Two days later…
“Man, she is not giving us enough time to rest,” complained Jeremiyah as he sat down to use the little ten minutes of rest that was given to his team as a reward for completing their last course of exercises.
For the past month, Athena had done nothing other than making them train from one exercise to another. And with the training getting progressively difficult and longer with each new exercise, they were always being forced to always break the new limits that they had managed to raise due to their previous exercise.
During that period, they were only given one hour of rest every day and additional rest time was granted if they could impress Athena by completing a set of tasks faster than the time she had tasked them with. The moment they realized that they could gain more rest time by working harder, it resulted in them always working harder than what Athena expected.
[One last exercise and if you do it well I will give you a whole day of rest!] Athena announced as the soldiers rested, resulting in them rising from their places, full of enthusiasm while starting to do their last exercise of the month before they get one day of well-deserved rest.
…..
A few hours later…
The soldiers could be seen sleeping in the barracks without any worry for the world since it was the first long sleep they had after the past month and these soldiers planned to use it to its fullest, however, Athena seemed to have different plans for them.
“BOOOOOOOM” A shell exploded near the barracks, jolting the soldiers immediately awake. Without asking any questions, they rushed to the weapon’s rack and retrieved their weapons for the first time, since they had assimilated the knowledge of these weapons into their brains a month ago.
Two soldiers picked up the military headgear and immediately put it on, powering it right after so that it could immediately gather the information in their vicinity. The data indicated that there was no one within a three-kilometer radius around them, giving them some relief, however, that relief only stayed for a short time before their bodies immediately tensed up as the headgear warned them of a shell which had entered the 6 km bubble around them. Moments later, the base again, sending debris of the shattered walls flying towards them.
While one of the soldiers was keeping an eye out for any more incoming enemies and warning his comrades if a new shell was incoming them, they weren’t dilly-dallying, as they were wearing their gears and when one of them was done with gearing up, he patted the first soldier on the shoulder, taking his place as the onlooker, allowing for him to go and gear himself up.
Two minutes later, all the soldiers were now completely geared up, looking intimidating as their eyes reflected the thrill and the pent-up frustration in them, which they planned to vent on their enemies.
When the tenth shell struck the building, their headgear had gathered enough data to pinpoint where the enemy’s location was and with enough accuracy, the headgear started to give them a rough direction to reach their enemy.
Dividing themselves into five teams of ten, each team chose its own leader and started heading in different directions. By doing so, they intended to expand their bubble of information, since they were on their own and had no headquarters to provide them with any further guidance, leaving them to rely on themselves.
Using their headgear’s instant communication, which combined all the computing powers of the fifty headgears, making them act as one computer to increase the commuting power of the team, the teams started to move, and the map of their surroundings was continuously being updated continuously whenever they went.
Among the five teams, the most vigilant one was heading into the direction through which the artillery had been coming from. After walking for about twenty kilometers, their headgear finally started revealing them a heavily guarded enemy base.
With the rest of the teams not finding anything notable during their twenty kilometer walks they decided to regroup with their fellow soldiers before they made their move and launched their attack on the base.
An hour later, they finally recollected themselves and came up with the plan which wasn’t difficult at all since they were able to see everything that was in the enemy base, allowing them to have a whole map of the base including the position of the people within it. And after forming a relatively easy plan, they started executing their moves.
Using the advantages of their weapons having a longer standoff distance to their favor, they initiated their attack while they were still three kilometers away from the base. One by one, the soldiers inside the base started accidentally dying with the assistance of a metal object which entered their bodies, which was of course, the strategic elimination carried out by the Ares members.
It took the personnel on the base more than ten minutes before they could realize that their numbers had been dwindling by a great extent since the Ares members prioritized taking out the enemies that were in places which wouldn’t raise too much attention.
With the realization that the alarm had been triggered, the enemy soldiers from the base tried to return fire, but they were not sure where the killers of their comrades were. With some of the soldiers in the base panicking, they started firing randomly in hopes that they would force the enemies to reveal themselves, however, the Ares members who were positioned three kilometers away, other than simply observing, did nothing and started picking off the panicking soldiers. After killing a few more casualties, due to some smart thinker analyzing how the killed soldiers fell and knowing the general direction of where the bullets came from the enemy soldiers finally discovered Ares soldiers’ direction was finally discovered.
This massacre continued, with the soldiers in the base desperately trying to locate where their attackers were as the Ares members flawlessly executed their plan, reducing the number of their enemies until only the commander of the base was the one who remained, which was also the result of their deliberate actions before they started heading to the enemy base, walking and capturing the commander.
[Congratulations] Athena appeared, causing the still tense soldiers to release a sigh of relief as they understood that with her appearance their test was finally over, however, wasting no time, they immediately lined up and saluted her.
Athena smiled and returned the salute before she announced [Now that level one has been passed, let’s increase the difficulty] after which she teleported them away.
When the Ares soldiers opened their eyes, they found themselves in a military cargo plane that was taking them to an undisclosed location.
The only thing that had changed on them was the color of the gear they were wearing, indicating that this mission was going to take place at night.