"My rank is currently under maintenance!" I shouted back at her loudly.

"Under maintenance? Pfffftt!!" Olivia Summers snickered loudly.

"He's ranked extremely low, way above 28k." Roland Hu beamed at the girls.

"Exactly. There is no way I am ranked so low after winning the Grand Melee. My rank is definitely wrong, and thus it is officially under maintenance until further notice! No one is to mention my rank until it is fixed!" I declared.

It would be extremely worrying for the country if my pathetic declaration actually stopped the kids from teasing and laughing at me about my rank.

Thankfully for the country, and unfortunately for me, they didn't give a crap about what I had to say and continued to tease me mercilessly.

I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say that I had to live as "that low ranking weakling" for the next few weeks.

The remainder of the day passed by rather uneventfully.

In fact, the remainder of the week passed by that way.

By the end of the week, I had gone through all the classes at least once, and I had to say that being in school was not as bad as I originally had expected.

The theory classes were all useful classes, and the practical classes were all interesting and eye opening.

As a first grader, I had to take only two theory classes called Basic Physics and Basic Biology which taught us how mechas and our bodies work.historical

They were prerequisites to learning essential intermediate classes called Mechatronics and First Aid.

Apart from those two theory classes, the remaining classes were all experiential learning classes, aka practical lessons.

Physical Fitness, Personal Combat, Mecha Movement and Teamwork.

The practical lessons were all twice a week, and the theory lessons were only once a week. Each lesson took up the entire chunk of time before and after lunch aka Morning Class or Afternoon Class.

The lessons weren't very advanced, but all of them were extremely important for me and the strengthening of my basics.

Those few weeks solidified all of our mindsets as mecha pilots, and gave us exactly what we needed to succeed in the long run.

Mecha Movement classes were basically training us to execute all sorts of movements either alone or in teams, and always across extremely dangerous and difficult terrain.

Not only did we have to be extremely precise with our mechas, we needed to do so in the correct timing and the correct manner.

It was extremely challenging for the kids, even for the Royals.

For Divines such as me, and especially me, it was much easier.

I remember one particularly difficult session sometime in the second week or so.

We had finished practicing with standard practice mechas the week before, and did rather well by our standards.

Apparently the teachers felt the same way, and decided to raise the difficulty by a notch. Or a few notches.

The entire batch was brought to an ancient battleground somewhere deep within the Chinese Federation early one morning, and there we found five thousand mechas in varying states of disrepair.

In fact, disrepair was a very mild word to describe those mechas. Five thousand atrocious mechas looking like a mecha junkyard come to life stood before us.

There were absolutely no mecha which was intact, and none that sported two limbs belonging to the same original mecha.

It was a hodge podge of mecha parts come together in a frankenstein-like festival!

"What the hell? Are we supposed to pilot those pieces of junk?" Jack Yang muttered loudly as our massive transport ship landed and the gate opened to reveal the five thousand mechas in all of their inglorious state.

"Junk? I've seen junk and they look like brand new Soaring Dragon mechas compared to these pieces of crap!" Victor Long grumbled.

"No you haven't seen junk. And they definitely didn't look like brand new mechas, much less Soaring Dragon ones." I rolled my eyes at that pampered little punk born with a diamond spoon.

"Look on the bright side. At least today's lesson won't be as boringly easy as last week's." Elise Wang said lazily as she stifled a yawn.

"Yes, that's right!" Gerald Long added, eager to agree with her. That poor little Long boy had somehow managed to get himself to "fall in love" with Elise Wang and had spent the past few days either following her around or getting yelled at by Victor Long.

Elise Wang was by no means a manipulative b***h like so many budding politicians who liked to play with boys' hearts, but she was also a little girl who just had her first fan, so she did nothing to push him away, and merely enjoyed his attentions.

Of course she occassionally allowed him to carry her stuff, buy her cute little things such as diamond studded dresses and all, but that's just normal... Right?

Right??

Anyway, we all trooped out of the massive transport apprehensively and quietly entered the mechas randomly, getting into the ones that we felt he had confidence in handling.

There was no need to bother staying together as the instructors usually formed groups consisting of random students.

They liked to put us among new people each lesson so that we would be constantly forced to deal with different kinds of team mates and not create comfort zones into which we could fall.

I found myself in a small, humanoid mecha with a pair of raptor legs, a drill as a left hand, and a three fingered hand on the right.

It also had a huge third arm protruding out of its back that hung over its head like a strange plant giving it cover from the sun.

That third arm looked extremely out of place, and felt like the mecha designer wanted to still give the mecha two arms which still had fingers, but was unwilling to sacrifice the drill on its left arm.

I powered up the mecha and allowed my powerful resonance to wash over the mecha and study it in a level of detail that not even its creator probably had.

Instantly, I realized that despite its ridiculous look, the mecha was actually more powerful and more ferocious than most of the blue mechas in the Red Dragon Gang!

The mecha designer that made the strange mecha must be a genius!

"Alright! Are you all ready? If you're ready, take a good look at the battlefield in front of you. Today's task is very simple. Get to the other end of the battlefield!

In!

One!

Piece!" The instructor shouted.