Chapter 307: Ranking Gravitas

———Orrel———

<2: 02 pm>

“I’m surprised you went out to do that today of all days.” Malk said to Useph.

“It wasn’t that taxing, honestly. Mostly a bunch of grunts and a few stronger grunts.” Useph said, sounding quite bored recounting the event. “To say my body was damaged would be quite insulting, you know?”

“Yeah yeah, like that’ll tell us anything.” Qyunda remarked. I don’t think he looked hurt even when he came back. At most is some dust and blood on his clothes that were washed off quickly. Of course he would’ve still been healed the moment he came back anyway, but it can’t completely heal everything. “I thought you said it was a high grade mission? What was it again?”

“It said A rank.” Useph answered.

“Pfft. What? Obviously something of that rank wouldn’t cause a problem.” Gregori said, clearly mocking him. “If the criteria is the same as when assessing danger level, then we are all overqualified for it.”

“Well excuse me! That was the highest rank mission any of us had found so far, right!?” Useph argued. “All anyone had found were a bunch of missions against cannon fodder. Even people in other classes rarely ever found even a B rank mission.”

“Not surprising. There isn’t a large-scale conflict happening that really needs our intervention. I believe we have checked a few times that we can handle up to AA missions solo and AA+ as a duo. Emmie can probably go up to AAA rank. Anything from AA rank can be considered apocalyptic so… yeah.” I explained in a bit more detail.

“...When you put it like that, then it’s probably a good idea it never went past A rank.” Malk remarked. “...Wait. Isn’t AAA rank considered a national threat? When did Emmie get that far?”

“It’s just a hypothetical. Besides, we don’t even know for sure if the ranking of the mission accurately reflects the actual dangers of the opponent or the crisis.” I elaborated.

“Alright you little scoundrels." Rico’s voice rang out as it looked like the class was actually about to begin. “I don’t feel like doing any teaching today, you guys are growing at a stable pace anyway, so I’m going to try out a new function here.”

She messes around with the school tablet and a chamber rises out of the ground. What is this?

“You can come check it yourself or sit your ass down. I want to slack off today and we have to introduce this one day or the other.” Rico said before walking away and sitting in the corner of the room.

I’m quite curious as to what the chamber is for. Probably something either very technologically or magically advanced. This place is simply too advanced in both directions for any reasonable guesses to make sense.

Let me go check the control panel, that should give me enough information to tell what it’s for… Hmm… There seems to be a panel both inside and outside the chamber… It’s a gravity chamber!

“Now this looks like a good challenge!” Qyunda said as she and Malk walked inside. “So how do we start this baby up?”

“Looks like the panel on the outside is for someone to open the chamber in case the people inside are incapacitated. The panel in the chamber should be able to start things up.” I said to the two of them while everyone else calmly observed from the outside. “Hmm… Even two times Earth’s gravity can be taxing on the body, we don’t quite know how well our strength would’ve offset the harsh environment.”

“And we’re going to find that out now!” Qyunda boldly declared. “We need something way harsher than those noob missions to really push ourselves. Even dungeons feel more like a chore than an actual challenge.”

“A marathon of any kind is still a challenge. It doesn’t have to actually risk your life.” Gregori argues while the two of them are inside and meddle with the control panel.

“Whatever dude! Let’s get this started already!” Malk said before he pressed something and the door into the chamber closed up and the light bulbs inside glowed red.

Their posture suddenly shifted as they began adjusting to the new environment. They don’t seem that uncomfortable at the moment with three times gravity. They couldn’t really be said to be struggling at the moment.

“Don’t people shrink from staying in a high gravity environment?” Jeff asked.

“If they have been in one for a long time, but even if they stay in there for the entire class it wouldn’t have any effect.” Gregori answered while everyone else observed their movement. Walking and running inside the chamber to see how well they can power through. It honestly doesn't look like they even registered that they’re in a different environment.

Meanwhile Emmie seems uninterested in the whole affair and is sparring with Jennla using martial arts. There are also other duos fighting and sparring that don't involve this massive gravity chamber. Jass and Useph fighting with their swords or Sixson and Nicks going at each other. Since it’s basically free time not everyone bothers to focus on this gravity chamber.

Malk walked over to the panel and then increased the gravity to ten times, and they almost fell to the ground due to the sudden and harsh shift in gravity.

“Even five times can knock someone out easily, if I remember correctly.” Jeff said while also watching things unfold. I’m surprised he’s being introspective about this. Perhaps it’s because it’s another training avenue.

“Both of them do adjust pretty quickly, standing tall and showing no sign of slowing down as they move their bodies.” I pointed out as they routinely check their bodies, adjusting the amount of power needed to withstand the much harsher gravity and making sure nothing could trip them up. They began exercising and pushing their bodies more and more in this harsh condition, no doubt burning through their mana pool at a pace only a truly dangerous battle would’ve matched. It does sound like a pretty good exercise routine, but I’m sure being subjected to this kind of gravity probably damages your body quite a bit, so there needs to be something to heal you as well, or you might as well gain nothing.

