

After realising this I take a minute to meditate before the next match.

I sit cross legged and concentrate, bringing up the system's user interface. I want to see if that "train until you drop" task has increased today. Sadly, "get beaten up" or "beat others up" isn't one of my tasks I can do right now, so it would be nice if this brutal training counted towards at least one of my tasks. before I can check if progress has been made towards that task, I notice something.

Hmm? that system isn't bothering me...

Recently, whenever I meditate, I can see the glowing red orb somewhere, trying to get me to step on the path of a criminal. For some reason, it's not here. I've never seen it hide before, but this is probably a good thing.

A whistle sounds and I leave my meditation. I find Alice sitting on the grass several metres away from me, also waking up from meditation. She frowns at me, before giving me a pitying smile and whispers a quiet "good luck", then we both rotate to our next opponents.

I'm left somewhat confused as I face my next opponent. Is there something wrong with this next person? Or did I just misinterpret that pitying look she had on her face?

An incredibly short- yet stocky- person enteres my view. If I am approximately 1.9 metres tall, he would be aprroximately one and a third? He also wears the same blue tracksuit as I, with the nametag "Mido Gimmel" on it. He had short, windswept orange hair that made him look somewhat like a leprechaun. He even had a Stubble to finish the look off.

Yes, metres is used to measure height. No, why on earth would anyone use feet in this modern day and age?

The leprechaun starts to speak.

"Oi."

?

"Gotta problem with me, mate?"

no?

I give Mido a confused look. I haven't seen him before. There are far too many trainees to know everyone. Knowing Alice was a special case, but I don't think I've met or heard of this guy before. I'm about to speak to him but he talks first.

"People who look down on me are the worst. You think you're such tough stuff just because you're tall?"

Ok, maybe I lied when I said I was just a bit taller than average. I'm a good head taller than your average person.

He takes a moment to read my name from my tracksuit

"Come on Stewart! I'll show you what you got!"

"Stewart is my last name. Feel free to call me Argus."

I don't know what his problem is but we are meant to be sparring anyway, so I decide to put his misunderstanding in the back of my mind for now. Maybe this was his strange form of pep talk. I assume my normal fighting stance and he does the same.

Mido continues his... pep talk?

"I may be this size, but I've broken the shins of countless trolls like yourself before!"

I nod sagely, I'm not sure what exactly he wants from me, so I should just agree with him here.

"Oh, yes! I can tell you're an expert at breaking shins!" He freezes at my reply, whilst I continue talking. "I never doubted that for a second!"

The man's face turns red, clearly not pleased. I guess he didn't want me to interrupt his talk or something.

A whistle blows and the fight starts. After suffering a fully defensive spar last time, I try going on the offensive and throw a punch.

The curious man appears to be thinking something similar, and as soon as the whistle blows, he charges at me. Of course, this means my fist lands squarely on his face, and he staggers back in recoil.

Like many aspects of life, one might think the system changed martial arts, however, unarmed combat barely changed. After all, whilst the force a punch carries is vastly different, the most efficient way to throw a punch is the same. The same goes for kicks, blocks, and grabs. The only difference in martial arts now is throws and holds. By "hold", I mean the ability to restrain a person's movement.

Sadly, I did not take unarmed combat as a child, so my martial arts is terrible. Oh, I can throw a pretty mean punch, but thats it. Thats my one skill. While the SIT does have a course on unarmed combat, first-year trainees don't start it until springtime. So the only proper guidance I've recieved on martial arts is from today.

The fight continues with what you might expect from two untrained people. It devolves into some form of wrestling-sparring hybrid. Mido Gimmel body slams into me, and I tumble backwards. He grins at me, and starts to speak.

"See? I'm a very good wrestler. I know how to use my weight and shift my centre of gravity."

I nod.

We continue with this strange wrestle-spar hybrid, until he lifts me up and throws me onto the floor.

"Its all about shifting your centre of gravity lower." Mido states, patting his stomach.

I nod. Thinking carefully how to improve. After some thought, I bitterly state my conclusion.

"I can't get my weight low enough to match."

"Why you-"

Ah, I guess he took that the wrong way.

Mido walks up to me and grabs my ankle. He yanks it up mid-air, so it sort of looks like we are about to participate in a wheelbarrow race. I try to kick his hands off my legs, but then a strong force jerks me to the side, and I start spinning. I spin faster and faster and my vision turns into a green-blue blur. My arms reach for the floor in an attempt to slow myself down, but to no avail.

Then the force on my ankles stops- although the horrible spinning motion continues- until I collide with something green and hard.

my mind goes fuzzy for a second as I hit the ground. It takes about ten seconds for my body to respond to the situation.

I stand up in a daze and look around.

Where did he go?

"Right here, Stewart!"

I blink several times, then look below me.

He really likes my last name, doesn't he?

I see Mido, fists raised.

I'm clearly quite lightheaded to not have noticed him there. Still in a daze, I chuckle before answering.

"sorry" I laugh again, "I didn't see you there."

That was the last thing I remember before waking up in SIT's infirmary.

[SYSTEM]

[Task : train until you drop ten times.]

[Progress: 7/10 -> 8/10]

[Rewards: small increase in stamina]

huh, did I say something I shouldn't have?