In the following few days, the massive military movement in Edenia put a slight sense of unease among the citizens of the state.
Buses after buses filled with soldiers were being sent to Edenia, the capital city, which was now filled with soldiers as they were being stationed in various hotels of the city and in any places where people could be accommodated for a short period of time.
The unrest continued to increase day by day until the president was compelled to make an announcement to address the rising anxiety of the citizens among whom the rumors were spreading that maybe they were preparing themselves for a war with Esparia and the soldiers were there to protect the city.
During the announcement, the president assured that the soldiers were here temporarily to prepare themselves to go for further training in a classified location. Although this slightly helped calm down the citizens, some of them still thought of the speech as a diversionary tactic to avoid causing a panic and as a result of this, people started panic buying things, in order to stockpile them in their houses in the worry that if a war were to break out there was a chance of the city would be imposed with a curfew.
However, by the fourth day, Sunday of the same week, the soldiers continued arriving in the city, their movements restarted with all of the buses carrying them and started heading to the same location: a small port.
This caused the people who were still worried to finally let out a sigh of relief as they finally were able to believe that the President’s announcement was not a diversionary tactic.
“Holy mother!” a soldier exclaimed in shock as he got off the bus at the port and witnessed more than fifteen ships waiting for them.
“Start moving and boarding the docked ship, we don’t have much time to waste!” shouted their commanding officer, forcing the dilly-dallying soldiers to start moving to the ships.
The moment the ship was filled, it undocked itself and started making its way to the island. Soon after, its place was immediately taken by a new one which started boarding the newly arrived soldiers.
….
Esparia, on the other hand, had interpreted Eden’s military’s this movement as an escalation or at least they showed it outside that was how they were perceiving it, as an escalation and responded by sending more soldiers to the border, despite the capital city which the soldiers were being sent to was more than hundreds of kilometers away from their nearest border with Esparia, it seemed like they were just looking for a justifiable reason to do such things and now that they had found one, they were not going to let it go to waste.
With the increase in number of soldiers on the border on the Esparia’s side, they also brought with them heavy military machinery, including tanks, artillery, and rocket launchers, as on the water side of the border, the number of military vessels increased, outnumbering whatever Eden had brought with them on the border, wanting to make sure that if a fight does happen, Eden doesn’t have any chance of winning the fight.
These movements did not bode well with Eden’s citizens who had most of their products’ prices increased due to the Esparia’s actions, blockading their products that would have normally been transported from Esparia’s ports, the citizens were about to get fed up with their actions but the only thing holding them back was their worry of not being able to win the war, if the fight really broke up between the two of them and hence, they started directing their anger by wanting to increase the power of their country.
And thanks to that, the number of people joining the military had increased exponentially for that period of time, showing the citizens’ enthusiasm for wanting their country to increase in power and not be bullied by their much smaller and only neighbor.
Adding on this, Nova doubled down the feeling of patriotism among the people, ordering the AI in Gaia OS to start pushing things that would make people feel patriotic and angry at Esparia, increasing the number of people joining the military even more, this caused Athena’s stoic expression to turn into a smile as she was in joy knowing that she was getting a new batch of people to torture and strengthen for her master or Father.
……
“Ptffffffff”
Fifty pods were simultaneously opened, releasing a slight puffing sound along with smoke as the massive handles were rising, revealing bodies that looked more like what a human would have been able to make if they had the capabilities of customizing their bodies.
Needles started coming out of their bodies as they were being retracted back inside the walls of the pods which was followed by the soldiers opening their eyes after a few minutes as they remained lying there for a few seconds before they were able to move themselves into a seating position.
As they raised their hands, they observed the changes that had taken place on their bodies which looked the same as they had become as a result of the excruciating training which they had faced in the VR world.
Realizing that they were finally released from that harrowing location and the brutal trainer who had made them sleep a total of only 35 hours in a whole month, which was immediately followed by endless battles with them being sent to different scenarios, fighting lengthier battles with more smarts enemies and the more they won, the more technologically advanced their enemies became, this had reached a point where even their advanced tech seemed inadequate due to how advanced their enemies had become, knocking away all of the confidence they had thanks to their advanced weapons, however, despite that, their enemy’s asses were continuously being kicked, earning themselves a losing streak that would make ISIS feel sorry for them.
The only difference being the time it took for the enemy to lose each battle continued to increase every time as they had started using tactics and other means to try to reduce the disadvantage they found themselves being against.
Getting off the pods and despite their legs touching the ground for the first time in a week, they felt surprisingly energetic as they remembered what Athena had said about their body when they were logged in the simulation; she had told them that their body training would be reflected into their real world counterpart.
When they turned around and saw row after row of pods being lined, it sent goosebumps all over their body as they saw all of the pods were releasing a green light except the ones in which they used to be were the only ones having its light red.
They felt goosebumps as they realized that all of the thousands of pods that they could see continued to go on almost endlessly and were filled with occupants, meaning that their General was now providing training to more than a few thousand people, giving all of them the training which exceeded any training that any of special forces of the any other country could receive without having to worry about any of them inuring or dying during the training, resulting in a great loss of investment.
“The only disadvantage is the time it takes to complete the training,” they thought to themselves, knowing that they had spent more than three months and two weeks inside these pods while they were receiving their training.