Jonathan banished all of the negative thoughts from his mind before he started training the next day. Strictly speaking, a mech didn't fight better because of positive mental energy, but Jonathan knew he'd only drag himself down if he focused on how long the tests were taking instead of on how to handle his own business.

He'd finished the final test of his ability to move in a mech, but he was far from done with the battery of tests as a whole. Mechs weren't primarily meant for transportation, after all. The Royal Academy wouldn't turn students loose on their virtual world until they showed at least a modicum of fighting capability.

The first combat test was relatively simple. Jonathan found himself standing on a white plane that stretched off endlessly around him. The only other inhabitant of the virtual world was a mass of chitin and tentacles, a heap of evil about the same height as his own mech.

Jonathan had never seen such a monster in person before. He wouldn't have lived long enough to go to a mech piloting academy if he had. Still, he knew what he was looking at. He'd seen plenty of pictures of his void beasts in his textbooks, although a mere picture couldn't really convey the sheer presence of the things.

Void beasts had developed the ability to use spiritual energy to survive in environments that were inhospitable to ordinary life. Their twisted flesh was tougher and stronger than any ordinary material. They were mindless hunger personified, their unnatural forms reflecting their single minded focus.

Fortunately, they mostly lived the life of solitary predators. They had a sort of low cunning in combat, but they never came together to form a civilization of their own.

Accordingly, Jonathan didn't waste any time before taking advantage of the situation. He drew his rifle and took aim.

His first shot hit the beast where it's chest would be. One of its tentacles was nearly severed by the exploding bolt of plasma. The beast let out an ear-splitting screech as black goop sprayed out from the wound.

Jonathan was grateful that his mech didn't have a sense of smell.

He took a few bounding steps backward, just in time as several tentacles lashed through the space where he'd be standing. His mech might be able to shred through any ordinary sort of biological entanglement—even the toughest vines wouldn't amount to more than old cobwebs in the face of a mech's power—but the flesh of the void beast was fortified by spiritual energy.

Or, rather, by the beast's equivalent of spiritual energy. It was drawn from a similar source as human spiritual energy, but void energy was a twisted thing. Even mild exposure could be lethal to an unprotected human being. Jonathan's mech was shielded against the corrosive effect, but even his mech would have a hard time tearing one of the beast's tentacles apart with its bare hands.

That same void energy was responsible for the beast's unnatural resilience. The plasma bolt from Jonathan's rifle would have been able to smash through tank armor back on Earth without even slowing down. Here, it was barely energetic enough to penetrate the outer layer of the beast's defenses.

Fortunately, while the monster was quick with its tentacles, it wasn't a fast runner. Jonathan focused on making sure his shots landed on target as he backed away, maintaining the distance. Even if the rifle wasn't inflicting devastating wounds, chipping away at the beast would eventually do enough damage to finish it off.

The rifle, like all of his mech's heavy duty weapons, was fueled by his mech's spiritual energy reactor. Each shot drew down on Jonathan's energy supply, but he could keep up a steady rate of fire for far more than the time he'd need to whittle the void beast down to nothing.

His cautious strategy was rewarded with four direct hits. He aimed for the center of the beast every time, but considering that he was shooting at a writhing mass of tentacles while he was on the move, his shot grouping wasn't particularly precise. Jonathan was pretty pleased with the fact that every shot had been on target.

The beast wasn't of a mind to appreciate his sharpshooting. It let out an ear splitting screech and lashed out with its tentacles. This time it wasn't making a futile swipe at Jonathan, though he still took another step back just in case. No, the monster speared out at the ground on either side of it, driving its tentacles into the featureless white ground.

The tentacles stretched taut and held tight. Jonathan realized what was going to happen just as the beast launched itself forward with a triumphant howl.

Jonathan took another shot. He was already aiming right at it. The bolt hit, but didn't do any more damage than the last four. He let his rifle fall to the ground as he prepared to deal with the beast in melee combat. It had foregone any attempt to control its flight, which let Jonathan wind up a haymaker and lash out just as it flew into range.

Learning how to handle a mech in a fight was a lifelong process. Master mech pilots could channel the energy provided by their mech's spiritual reactors into dazzling attacks that packed all sorts of esoteric effects. Beginners could use weaponry to convert that energy into structured plasma. The first attack any mech pilot had to master, though, was refreshingly straightforward: throwing an effective punch.

