Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2085: First Runs

"These pods are fully enclosed. Once you’re inside, you will not be able to see or hear anything from outside until the simulation ends. The motion systems you see around them will physically move you, tilting, turning, shaking, and throwing you around as your Mecha moves.

"The haptic systems inside will let you feel the controls, the impacts, and the pressure on your body. When your Mecha accelerates, you will feel it. When it turns, you will feel that too."

Her expression did not change.

"And when you’re hit, you will feel it. An impact against your Mecha’s armor will jolt your entire body. If your Mecha loses a limb, the systems will make sure you know it.

"You won’t be injured, but your body will not be able to tell the difference. Several pilots have needed help getting out of these pods after a bad run. Don’t be surprised if you’re one of them."

Several of the cadets exchanged uneasy glances. Even Hale looked slightly less amused than before.

"The scenario itself is extremely dynamic," Varga continued. "There is no fixed course, and nothing about it will be the same twice. The enemy will adapt to what you do. If you rely on a single tactic, they will learn to counter it. If you stay in one place too long, they will surround you."

She looked across the room.

"The purpose of this simulation is simple. You will be deployed into an ongoing battle in the middle of the war, alongside allied units, against enemy forces. Your task is to fight for as long as you can survive. There will be allied units, enemy units, and disguised units that look like one but are the other.

"Your objectives will change during the battle, sometimes without warning. Your communications with allied units will be subject to realistic delays and interference. Nothing will be handed to you."

She paused.

"As in your academies’ simulations, three hundred points is considered a good score here. But I want to be very clear that reaching it in this machine is far more difficult. Most cadets attempting the True Simulation for the first time score well below it.

"Those who manage to score three hundred or more consistently are permitted to work toward becoming real pilots. Everyone else goes back to their academies and tries again."

She let that settle over them before turning toward the observation gallery.

"Everyone not currently in a pod will watch from up there. We’ll go in order by academy. The first group, follow me."

The cadets from the larger of the other two academies went first.

From the observation gallery, the display showed the feed from inside each pod as the cadet entered it, and within seconds of the first simulation beginning, Ning understood how different this was from anything at the academy.

There was no asteroid field and no straight-line run toward a distant objective.

The first cadet was dropped directly into the middle of a battle already underway, a broken urban landscape on some distant planet, with human Mechas fighting their way through ruined buildings against Mekharan forces that seemed to come from every direction at once.

Smoke drifted across the streets, explosions shook the ground, and the cadet’s communication channel was flooded with overlapping voices from allied units calling out positions and requesting support.

He had to make decisions almost immediately. Which allied unit to support, which street to move down, and which approaching machine was an enemy and which was a friend.

Ning watched his Mecha jolt violently as it took its first hit, and on the display, the cadet’s physical reactions were clearly visible as the pod shook around him.

He lasted a respectable time before a disguised Mekharan, which had been broadcasting a corrupted allied signal, caught him from behind.

<233 Points>

The next cadet from the same academy was dropped into a different scenario entirely, a battle across the surface of an airless moon, with low gravity and long, open plains that left nowhere to hide. She handled the movement well and made several smart decisions early on, falling back to cover a damaged allied unit when her objective shifted from attack to defense. But when the enemy adapted and began flanking her position, she was too slow to respond.

<251 Points>

The third was thrown into a space battle among the wreckage of a destroyed fleet, and he spent most of his run struggling with the communication delays, receiving orders from his commanding unit several seconds after they had become useless. He managed well enough despite it, but never quite recovered from a mistake early in the fight.

<228 Points>

The cadets from the second academy followed, and their results were much the same.

One of them, a stocky young man with a shaved head, fought his way through a battle in a frozen canyon and made it further than anyone before him, reaching the high two hundreds before a sudden enemy push overwhelmed his position.

Another lasted a shorter time but made almost no mistakes in identifying targets, and finished only a few points behind.

<274 Points>

<267 Points>

Most of the cadets from the other two academies scored somewhere in the mid to high two hundreds. None of them reached three hundred, but it was clear from the way they talked among themselves afterward that they had expected as much, and that scores in that range were considered entirely respectable for a first attempt.

Then it was the turn of Ning’s academy.

Tobin went first.

He entered the pod with his jaw set and his shoulders squared, clearly determined to prove Hale wrong, and when his simulation began, he was dropped into a battle on the outskirts of a burning city.

He started strongly, advancing aggressively down a wide boulevard and destroying two Mekharans in quick succession.

But the aggression that served him well at the start began to work against him.

He pushed too far ahead of his allied units, and when his objective shifted from advancing to holding a position, he was already too deep in enemy territory to fall back in time.