Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2048: Jason’s Simulation Test

Liam stared at him, apparently unsure whether Ning was mocking him or simply telling the truth.

"Then I’ll pay you," he said after a moment. "Units. More than the two thousand you took off me, if that’s what it takes. Name a number."

"I don’t care about that either."

The frustration on Liam’s face deepened, and he leaned forward slightly as though trying to work out what kind of person sat across from him.

"Then what do you care about? Everyone wants something. Tell me what it is, and I’ll find a way to get it for you."

Ning thought about the question for a moment, mostly because Liam seemed to deserve at least that much consideration, and then he gave him the most honest answer he could.

"Honestly? Nothing," he said. "There’s nothing you have, and nothing you could get for me, that would make me want to spend my evenings teaching you."

The room went quiet.

Liam looked at him for several long seconds, and Ning could see the anger rising in him, coloring his face and stiffening his shoulders until he looked very much like the young man who had stood over Jason’s table in the cafeteria that first evening.

Liam stood up from the bed.

"You’re making a grave mistake," he said, his voice low and tight. "I came here and asked you properly, which is more than I’ve done for anyone in this academy. You could have had me on your side. Instead, you’ve decided to make an enemy out of someone who can get into any room, any locker, and any system in this place."

Ning smiled up at him, entirely unbothered.

"Then I suppose I’ll be looking forward to seeing what you do."

Liam’s hands curled into fists at his sides, and for a brief moment, Ning thought he might actually try something right there in the room.

Instead, Liam turned sharply, crossed to the door, and yanked it open hard enough that it struck the wall behind it. He stepped out into the hallway and slammed it shut behind him, and the sound echoed down the corridor along with his footsteps as he stormed away.

Ning couldn’t help but laugh a little before closing the door himself and lying down on the bed.

He quickly forgot the entire interaction.

Over the next several days, the simulation room saw a steady stream of cadets from Batch 122 as Lorna worked through the remaining names on her schedule so that everyone would have at least one attempt at the Rank 1 assessment before the month was out.

Ning attended every session, partly because it was required and partly because watching the others had become one of the more interesting parts of his day.

Many of the students who had crowded around his table after his own run had taken his advice to heart, and it showed.

Their routes through the asteroid field were less wasteful than before, they held their fire a little longer before committing to a shot, and several of them finished with more fuel in reserve than they had ever managed.

Scores that would have sat around one hundred and eighty were now creeping toward two hundred, and one cadet who had previously struggled to break one hundred and ninety came out of the pod with two hundred and thirty-one, looking as though someone had handed him a medal.

Ning was pleased for them, though he was not convinced the improvement would last.

Advice could correct a few obvious habits in the short run, but without enough time in the simulator to build on it, he suspected most of them would eventually settle back into whatever level their actual experience allowed.

Then, on the third day, Lorna called Jason’s name.

Jason walked toward the pod with his shoulders drawn in and his eyes fixed on the floor, as though he hoped that by avoiding everyone else’s gaze, he could make the entire room forget that he was there.

He fumbled briefly with the helmet connection behind the seat before the pod closed around him.

Ning watched his preparation period with some interest, but it became clear within the first thirty seconds that Jason was not testing the controls so much as struggling with them.

He accelerated too hard, stopped too late, and spent several seconds turning the torso back and forth as if he could not quite remember which input controlled which movement.

When the assessment began, things did not improve.

Jason collided with the very first piece of drifting debris he encountered, a slow-moving slab that every other cadet that day had avoided without trouble, and the damage indicators lit up before he had traveled any meaningful distance at all.

He fired at his first Mekharan four times before hitting it once and spent so much fuel correcting his course afterward that the counter was already noticeably lower than anyone else’s had been at the same stage.

The run lasted only a few minutes longer before his machine took one hit too many and went dark.

<104 Points>

From the corner of the room where Liam stood with his friends, laughter broke out almost immediately.

"A hundred and four," one of them said, loudly enough that the whole room could hear. "I think a broken simulator could score higher than that if you left it running by itself."

"He’s going to have to beg the examiners to let him clean the hangar instead," another added, and the group laughed again.

Liam said nothing himself, but he was smiling, and when his eyes drifted toward Ning for a brief moment, the smile widened a little further.

Lorna silenced the group with a single sharp look, though by then the damage had been done.

Jason climbed out of the pod with his face pale and his jaw clenched, and he returned to his place at the edge of the room without looking at anyone.

Ning watched him for a while afterward.

A score that low was not simply a bad day.

Unless something changed considerably before the end of the term, there was a real chance that Jason would not pass the practical portion of the academy’s examinations at all, and from the way Jason was staring at nothing, Ning suspected he knew that perfectly well.