In the following medical examination, Ethan Brooks finally got to meet the female protagonist he had been hoping to see: the medical officer Lena, who shares the same birthday as China, and is also the founder of the Hunter School—the daughter of Hunter General Ross.

When he took off his clothes, Ethan Brooks's muscle definition was much more pronounced than that of the special forces soldiers who mainly trained for endurance, which made the medical officer Lena's eyes light up repeatedly.

After the examination, Instructor Croft began to assert his authority and assign groups.

Ethan Brooks was number six, Logan Wright was number five, William Harris was number seven, along with the number eight team leader and number thirteen, the Black man Jason Miller, forming the second group together.

The team leader originally looked down on the two Chinese members, but with Ethan Brooks joining, three out of five in the team were now Chinese, so he looked down on all three of them.

In the original plot, he requested that William Harris and Logan Wright be removed from his team. At this point, he still asked the instructor to remove the three Chinese members from his team, but unsurprisingly, his request was denied.

Chapter 5: Where Did the Sniper Come From

The next day, Ethan Brooks was still groggy from sleep when he suddenly smelled a strong, pungent odor and began to cough violently—the grueling training had begun.

Obstacle climbing, scaling net walls, crawling under barbed wire, climbing steel frames—countless drills quickly soaked his clothes with sweat, leading to severe exhaustion.

Thanks to his strong physique, Ethan Brooks completed many of the drills the fastest, but as time went on, he couldn't keep up. No matter how perfect his mastery of basic military skills was, it was ultimately just a cheat; he had never done this kind of training before, and his body simply wasn't used to exerting strength in this way. In this regard, he was far inferior to these real special forces soldiers.

It wasn't until the zipline and warzone crossing that Ethan Brooks's expression grew serious. This was the so-called "devil's road." He knew that the bullets and shells here were real, fully simulating a battlefield. If he was unlucky enough to get hit, he'd have to start over.

The basic military skills mastery included bullet-dodging techniques, but he always felt that luck played a bigger role in this.

Artillery thundered, fireworks shot into the sky accompanied by dust, and heavy machine gun bullets roared past. Even without swords and horses, the scent of the battlefield was even more intense than in ancient times.

When it was the second group's turn, Ethan Brooks charged ahead without hesitation, grabbed the zipline, and slid down, jumping into the muddy river, then pressed forward without stopping.

While advancing, he also had to shoot. At this point, his intermediate firearms mastery began to show its power. At this distance of several dozen meters, he could easily hit the targets, even more formidable than the two Chinese special forces soldiers with protagonist halos.

After the training, as expected, Instructor Croft, watching through binoculars, stopped and said to the record keeper beside him:

"Second group, Chinese trainees number five, six, and seven, ranked first."

The training didn't stop there; on the contrary, the real physical drain was yet to come, including dangerous rock climbing, extremely exhausting sand crawling—many special forces soldiers were so tired they collapsed.

Ethan Brooks secretly felt glad that he had allocated some physical attribute points to stamina; otherwise, with only speed and strength, the stamina boost wouldn't be enough, and he probably wouldn't even be able to stand now.

Some parts of the original plot couldn't be changed: Logan Wright had trouble moving because his boots were too big, William Harris stayed with him and fell behind, and Ethan Brooks stuck close to them, sharing weal and woe.

All three ended up in the last five. Not only did they lose the right to eat, but they also had to run five kilometers along the beach. Two special forces soldiers quit on the spot out of dissatisfaction.

It was almost the same as the original plot. Logan Wright tried to explain and defend Ethan Brooks and William Harris, but was rejected.

Number forty-one, a foreign special forces soldier, went to ring the black bell that symbolized shame and giving up. Ethan Brooks patted William Harris and Logan Wright on the shoulders: "Don't look, let's go. Let's see what the South American sea looks like."

When they returned, ceremonial music played, and a national flag was slowly lowered. Only then did the special forces soldiers who had chosen to quit realize the weight of honor, hugging the flag and crying loudly.

William Harris's protagonist syndrome flared up again. Deeply moved, he said earnestly to Ethan Brooks and Logan Wright, "Ethan Brooks, Logan, for our national flag, we must fight."

That night, there was still a brutal physical challenge: a group of people had to stand on a wall more than two meters high while being blasted by high-pressure water cannons. The special forces soldiers had to stand their ground with their own strength; anyone knocked down would definitely get hurt.

Ethan Brooks was stronger, standing between William Harris and Logan Wright. Whenever they were about to fall, he gritted his teeth and grabbed them.

After a whole day, his muscles ached to the extreme, his feet were white from blisters, and especially after such grueling training, he hadn't even had a single corn cake for dinner. Now he was starving and miserable.

Ethan Brooks just hoped to rest early, because he had packed plenty of high-calorie food in his portable space, enough to handle all of this.

That night, he quietly handed Logan Wright and William Harris a Snickers bar each, avoiding the original plot where Logan Wright was falsely accused after accepting a corn cake from Ross. He then collected the Snickers wrappers from William Harris and Logan Wright, since the 2015 production date on them definitely couldn't be exposed.