Once he was synced up, at least, decorating his mech didn't seem quite as urgent. After all, the only mech he could see was Philip’s. Jonathan’s roommate led the way to their battleground, walking with solid, methodical strides that were somewhat at odds with his garish paint job.

“To collect on the big ticket items you have to register at the front desk,” Philip said. “You have to put up earnest money that you’ll lose if you can’t collect on the bounty.”

“Makes sense,” Jonathan said. Every virtual environment was packed with methods to keep newbies from getting in the way of the experienced players.

“We’ll start you out with some evergreens,” Philip said.

The back of the hangar had opened up to deposit them in a barren wilderness. Jonathan wasn’t quite sure that the geography matched up with what he had observed of the city earlier, but he wasn’t going to complain if the virtual world was set up to fudge some physical details for his personal convenience.

There were scraggly patches of grass and some sparse bushes scattered here and there, but that was about it for wildlife. Their surroundings were dominated by sand underfoot and bare rock all around them. There were oversized boulders dotted all about the landscape, and a veritable maze of canyons.

Philip led them down the mouth of a ravine. Jonathan didn’t see what made it different from any other, but he marked the waypoint on his map anyways. If this was a reliable spot to harvest some virtual credits, he’d probably be spending a lot of time here.

One area where the virtual world deliberately took it easy on cadets was in mech maintenance. In the real world, Jonathan would have had to put his shields up the minute they stepped outside in order to prevent all of the fine dust carried by the wind from accumulating on his mech. Either that, or he would have been stuck spending the evening scrubbing out every nook and cranny of the giant machine. Here in the virtual world, their mechs only took environmental damage from specially marked areas.

A penny pinching cadet would only have to pay to repair damage inflicted by enemies in combat. Otherwise, strictly speaking, what was for sale was more in the nature of enhancement than repair: you could pay to restore your spiritual energy, a feat that was impossible in the real world outside of nigh-legendary medicinal materials. You could also pay for training time that would consume neither spiritual energy nor result in any “real” damage to your mech, which made it an attractive option compared to just grinding monsters.

Jonathan’s thoughts were taken back to more practical matters when he heard a familiar ear-splitting screech. The horrifying sound once would have sent him running for the hills, but after all the combat tests he had been put through before entering the virtual world Jonathan now recognized it as the call of some easy prey.

Philip had already drawn his beam saber and charged ahead, the heavy, methodical steps of his mech picking up speed until he was moving with the force of a freight train. Up ahead, a tentacle monster came around the canyon wall, bellowing a challenge.

An answering cry came from the other side of the canyon as a second void beast popped into view. Jonathan drew his own weapon without any further prompting, igniting his beam saber. The hiss of plasma consuming air wasn’t as dramatic as the beasts’ cries, but it promised death just the same.

Jonathan focused his attention on his own fight. No matter how many of the void beasts he killed in the simulations, he never forgot the feeling of being torn apart the first time he had fought one. He knew how to fight them now, but a moment’s carelessness was all that they would need to turn the tide of battle.

Jonathan didn’t give it a chance. He methodically chopped off every tentacle that strayed within range, keeping on the move just enough to keep from being overwhelmed. It wasn’t until the beast gave off a last gurgling cry and fell still that he could take a look around.

There weren’t any more void beasts looking to avenge their fallen brother. The virtual world could be going a little easy on newcomers by giving them a hunting ground that fed a steady trickle of manageable foes, but there was some basis in reality for the decision. Void beasts were highly territorial and hardly ever came to each other’s aid.

The lowest level beasts, like the one Jonathan had just killed, might swarm together for protection against the true monsters out there, but it would hardly be useful training if the virtual world swamped cadets in endless tides of enemies.

Philip was still working on finishing off his chosen opponent. Jonathan couldn’t tell from a distance if there was anything to mark it as a tougher foe than the one he had killed. He did notice that Philip’s methodical approach to mech controls carried through to combat as well. He kept his sword moving in controlled, somewhat predictable sweeps.

It got the job done. Jonathan thought his own approach of lopping off tentacles in response to the void beast’s attacks was a bit more efficient, but by sweeping his own beam saber back and forth in a form of area denial Philip was able to punish the void beast’s aggression without having to worry about suffering a disaster if he made a mistake.

