Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2037: A Risky Move

There would be a penalty for leaving a hostile unit behind, but it would be relatively small compared to the punishment for killing a friendly pilot. Most cadets who encountered this part of the simulation made exactly that choice.

Ning wasn’t most cadets.

He looked at the two machines again, recognizing something integral about their situation that could help him isolate their signals.

"They’re rotating around a common point."

Instead of moving away, he changed course and headed toward the fight.

Outside the simulation, several students immediately reacted.

"What is he doing?"

"He should leave them."

"If he guesses wrong, he’ll lose more points than he gets for killing the Mekharan."

Lorna did not say anything. She was watching Ning’s movement more carefully.

Rather than trying to force the identification system to solve the problem from his current position, Ning moved until his own trajectory began matching the rotation of the two machines.

The overlapping signals started separating.

By aligning himself with their movement, Ning reduced the relative change in position between himself and the two targets, giving the radio system more time to isolate each transmission before the machines crossed one another again.

One signal became clearer.

Human.

That meant the other one was the enemy.

Ning waited for the rotation to bring the Mekharan into view. For barely an instant, the hostile was exposed without the human Mecha directly behind it.

Ning fired.

The bolt struck the Mekharan through the side of the torso. Its movement immediately failed, and the human Mecha broke free as the enemy drifted away into the debris field.

Success.

Ning looked toward the human Mecha and sent a message asking if it required any aid. If this simulation was in any way realistic, aiding a fellow human should give him points as well.

A message returned a few seconds later, saying that the pilot was fine. Taking that message, Ning left the area and returned to his path.

For several seconds, the room outside the simulator remained quiet.

Most of the cadets who had attempted this scenario before knew exactly what had just happened.

That section was notorious.

It was designed to force a decision between caution and opportunity, and most students chose caution because the risk was simply too high. Misidentifying the targets cost far more points than successfully destroying the Mekharan could earn, while spending too long trying to separate the signals wasted both time and fuel.

Even cadets who attempted it usually gave up after several seconds.

Ning had identified the enemy faster than anyone in the room had ever seen.

One of the students finally said, "He actually did it."

Another stared at the score display. "That fast?"

Lorna’s expression had changed as well.

Until now, she had been impressed by Ning’s efficiency and control, but those could still have been explained by unusually good instincts or prior simulation experience.

What he had just done required something more.

He had recognized why the identification signals were overlapping, changed his own position to make them easier to separate, and solved a problem most cadets treated as too dangerous to attempt.

Lorna kept her eyes on the screen as Ning continued moving deeper into the simulation.

This transfer was far more capable than his records had suggested.

Ning continued deeper into the simulation, though by now the environment had become far more hostile than anything the earlier cadets had managed to reach.

The debris field was thicker, with larger asteroids crossing through narrow gaps while broken machinery spun unpredictably between them, and the number of Mekharans appearing along his route had increased enough that Ning could no longer treat every engagement as a simple interruption. Some enemies attacked from behind cover, others approached from multiple directions, and several forced him to spend more fuel than he wanted simply to avoid being pinned between hostile fire and the surrounding wreckage.

Even so, Ning kept moving.

He had already traveled farther than most cadets ever managed on this test, and although his resource counters had finally started dropping at a noticeable rate, he was still using them more efficiently than anyone watching had expected.

Each time an enemy appeared, Ning responded with the minimum amount of movement and firepower required, but as the pressure increased, even he could not avoid every wasted shot or every unnecessary burst of fuel.

One Mekharan disappeared behind debris just as Ning fired, causing the bolt to strike an asteroid instead.

Another forced him to fire twice after the first shot glanced off its armor.

A third appeared close enough that Ning had to accelerate hard just to avoid being caught between it and a drifting section of wreckage.

Bit by bit, his ammunition disappeared.

Outside the simulator, Lorna was watching the numbers as closely as the actual fight.

"He’s almost empty," one cadet said.

Lorna nodded. "At this point, ammunition becomes the limiting factor. His fuel is still acceptable, but that only helps if he has something left to fight with."

A few moments later, Ning fired again. The shot destroyed another Mekharan, but the ammunition counter reached zero.

Ning glanced at it once before returning his attention to the field ahead.

He still had slightly less than half of his fuel remaining, which would have been a comfortable amount earlier in the simulation, but with no ranged weapon left to defend himself, that reserve was unlikely to matter for long.

The students outside understood the situation immediately.

"So that’s it."

"He can’t do anything without ammunition."

"He might still get a little farther if he avoids everything."

That possibility disappeared almost immediately as another Mekharan emerged ahead of Ning.

The enemy recognized him at once and raised its weapon. Everyone watching expected Ning to turn away, as that would be the reasonable thing to do here.

Instead, he accelerated directly toward it.

Lorna’s eyes narrowed.

"What is he doing?" a cadet asked.

"Is he trying to fight it? That’s suicidal," someone else said.

Ning, who could not hear any of their words, continued toward the enemy.

When he got close enough, the Mekharan fired.