"All students waiting for the strategic assessment to start, line up here!" A voice boomed out through the surroundings.
There was no need for things like microphones and loudspeakers in the university, as everyone there was an awakened and could infuse energy into their voice to increase its volume drastically.
For some, they could even use this as a method of attack, using soundwaves.
Alex, hearing this announcement, naturally hurried his steps and arrived at the assessment venue within a few seconds.
The distance between his dorm and the venue was short after all, only a few kilometres, which for a D tier awakened like Alex was nothing short of a light walk.
'Fuck, I haven't felt this nervous since I was first whisked away to the Primordial Expanse!'
Alex was feeling the brunt of all of his emotions as he stood in line as the students slowly filtered into the large building that housed the virtual reality pods.
His goal was to be first place on the first year rankings right from the start.
And considering his result from the Combat assessment, his only chance of this even happening was the last assessment, the Strategic assessment.
But Alex had little confidence in this one.
All of these other students looked calm and collected as they filtered in, but that was because they came from privileged backgrounds and had training and education in strategic planning during their middle school and high school days.
Whereas Alex, as one of the few students who came to this place from a very underprivileged background, had no such education.
"Mira!"
Coincidentally, Alex spotted Mira joining the queue near the back, and she spotted him as well.
Having seen her boyfriend, a word which she was still too embarrassed to say out loud, Mira moved through the thousands long line and cut in right next to Alex.
Normally, students as prideful and arrogant as these would never have let someone just cut through the thousands long queue like that.
The attendant standing at the door asked in a neutral tone.
Alex scanned his communicator on the attendant's device, as in this day and age everything was digital, including his Student ID, even his federal ID as well.
Mira did the same, and they were both let through immediately after.
"Go and find an empty pod, and the AI will explain everything to you when you load in."
Another attendant greeted them in front of a bunch of long lines of futuristic looking pods that seemed to stretch infinitely.
Each one of these pods were Virtual Reality pods, created to simulate a 100% realistic environment, replicating every sense and even being upgraded to take into account Awakened's abilities when they first started appearing in the federation and the first calamities caused by the integration of the Primordial Expanse had passed.
Developed shortly after the eve of the new space age started, there was almost immediately a craze surrounding the Full dive Virtual Reality systems as all of the old and young gamers all flocked towards their nearest retailer to place an order on them.
There were even a few cases where some people had their own 'VRMMO Webnovel' stories happen to them, going from a poor person from the slums to a famous, rich pro gamer thanks to their come up in the biggest games of the time.
But back to the present, the craze around Virtual Reality had died down a little after hundreds of years had passed and people had gotten used to its existence.
The market for them was still huge, but their use in training was even bigger.
Alex exchanged his goodbyes with Mira and went to the nearest empty pod he could find, which required quite the walk as the ones near the entrance were all already occupied.
He had to walk for over 300 metres before he found an empty one.
Following the instructions of the attendant, he lay down in the pod and allowed the seat to form perfectly around his body to enable the most optimal comfort during his time in the Virtual test.
He was going to be sitting in the exact same position for 24 hours straight after all, the least they could do was make it comfortable for him.
"Initiating test..."
The moment the pod closed, the AI voice operating the simulation spoke, and attached a helmet-like device over Alex's head, and Alex's consciousness gradually drifted away from his physical body...