With what felt like a literal ton being lifted off his chest, Bill genuinely smiled for the first time in a while as he continued to slowly regain his motor functions.

The heavy and tense air around the two friends had finally dissipated and they finally acknowledged their surroundings as Professor Curtis and the Head nurse rushed in to stabilize the devices and make sure Bill didn’t suffer from additional damage from Mako’s slap.

Thankfully, Bill was okay with the monitor only recording his elevated heartbeat and hormone levels which shouldn’t have been elevated this early after just having surgery.

“That was quite reckless from you, young man.” The head nurse scolded Mako for his physical outburst and was a bit surprised to see Bill fine and recovering so quickly.

After performing her checks all over again and scolding Mako plenty, the head nurse took her leave, leaving the three friends alone in the recovery room alongside Professor Curtis.

“The head nurse has done everything that she could do and thankfully none of your vital organs or core was damaged too severely. The healing pills being injected into your body will start to repair the physical damage right away and you should be able to make a full physical recovery within 1-2 weeks.” Professor Curtis explained.

“It’s going to be close, but I think you will be able to recover just in time for your first exam,” He added.

Bill, Mako, and Erin were all smiling and happy after learning that Bill would be able to recover in such a short amount of time; however, they all paused and slowly turned toward Professor Curtis after he said his last sentence.

“First Exam…? What are you talking about, sir?” Erin asked with confusion plastered all over her face.

“Hmmm? You guys don’t know yet?” Professor Curtis asked with a look of surprise to which both Mako and Erin shook their heads while Bill remained still as he still couldn’t move much besides his face.

“Well… your homeroom teachers should have already told you guys, or maybe I just got the dates mixed up again… *Arrrhh!*, it doesn’t matter, You guys would get this information in a couple of days anyways so I’ll just let you guys know about it now.” The Professor said as he massaged his forehead after realizing he messed up his dates again.

All attention was now on Professor Curtis as Erin, Bill, and Mako paid close attention to his next words.

“The first military semester is broken down into two parts, the first three months of your first semester here is what we call the welcoming period. Up until this point, all the cadets were not subjected to any serious or intense training and were mostly there to collect data on their abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.” The professor began to explain.

“After all the data has been collected, we give all the cadets a special exam which will determine their place in the military school for the remaining year.” He added.

“Sir, what kind of an exam is this?” Mako asked.

“The exam is pretty much an expansion of your recruitment test. The recruitment test was designed to test every aspect of you, your skills, your abilities, your leadership, etc. However, you didn’t have any goal other than to simply survive.” The professor explained.

“This time you will be transported to an undiscovered planet and you will be given a list of missions that you will have to complete in a certain amount of time.”

Faces of surprise and shock mixed with a hint of excitement could be seen on everybody as they instantly had a hundred questions they wanted to ask.

What kind of planet will they be going to? How far away would this planet be? What kind of tasks would the school assign them?

Rather than being upset or annoyed at the fact he would have to go through a similar experience like the recruitment test, Mako was actually excited at the prospect.

He really didn’t have a chance to fully test out the fruits of his training yet and wanted to see the difference between now and when he took the recruitment test.

He also didn’t receive that many quests lately so his level progression was quite slow and now that he would face new challenges in a brand new environment, he was bound to get a couple of decent quests with juicy rewards.

The professor tried to calm down Mako and Erin who were firing questions at him non-stop all the while Bill just calmly smiled, as he didn’t have the energy to keep up with his friends, but was glad to feel a unique feeling of warmth while being surrounded by his friends.

“Your homeroom teachers will give you guys all the tiny details so I will just tell you guys the general idea…” Professor Curtis said.

“Every year, three undiscovered planets that don’t host any intelligent life are selected as the grounds for your exam. Each of these planets varies in terms of difficulty as the low-tier planet is considered the easiest with having a suitable environment and beasts no higher than the high-tier.”

“Then there are the medium tier planets which is considered a step up from the low tiers as they have an unfavorable environment and have chances of harboring up to advanced tier beasts.”

“And lastly… there are the high tier planets which have a very harsh environment and harbor many different kinds of advanced tier beasts with a very rare chance of a higher tier beast also living on the planet.”

“The planet tiers are grouped in accordance to the student class as the low-tier planets are for the basic class students who don’t have much experience or strength, the medium tier are for the advanced class and similarly, the high tier planets are for the special class students.”

“However, the grouping is not entirely dependent on a student’s class. There are some basic tier students who are brimming with talent but due to unfortunate circumstances are placed in the basic tier, and the same holds true for advanced tier students.”

“And similarly there are some students in the special and advanced classes that due to some very fortunate circumstances are placed in their respective classes but they didn’t deserve it nor did they work hard for it.”

“In order to make the test fair and make sure there are no casualties, we use the data that we have collected on all the students in these past 3 months to identify their strength and power level and place them on the correct planet accordingly.”

“Since you guys were part of Sable’s task force and ex-special class cadets, There is a very good chance they will pair you guys up with the other special class cadets for the mission on the high tier undiscovered planet.”

“There are different reward systems in place for the cadets who successfully complete all of their missions with respect to which planet they had been sent to but I don’t have much information on what kind of rewards would be offered.

“However, I do know that the results of the students’ performances could also lead to them getting a promotion into the next class if they were able to do a great enough job.”

Mako and Erin were ecstatic after they had heard the details of their coming exam. They had all been working so hard and finally would be able to put their strength to the test and earn back their special class privileges.

However, the memories of the recruitment test were still fresh on their minds and it seemed like there was just one more question that all of them had on their minds.

What about the safety of the students? Since they would be venturing into the unknowns of a whole different planet, there were so many unknowns that could affect their mission and it would be a lot more dangerous for them to do this mission unsupervised.

Considering that during the recruitment test, they were only supervised by low-level officers, they didn’t feel comfortable relying on those types of supervisors again, especially on a whole

different planet.

Professor Curtis was quite surprised to see that Mako and Erin had this concern as he had

never seen a cadet concerned with this kind of issue before.

He was honestly very impressed with all of them, he had been from the very start, and they somehow keep on impressing him on every turn.

“These kids are definitely something else,’ Professor Curtis said to himself with a tiny smile. He assured them that they didn’t have to worry about that this time as the homeroom teachers would be moving alongside their class, keeping watch over all the different groups within their class while the professors and other teachers will all supervised a sector of the planet to make sure no cadet is critically injured.

“Unlike the low-level officers at the recruitment test who intervene at their own discretion, often without regard for whether the cadet has the situation under control and frequently arriving too early or too late, the homeroom teachers and the supervising professor possess comprehensive data on every cadet. They know precisely when a cadet is in danger and will only step in when absolutely necessary-meaning only when a cadet’s life is at risk.” The professor explained.

Mako and Erin both let out a small sigh of relief after hearing the professor’s explanation; however, his next sentence left chills down their spines.

“However, if they do intervene, it signifies that you have failed the exam…”