Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2086: Naysha’s Turn

The enemy adapted to Tobin’s forward push, surrounding him from three directions at once. His Mecha lost an arm to a heavy blast, and from the observation gallery, Ning saw Tobin’s whole body convulse inside the pod as the haptic systems delivered the impact. He fought on one-armed for a while before he was finally brought down.

<216 Points>

Tobin climbed out of the pod slowly, his face pale and his left arm held stiffly against his side, as though he could still feel the missing limb.

Elena went next.

She was more careful than Tobin had been, and for the opening minutes of her run, a battle among the docking structures of a massive orbital station, she made almost no mistakes. She moved methodically from cover to cover, verified every target before firing, and stayed close to her allied units.

But she was too careful. When a sudden change in objectives required her to break cover and race across an open stretch of the station to reinforce a collapsing allied position, she hesitated, checking and rechecking the signals of the units around her.

By the time she moved, the position had already fallen, and the enemy forces that had overrun it turned their full attention on her.

<198 Points>

Elena climbed out of her pod with her lips pressed tightly together. She did not look at anyone as she walked back up to the observation gallery.

Across the gallery, several of the cadets from the other academies were smirking.

"Two hundred," one of them said, not quite under his breath. "That’s about what I expected."

"And they still have two first-years to go," another added. "This is going to be painful to watch."

Tobin’s face darkened, and Elena stared straight ahead, saying nothing.

Then Instructor Varga called Hale’s name.

Hale walked down toward the pods with the easy, relaxed stride of someone who had no doubt whatsoever about how the next few minutes would go. As he passed Ning’s group, he glanced toward them and gave them a small, pleasant smile that did not reach his eyes.

His simulation dropped him into a battle across a mountainous region on an unfamiliar planet, with allied and enemy Mechas fighting along a series of narrow ridges and valleys.

Ning had to admit that Hale was good.

He moved through the terrain confidently, using the ridges for cover and the valleys to flank enemy positions. When his objective shifted from capturing a ridge to escorting a damaged allied unit back to safety, he adapted almost instantly, falling back in an orderly retreat that kept both his Mecha and the allied unit alive.

He identified a disguised Mekharan by its slightly delayed response to an allied communication and destroyed it before it could strike, which drew murmurs of approval from the cadets of his academy.

He lasted longer than anyone before him. When the enemy finally adapted to his tactics and brought him down with a coordinated assault from two directions at once, his score climbed past every result that had come before.

<280 Points>

The observation gallery erupted.

The cadets from Hale’s academy cheered loudly, slapping each other on the shoulders, and even several cadets from the second academy clapped. It was the highest score of the session by a clear margin, and only twenty points short of the threshold that Instructor Varga had described as so difficult to reach.

When Hale climbed out of his pod, he did so slowly and deliberately, pausing at the top of the steps to look up at the observation gallery and the cheering cadets.

He was clearly enjoying every moment of it.

As he walked back up to the gallery, he passed close to Ning’s group again, and this time, his smile was much wider.

"Two hundred and eighty," he said lightly, to no one in particular. "Not bad for a first attempt, if I do say so myself."

He glanced at Naysha, then at Ning.

"I hope your first-years have been practicing."

Instructor Varga called Naysha’s name next.

The cheering from Hale’s academy had barely died down when she rose from her place in the observation gallery and walked toward the stairs. Ning watched her go with mild interest.

Her expression was as calm and composed as it had been all afternoon, and she did not so much as glance toward Hale or the cadets around him as she passed.

She walked down to the nearest pod, climbed the short set of steps to its entrance, and stepped inside.

The hatch sealed shut behind her with a heavy, hissing thud.

Inside, the darkness was complete for a moment. Then the interior of the pod came alive around her. A seat rose to meet her, padded restraints closed gently across her chest and shoulders, and a connection port slid into place behind her head, linking with her helmet with a soft click.

Then the cockpit appeared.

It was nothing like the cockpit of the Rank 1 Mecha in the academy’s simulator.

It was larger, more detailed, and more real in every way, with controls that felt solid beneath her hands and displays that glowed with an almost painful sharpness. When she shifted slightly in her seat, she felt the cockpit shift with her.

Then the pod began to move, and the cockpit display filled with sky.

She was falling.

The True Simulation had dropped her into the battle exactly as though she had just been deployed from a transport high above the planet’s surface.

Her Mecha was plunging toward the ground at tremendous speed, and the motion systems around the pod made her feel every second of it. Her stomach lurched, the restraints pressed hard against her shoulders, and the roar of wind and engines filled her ears.

Below her, the ground rushed upward. It was a desert, a vast, endless expanse of pale golden sand stretching to the horizon in every direction, broken only by the shattered remains of a city half buried in the dunes.

Columns of black smoke rose from a dozen places across the landscape, and the wreckage of destroyed Mechas lay scattered across the sand like broken toys.

She was already being fired upon.