People were sitting on other tables. They seemed to not pay us any mind. For the most part, the boys did not look at them. After eating, we were all told by the voice to report to the training hall. I wondered what that would look like. We got in the lines again and walked over. We were told that since we were new candidates for the Rays of Osolario, a brutal warrior band that worshipped the sun god, we would be trained evaluated for a week. After that, a group of 48 of us would become part of the group in an upcoming ceremony. The other two would be made human sacrifices. It seemed everyone was into this. All of them saluted in unison. No one thinks they are going to be the ultimate loser after all. The first 3 days would be focused on combat. We would randomly be assigned 5 opponents and fight them. I was apparently not going up for a fight anytime soon. I sat with some others and watched the fights. After a couple of the fights, the victor stretched and cracked his back. His shirt lifted and one of the boys pointed. "His crown!" he exclaimed. There was one on the right side of back.
Just above his hip bone was a 3-pointed crown. It was purple. "What about it?" I asked. He just looked incredulously at me. "It's actually activating! His power's growing. I wish it was me. My crown isn't purple, is it?" he said, turning his back to me. Lowering the neck of his shirt, he revealed he had a similar crown mark on the upper left side of his back. It was just black. That meant that I was going to search it up in the menu. My subrace was a type of humanity that adapted to draw our energy to the sun. Using photosynthesis supplemented the energy that we needed. That was why we could live on a single protein bar and piece of fruit a day. It also explained all of the wild hair colors and length of our hair. The crown went from black to violet. From there it went to red and then white. Once enough kinetic energy through combat was achieved, they could blast a solar beam from their bodies. It all depended on the color of the crown. Violet was the weakest beam and white was the strongest. You also could sustain it for longer. I wondered where mine was. I would have to look for it later.
Even with my bonuses, I was not the best one in combat. On the first day, I won 3 fights out of 5. That was the sidearm battle portion. The guy who showed me his back was named Haroon Neyoun. He had a puffy pink ponytail and navy blue eyes. Since we were sitting together and pointing things out, we got pretty close. He was a very touchy feely guy. He wrapped his arms around me and rocked me back and forth when taken by certain emotions. I did not mind. He won only 2 fights. "Don't worry. You got this." I told him. Haroon sheepishly said "I like talking with my fists more. I'll catch up." I nodded and we went off together to the showers. Now naked, I saw my crown was on my outer thigh. It felt really good to have the cool water flow down my body after all that running around. After that, we were free to do what we wanted. I won 4 out of 5 on the second day of the trials. We did a hand-to-hand combat day. Haroon got 4 wins as well. The next day was blade combat. Haroon and I got pitted against each other. I let him win because I wanted him to do well. He had 4 wins to my 3 wins.
The fourth day was on a large shooting range. Rifles was something that I specked into. I got 83.56% accuracy rating. 73.84% was Haroon's accuracy rating. Since we were both done early, we decided to go to the showers. He was happy with our standings. We were doing well, so we were in the upper mid positions of the packs. There were already people in the locker room area. It seemed like they were talking together about something from the way they were hunched together and whispering about something. Haroon knew them all and called out to them. Their names were Orin Maddox, Michee Meyers, Maison Wover. They immediately jumped apart. Whatever the group was talking about, it was something they did not want us to know about. It made me curious. "What were you guys talking about?" I asked. "It's nothing." Michee said. Orin and Maison just nodded their heads furiously. It made me suspicious. Haroon just gave them a look over before pulling me towards the showers. They looked relieved in their gray boxer briefs. "C'mon! I'm sweaty." he whined. I just went with him.
