Jonathan had made the mistake of bringing his sword to a gunfight, but it wasn't all bad news. His sudden stop had thrown off the enemy's aim. It's third shot smashed into the ground in front of him, leaving a scorch mark on the otherwise featureless ground. It was nice to know that the computer-generated opponents could make mistakes.

Jonathan drew his own rifle and took aim. The enemy mech landed and jumped to the side this time, not wanting to retreat completely out of range. He led the moving target as he'd learned to do in the hours he'd spent dueling with the fox spirit.

The mech reacted as his shot drew close, using its flight module to change its trajectory. It was too late to dodge the shot entirely. The bolt vanished in a flare of discharging shield energy as it was about to strike the mech's shoulder.

Jonathan grinned at the success, then took a great sideways leap of his own. He used the flight pack for a little extra boost, and was rewarded by the sight of the enemy's shot flying wide. Jonathan attempted to return fire while he was in the air, but it wasn't as easy as the other mech had made it look. His shot went wide, not even close enough to make the enemy think about dodging. The well-aimed return fire caught Jonathan in the chest, shaving another chunk off of his energy reserves.

Jonathan growled in frustration, but mech combat wasn't something that would go your way just because you were upset. He did his best, but as the duel continued it became clear that while he might be able to match the other mech in firing from a fixed position, he was at a serious disadvantage when it came to firing on the move. Unfortunately, standing in place and presenting a static target against a moving enemy was a recipe for failure.

If Jonathan could have used some kind of cover or fortification, he might have been able to turn the situation in his favor. In the featureless arena, though, there was nothing he could do to hide his shortcomings or neutralize the enemy advantage. There was nothing to stop his opponent from moving and firing at the same time. All that he could do was try to match its skill.

In the end he was presented with the all too familiar notification of his own death shortly after his mech finally ran out of energy. Jonathan would have done better if he hadn't eaten the initial shots when he tried to get close, but even without that he didn't think the result would have changed. The report of his failure showed that the enemy mech had still had forty percent of its energy reserves to call on when Jonathan had run dry.

From an objective point of view, Jonathan could see what the test suite was doing. By pitting him against different opponents, it was making sure that he could adapt to the basic modes of mech combat. The frustrating part was that the training system set such a high bar for basic competence. It made sense—mech pilots were the elite of the nation's military, and the Royal Academy trained elite mech pilots—but it was discouraging to keep running into such high hurdles.

Jonathan took a deep breath, releasing his frustration on the exhale. He'd picked up melee combat well enough to deal with the void beast. He'd learned how to aim from a fixed position well enough to deal with the spirit beast. Now he would work on firing on the move until he was able to beat an enemy mech.

In the long run, he wanted to reach the top. Even if the Divine Piloting System was there to give him a hand up, he would have to put in the effort to make the abilities his own. And if the system never showed up again, well, he'd just have to work hard and walk the long road to the top.

Just changing his approach showed immediate results. Because he didn't spend the first half of the test charging face first into the enemy mech's plasma bolts, he was fighting from a level footing in terms of spiritual energy. He still lost, in the end, but it was a much closer fight. The test report showed that the enemy had been down to its last ten percent of spiritual energy, which was essentially tapping into its emergency reserve.

Besides the refinement to his shooting ability, fighting another mech brought home an important strategic lesson. Mech pilots might naturally be stronger in either melee fighting or long range combat, but no pilot could afford to neglect one aspect completely. Most mechs of the same level were similar in terms of their speed and agility. The circumstances of a battle might allow you to control the range, but it was foolish to count on that happening. A truly capable pilot had to be able to put up a good fight regardless of the situation.

Jonathan's aim improved as he took the test over and over again. The balance of the fight finally tipped in his favor on his fourth try, although his final test score was barely over the pass line. He kept at it, refining his abilities with every attempt. He kept at it for the rest of his training time for the day and the bulk of his time for the next. All of that effort got him to ninety percent.

Jonathan thought it might take another day of plugging away to get a perfect score. Then, he hit some kind of tipping point. After the initial phase of the combat skirmish, the enemy mech realized that it was completely outclassed in long range combat and charged forward, dropping its rifle to draw its beam saber.

It almost worked. The sudden maneuver caught Jonathan by surprise. After two days of running and gunning, though, his instinctive reaction was to back away and keep the distance between them. He maintained a steady rate of fire and the enemy mech crashed to the ground long before it was able to draw close enough for melee combat.

Jonathan grinned at the perfect report card. He still wouldn't turn down a tangible reward, but by now he could feel that the process of pursuing full clearance of the tests was its own reward. He didn't have to worry about managing any virtual resources. He spent all his training time every day honing his skills. He could feel that he was getting better and better at controlling his mech, even if he was still a long way from the pinnacle.

