Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2035: Test Begins

A cockpit appeared around Ning, filled with controls and displays representing the Rank 1 Mecha he would be piloting. Ning leaned back, allowing his helmet to connect to a port set up on the back of the pilot seat. Information flowed through his helmet as the machine responded to his movements, translating the actions of his much smaller body into those of the five-meter mechanical frame.

<Preparation period: 2:00>

Ning began moving immediately.

He did not rush through the controls, nor did he rely entirely on the System to explain them. Instead, he tested each important function himself and paid attention to how the simulated machine responded.

He took several steps, changed direction, accelerated, and stopped abruptly to understand how much momentum the Mecha carried. He tested the turning limits of the torso separately from the legs, then checked how quickly the targeting system adjusted when he moved between distant points.

After that came the weapons.

Ning examined the available ammunition and tested the response of each firing system, making sure he knew how quickly the weapon could be raised, aimed, discharged, and returned to position.

Then he checked the fuel.

The amount was deliberately restrictive.

Every strong acceleration, major correction, and unnecessary burst of movement would reduce what he had available later, which meant the assessment rewarded efficiency just as much as raw reaction speed.

Ning smiled slightly.

He understood the machine much better now.

By the time the final seconds of preparation disappeared, he knew how much power he had available, how quickly the Mecha could move, how much ammunition he carried, and roughly how far he could push the controls before the machine stopped responding efficiently.

The timer reached zero.

<Rank 1 Test: Begin>

Ning placed his hands on the controls as the assessment started.

The simulation opened around Ning in an instant, replacing the quiet preparation space with a chaotic field of tumbling asteroids, shattered machine parts, broken hull sections, and smaller pieces of debris moving along different trajectories at different speeds.

A message appeared across his display.

<Primary Objective: Travel as far from the starting point as possible while maintaining combat effectiveness.>

Ning had expected something like that after watching the earlier attempts, so he did not waste any time once the assessment began.

The Rank 1 Mecha moved forward.

From the outside, what Ning was doing would have looked surprisingly simple, but there was considerably more happening in his mind than his movements suggested. He was not merely reacting to obstacles as they appeared in front of him. He was estimating their speed, direction, rotation, and relative distance, then calculating where each piece of debris would be by the time his Mecha reached that part of the field.

That allowed him to make corrections much earlier than the other cadets had.

Instead of waiting until an asteroid blocked his path and then burning fuel to dodge around it, Ning adjusted his movement long before the obstacle became a problem. A small change made several seconds in advance required far less effort than a sudden turn at close range, and because he was already thinking several movements ahead, most of those corrections barely looked like evasive maneuvers at all.

To the people watching from outside, Ning’s route almost appeared to be a straight line.

The asteroids simply kept missing him.

A large section of broken machinery passed beneath his feet while another chunk of metal spun through the space above his head, yet Ning only changed direction by a small amount and continued forward without slowing.

In just a minute or so, Ning had already traveled far enough for the first hostile contact to appear.

A mechanical figure emerged from behind a drifting asteroid, and Ning’s helmet immediately received the identifying radio pattern.

Hostile.

Mekharan.

Ning did not change course.

He raised the left arm of the Mecha, brought the weapon into line, and fired once.

A single bolt crossed the debris field.

It passed between two smaller asteroids, narrowly missed a rotating piece of wreckage, and struck the enemy directly in the shoulder, where several critical systems were concentrated.

The Mekharan jerked from the impact before its body failed.

Ning lowered the arm and continued forward.

There had been no burst of fire and no correction shot afterward. One attack had been enough.

The people watching the simulation grew noticeably quieter. Liam’s expression had changed as well.

Ning barely noticed any of it. He was already calculating the next section of the field.

The farther he traveled, the more complicated the debris patterns became. Several asteroids crossed one another’s paths, and pieces of broken machinery created smaller moving obstacles between them, but Ning continued making slight corrections long before any collision became possible.

His fuel consumption remained unusually low.

The effect became almost strange to watch.

Everyone else who had attempted the simulation had looked as though they were flying through a dangerous environment. They accelerated, stopped, turned sharply, or struggled to recover whenever something unexpected moved into their path.

Ning simply kept going.

A large asteroid drifted toward the route ahead of him, but he altered his heading several seconds before reaching it. By the time the rock crossed his original path, Ning was already somewhere else.

Another piece of debris passed behind him moments later.

From the outside, it looked less like Ning was maneuvering through the asteroid field and more like the asteroid field happened to be arranging itself around his route.

Then a second hostile appeared.

This time, the Mekharan had already noticed him.

Before Ning could bring his weapon fully into position, the enemy fired. The shot came directly toward the center of his Mecha.

Ning reacted without changing the machine’s overall direction.

He twisted the torso to one side while lifting an arm, narrowing the profile of the Mecha just enough for the attack to pass through the space where his chest had been a moment earlier.

The movement was small, but that was all he needed.

Before the Mekharan could fire again, Ning completed the turn and returned a single shot.