It wasn't that different from throwing a punch out in day to day life. It's just that instead of marshaling the energy of his body, Jonathan was controlling the limbs of a two story tall behemoth weighing dozens of tons. It was driven by spiritual energy rather than muscle strength. It still felt surprisingly natural to send his fist forth with building-shattering power.

He struck it cleanly near the center of the beast's body. He felt the mech's elbow creak under the strain as both fist and beast were stopped dead in their tracks. The featureless white ground around him rippled as the shockwave of the impact passed through. Jonathan was confident that such a dramatic strike would have leveled a building if it had been unleashed in a more detailed simulation.

Unfortunately, the void beast was made of sterner stuff. It only hesitated for the briefest of moments before it resumed its attack. It was probably too much to hope that an angry pile of tentacles would suffer a concussion.

It was also too much to hope for Jonathan to be able to use two arms to fend off a dozen tentacles. He got his arms up in front of the first attack, but blocking the strike wasn't enough to get him out of trouble. Instead of bouncing off, the tentacle wrapped tightly around his arms.

Jonathan strained his mech, trying to break free, but a second tentacle joined the first, then a third. Once his arms were thoroughly cocooned, the beast was free to go to work on the rest of his mechanical body. Jonathan closed his eyes, but he couldn't shut his ears to the shriek of tearing metal. Nor could he tune out the phantom feeling of loss as his mech was torn limb from limb.

Mercifully, the world around him soon faded into a dull grey. A message popped up, providing Jonathan with the helpful notification that he had failed the test.

He was offered the option to restart, but Jonathan wasn't quite ready to jump right back into the fray. He stood still for a moment, the phantom aches and pains gradually working themselves out of his body as the sympathetic feelings created by his mech's destruction faded away.

If he jumped into the same fight using the same methods, he could only ever expect the same results. In order to do better, Jonathan would need a plan.

Obviously, getting into a fistfight with a tentacle monster was a bad plan. Jonathan did have other choices. He'd gone with a straight punch for his first move because it was simple, straightforward, and energy efficient. Hard to go wrong... unless your opponent could shrug off the kinetic energy and proceed to tear you apart.

He could try using his beam saber. The energy blade operated on a similar principle to his rifle. Instead of launching bolts of burning plasma, though, it created a bar of contained plasma that could be used as a melee weapon.

His rifle hadn't been capable of killing the beast, but he had managed to hurt it. Short of suddenly growing twelve arms to contend with the monster's plethora of tentacles, the beam saber was the closest thing he had to an effective counter. If the rifle could injure it, then the saber should be able to put some serious hurt on it.

Mind made up, Jonathan shook out his arms and legs. Everything felt like it was back to normal. He knew that the damage done in virtual reality was all in his mind, but that didn't do anything to take the sting out of the injuries the void beast had inflicted on him. Jonathan didn't want to go through anything like that again any time soon.

He made his selection. The virtual environment around him lightened from grey to white. Jonathan found himself once more synced up with a virtual mech, its metal chassis completely undamaged, shining in the sun. Even his internal reservoir of spiritual energy had been topped up.

It would have felt like he had access to some kind of cheat code if the void beast weren't standing in front of him, also restored to immaculate health.

He left the rifle in its holster and drew his beam saber. It sprang to life with a reassuring hiss. It was a little less reassuring when you considered the fact that the noise came from the air around him being destroyed on the molecular level as it drifted within the effect of the blade, but battling monstrosities from beyond the stars necessarily required wielding dangerous weapons.

The energy going to the saber would have been enough to cause brownouts back on Earth, but it was only a mild draw on Jonathan's energy reserve. The drain would go up when he started actually carving through something solid, but Jonathan wouldn't begrudge the energy use if it let him destroy his foe.

If the void beast was intimidated by the beam saber, it didn't let it show. It screeched at Jonathan as belligerently as ever before charging forward. It seemed that the only strategy it had available was to try to rip him apart with its tentacles.

Which, admittedly, was a good strategy. Jonathan thought he'd come up with an appropriate counter, but there was really only one way to know for sure.