Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2042: Ning’s Lesson

Ning continued explaining the issue more clearly.

"The asteroid is already forcing you left. Instead of fighting that movement and then returning right afterward, you should accept the new direction and calculate the next few obstacles from there."

"So I should stop trying to recover my original route."

"Most of the time, yes. Space is not a road. There is no lane you are supposed to stay inside."

He resumed the recording.

Naysha maneuvered through another section, accelerated hard to avoid debris, then fired her thrusters again to slow the Mecha before turning.

Ning paused once more.

"And here, you are wasting fuel twice."

"How?"

"You accelerate to escape the obstacle, which is fine, but then you spend more fuel canceling the speed you just gained because you want to turn immediately afterward. If you had planned the turn earlier, that momentum could have carried you into the next section instead of becoming something you needed to remove."

Naysha stared at the recorded trajectory.

"You’re right. I’m fighting against my own momentum."

Ning stood and moved closer to the display.

He drew several projected lines across the recorded asteroid field, showing Naysha’s route first and then an alternative path.

"You went here, accelerated around this asteroid, slowed yourself, turned back toward the center, then accelerated again. That is four major fuel expenditures."

He highlighted another route.

"If you make a smaller correction before reaching the first asteroid, you pass behind it instead of in front. Your existing momentum carries you toward this opening, and then you only need one short burst to avoid the wreckage here."

Naysha followed the route with her eyes.

"That would use less than half the fuel."

"Exactly."

She looked annoyed with herself now.

"I’ve been doing that constantly."

Naysha leaned back slightly. That seemed to bother her more than if Ning had simply told her she was bad.

"My instructors have told me to conserve fuel before, and I did try. But it’s such a vague term that I could never fully understand which part of it they meant. But it seems this was what they were talking about."

"Yeah, your issue mainly is that you don’t have enough practice," Ning said.

Naysha looked toward him. "Then how do I actually practice this if I only get one simulation attempt every month?"

"Honestly, you can only watch what you and the others have done and try to understand all the important elements at a theoretical level, at least, before trying to go for practical improvement."

Ning replayed the section again.

"For now, understand that you are focusing too much on a problem that you shouldn’t be focusing on in the first place."

Naysha frowned. "What other problem am I meant to be focusing on?"

"The next problem after the current one."

Naysha frowned. "That sounds simple when you say it."

"It isn’t simple. But you need to find a way to do it anyway."

Naysha remained in Ning’s room for quite some time after that. Once he began explaining what she had been doing wrong, she quickly realized that there was far more to correct than what she had initially believed.

By the time they finished, it was already late.

Naysha stood from the unused bed and stretched slightly before retrieving the recording from Ning’s room display.

"I think I understand it better now," she said.

Ning remained seated. "Understanding it is the easy part. Putting it into practice will be hard."

"I know."

She sounded considerably more serious than she had when they began.

Ning could understand why.

Her previous best score had been two hundred and ninety-three. She did not need some miraculous improvement to reach the three hundred points required for recommendation to the True Simulation. She only needed to remove enough of the small mistakes that had been holding her back.

That was entirely possible.

Naysha walked toward the door before turning back to him.

"I’ll see you tomorrow?"

"Sure," Ning said as he smiled slightly.

Naysha left the room shortly afterward, and Ning remained awake for some time longer, going through her previous attempt again by himself.

She was good.

That much had never been the problem.

Her shooting was considerably better than most of the cadets in their batch, her reactions were fast, and she remained calm even when several enemies surrounded her. If anything, those strengths had allowed her to develop bad habits without suffering enough immediate consequences to notice them.

Ning was curious how much she would change before her next attempt.

He found out the following day.

Naysha approached him after their morning lessons carrying another simulation recording, though this one did not belong to her.

Ning looked toward the file she had transferred onto his helmet before glancing at her.

"Whose is this?"

"My roommate’s."

Ning opened it. The name had been removed from the recording, leaving only the simulation itself.

Naysha had apparently asked her roommate for an old attempt, which made her intention obvious enough before she explained it.

She wanted to see whether she could identify the same problems Ning had taught her to recognize.

That was a much better idea than simply reviewing her own mistakes repeatedly.

They found an empty section of the academy grounds during lunch and watched the recording together.

The cadet was not particularly bad, though Ning could tell within the first minute that they were unlikely to reach a very high score. Their shooting was average, their movement was reasonably controlled, and they understood the basic idea of conserving fuel, but they reacted to everything too late.

Ning did not mention that.

He let Naysha watch.

She remained silent through the opening section before pausing the recording herself.

"There."

Ning looked at the frozen image.

The simulated Mecha was approaching a large piece of wreckage while a smaller asteroid drifted toward the route from farther ahead.

"What about it?"

"They should have changed direction already."

Ning waited.

Naysha continued after examining the image more carefully.

"If they wait until the asteroid reaches the route, they will have to turn harder. They can move upward now and pass above both of them without needing another correction."

Ning nodded.

"Continue."