“Oh! They’re actually fighting each other like that.” Jeff said while looking at the two fighting it out, their movements are slower than usual but considering the environment they’re in that’s a given. Both of them are probably trying to be conservative with their power output so they don’t accidentally run out of fuel needed to maintain their stance in this harsh environment. “Man, too bad there’s only one chamber right now.”

“Even if there’s more than one, it would’ve taken too much space for the others to get their practice in.” I pointed out. Clearly some people don’t want to use this interesting if risky tool just yet, letting these two hotheads duke it out and be their guinea pig before they try anything. If we know the upper limit of these two then the rest of us can work off it and see which gravity setting would’ve been good for each of us.

“...By the way, is the ranking about again? I heard about it a few times.” Jeff asked while us slackers observed the two hard workers duking it out.

“It’s a power ranking system that is a bit different from the power reading this class has us partake in occasionally.” I began explaining. “The lowest ranking is K, but the only rankings we should care about are F and up. Each rank also has a plus in between each rank, mainly to show that it’s the cream of the crop of that specific rank or on the edge of being classified as the above rank. It’s a somewhat loose system mainly so we can know how dangerous something can potentially be. F is a baseline human, for example. Meanwhile A rank is something that could level a city, and not a small one either. One thing of note is that the gap between each rank increases the higher you go, with F and E rank having a small gap while A and AA having a much larger gap.”

“I’m surprised they never did a lecture on that.” Jeff remarked.

“Probably because it’s not too important for us to know about, it’s not as if there’s other establishments using the same system.” Gregori chimed in. “What’s the point in talking about a system like that? It’s literally only useful for missions, and we don’t even know for certain if it’s the exact same ranking criteria or not. Last I checked Useph wasn’t fighting known city-busters.”

“But here’s the thing, it could just simply be talking about the overall scale, calculating everyone involved instead of just the strongest enemy in the room.” I gave my hypothesis. “Of course, that’s hard to tell since A rank enemies are way beyond us at this point, so Useph wasn’t going to struggle either way.”

“...So we need someone not in our class willing to be a guinea pig, and a rare A rank mission that probably only comes up once a week if we’re being optimistic. Also, a good deal of students are already beyond A rank anyway. Isn’t that a bit too hard of a requisite?" Gregori said with a somewhat mocking tone. “Anyone so eager to punch above their supposed weight class is probably stronger than that by now.”

“Perhaps that is true, but I don’t think persuading is impossible, and it’s not as if there isn’t a failsafe in place to prevent the students from getting killed or even kidnapped. The plan of those villains never would’ve worked.” I argued. I think there are people who can come to that conclusion and take solace in it. “Besides, we could simply go with them as an overseer, that way we can complete the mission for them if things do go south.”

“...I still don’t think that’s something most people would agree with, but I guess the odds are a bit higher than I personally thought.” He partially conceded. “I don’t think either of us has the charisma for it, if we’re being realistic.”

“Perhaps not… Still, this is a somewhat trivial topic, so neither of us are in a rush to test it out anyway.” I said, just to make it clear that there isn’t a strong incentive to do this at the moment. It’s possible we might never go through with it as well.

“Feels like going through extra hoops for something we could’ve asked.” Jeff remarked with his eyes glued to the scene of Malk and Qyunda continuing to fight. They are still going at it with punches and kicks, as Qyunda seems to have left her twin blades behind for this experiment. “Kinda looks like ten times is still pretty manageable for them, so maybe this is like a baseline for all of us?”

“Possibly, none of us should be that far behind those two to worry about ten times Earth’s gravity.” Gregori replied. “It’s a new and interesting training method that we just have access to, so this will take a while to fully comprehend.”

“Well I hope that comes quickly. You think these gravity chambers will open up more soon?” Jeff asked.

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Why don’t you go ask Rico about it? Ask her about mission rankings while we’re at it.” Gregori said while asking Jeff to go on a suicide mission.

“Real funny, dude.” Jeff sarcastically replied.

“Do you think they’ll need any help?” Seni suddenly asked as she approached the chamber.

“You mean for healing? It wouldn't hurt, and it's good practice for you as well.” I said while the four of us watched the fight getting more and more intense with each passing seconds.

Stray punches and kicks hitting the transparent wall of the chamber doesn’t seem to budge it at all as the two keep fighting inside, their expressions turning a bit grim as it progresses, unlike the others outside the chamber taking things at a leisurely pace.

They began to shamble around and their speed noticeably dropped as minutes passed, actually looking quite tired and seemed to come to a silent agreement as they made their way to the center of the room while the control panel was at.

The light in the chamber ceased and the two of them collapsed to the ground in relief, having pressed a button that stopped the machine from amplifying the gravity for even a second longer. The door opened up and the two got back up and quickly got out of the chamber.

“I call dibs!” Jeff said before running inside before anyone could say anything.