Now, he was unlocking hidden content, of a sort. Any student who moved on as soon as they received a passing score would never know the satisfaction of gunning down a helpless enemy mech as it desperately tried to close the range.

Jonathan engraved the lesson in his heart. Melee combat was more exciting and more decisive. A dominating melee fighter could carve through a swathe of enemies in the time that it took a ranged fighter to wear down a single target. Jonathan certainly wanted to master the beam saber. If he couldn't get close, though, he still needed to be able to handle himself.

Meanwhile, the first few days of classes kept him busy in the real world. Apparently the teachers at the Royal Academy thought that one day was enough time for orientation, as they started piling on homework on day two. Half of the classes were basically review for Jonathan, thanks to the memories from his past life, but he still had to do the work.

Not to mention the fact that he had forgotten most of his high school level math shortly after high school. Luckily, he was still able to pick it up more quickly than he would have if he'd been learning it for the first time. That freed up his time for virtual training and for the two classes that were the sharpest departure from his previous life: social studies and mech battle tactics.

He'd learned social studies before, of course, but never in the context of an interstellar kingdom. He'd learned the basics back on Matoug, but the Orion Star Kingdom expected great things out of the students at the Royal Academy. Naturally, it couldn't stint on their ideological education. Jonathan poured much of his precious free time in learning the history of the kingdom front to back.

The Orion Star Kingdom had been formed after the collapse of the Second Human Galactic Empire. That empire had been built on the back of a miraculous advance in mech technology. It stood for thousands of years. Even the spirit beasts had to treat the empire with respect. By all rights, it should have stood for thousands of years more if not for the Great Disaster.

Nobody really knew what triggered the Great Disaster. All that they had documented was the fact of it: an unprecedented flood of void beasts, demonstrating previously unheard of strength, had overwhelmed the heartlands of the empire. The grand imperial capital and all of the most prosperous inner worlds fell before the tide of void beasts.

It was humanity's most perilous moment. When the might of the inner worlds proved useless, it signaled that no military force humanity could muster would be enough to stem the tide. All that was left was for the void beasts, in their mindless hunger, to pour forth and exterminate the remnants of humanity.

Humanity braced for the final days, but the final blow never came. The void beasts were content to remain in what was now the Forbidden Zone, gorging on the wealth of the old empire. It was an inexplicable show of restraint, an oddity that caused just as much debate as the appearance of the void beasts in the first place.

Still, life went on. As humanity picked up the pieces and tried to make the best of things, it became clear that no one political force would be able to control the galaxy. Part of it was a practical concern. The giant forbidden zone occupied the center of the old empire, the area with the most dense interconnections and trade links. Connecting the galaxy without holding that territory was almost impossible.

The other problem was that the people had lost faith in the idea of a galactic empire. By and large society wanted to focus on local concerns, rather than fight for the ambitions of their leaders in some far off star system. As a result, the successor kingdoms coalesced more or less around the old imperial divisions. The Orion province became the Orion Star Kingdom, bordered by the Taurus Star Republic and Gemini Star Kingdom.

Jonathan had more than an academic interest in the local galactic map. As a mech pilot, he would be called upon to defend the people of the Orion Star Kingdom. While they weren't officially at war with their neighbors, that wasn't to say that there was no violence at all at the borders.

The fighting may have been in the form of individual duels rather than massive set piece battles, but the pilots who lost those fights were no less dead. And, of course, a true war could break out at any time. The last war, with the Taurus Star Republic, had ended just a few years before Jonathan was born. It was always hard to predict the future, but Jonathan's classmates at least were convinced that war was on the horizon.

That wouldn't be Jonathan's concern, not right after graduation. Even the Royal Academy wouldn't throw its graduates straight onto the front lines. Promising mech pilots generally served a few years as roving troubleshooters, tackling void beast infestations inside the borders of the Orion Star Kingdom. It was only after they had time to sharpen their skills and prove their mettle in real combat that they would be tapped for border duty.

While a position on the border was dangerous, it was also considered the most glorious posting. Defeating rival mech operators and winning prestige in border skirmishes was the quickest way to rise through the ranks, second only to the precipitous promotions that were available in war.

For his part, Jonathan hoped that war remained a distant prospect out on the horizon for as long as possible. Wartime might offer more chances for promotion, but in a galaxy that was home to dangerous spirit beasts and the deadly void creatures, he didn't see much appeal in fighting fellow humans.

Of course, there was one fellow human he was very much looking forward to fighting, even if only in the virtual world. Chad Worthington had gotten more brazen in his mockery by the day, as if Jonathan's failure to finish the entry tests and join the virtual world was a mark of cowardice.

Jonathan was starting to have second thoughts about rejecting Chad's request for a duel.