As Jonathan watched, Philip decided he had finally trimmed the void beast down to a more manageable level and switched from defense to offense. Moving forward, he attacked the heart of the beast, lopping off piece after piece until it was dead. He looked up afterwards, obviously surprised to find Jonathan already finished.

“You do fast work,” Philip said.

“Do we need to gather anything?” Jonathan asked. In his experience with this kind of game environment, after killing monsters like this you would harvest their drops to turn in for mission rewards.

“Nah,” Philip replied. “They’ll check our combat recordings when we report back in.”

Jonathan nodded. It was kind of the virtual system to let them focus on combat while it handled the administrative tasks in the background.

The two of them continued on. The ravine proved to be a friendly introduction to combat in the virtual world. The void beasts were spread out far enough apart that there was no risk of being dogpiled unless you blindly charged forward. The individual beasts got stronger as they moved deeper into their territory, but not enough to change the flow of battle.

For Jonathan, it wasn’t that much different from the combat test. The scenery was nicer to look at, too. The only drawback was that his spiritual energy didn’t replenish between fights. Not that he was using too much energy to dispatch such low level creatures, but every strike with his beam saber did take a little bite out of his energy reservoir.

Jonathan still had a little over half his energy left when Philip called an end to their expedition.

“I could go on for a little while longer,” Jonathan volunteered.

Philip looked at him in surprise, then shrugged. “We’ve done enough for your first day. Besides, we need to get the mechs back in storage before we run out of time for the day.”

They were limited to four hours on the virtual trainer. Jonathan had thought at first that the rule was overly cautious, but after experiencing the stress of fighting his way through such a realistic simulation, he realized that it really was a safety issue.

While the system cut them a lot of breaks in terms of the cost of maintaining a front line mech, there were limits. If they returned their mechs to storage before logging out, then daily maintenance was free. If they logged out in the wilds, then there would be a charge. The precise cost varied depending on just how rugged the surrounding terrain was, but it generally wasn’t worth it unless you were in the middle of a long running quest.

The virtual trainer also had some rules and regulations around logging in and out that were designed to prevent players from abusing the virtual nature of the system. You couldn’t log out during combat or when hostile forces were nearby. Of course, you’d still get kicked out if you had hit your four hour limit regardless of the circumstances, but you risked getting hit with a hefty fine if you tried to abuse the safety system for tactical advantage.

Those were all concerns for the future. For now, Jonathan fell in behind Philip without complaint. He certainly wasn’t going to waste his hard-earned virtual currency by racking up needless costs.

The combat system had recorded their exploits, but they still had to formally report in at the central hall to receive their rewards. The tentacle monsters were the lowest level void beast, more of a nuisance than a threat, and the reward on offer reflected that. Jonathan didn’t mind. It would be wishful thinking to expect much of a reward for such an easy fight.

Still, they’d spent a good couple hours chopping down every beast they came across. While Jonathan wasn’t rolling in virtual wealth, he did receive enough of a reward to at least begin cosmetic modifications on his mech. He had just started paging through the options when the warning chime let him know that it was time to log out.

Jonathan clambered out of the training pod to find Philip waiting for him with a smile on his face.

“What did you think?” he asked.

“It was interesting,” Jonathan replied. He knew he’d barely scratched the surface of the massive virtual world. “I can see why you’ve been so excited since you passed the tests.”

“I’m glad you had fun,” Philip said. “Now that you’re in, we can tackle some two person missions together.”

Jonathan nodded. The two of them closed up their training pods and headed back to their room. While racking up accomplishments in the virtual world was important, they still had to do their homework.

The next day they had their first class that directly involved the virtual world. That was the practical reason for the qualification deadline. Students had to be able to access the virtual world to be able to keep up with the class.

Even as Jonathan took his seat he could feel that the classroom was buzzing with energy. The first half of the class was an ordinary lecture in their ordinary classroom, but the students were still keyed up with anticipation. Instructor Brindley always commanded at least a little bit of attention, but the whole room was hanging on his every word as he introduced the features of the virtual world and what to expect from his training.

Their class sessions in the virtual world would count against their daily training time. On the bright side, the virtual currency required to fund their activities would be covered by the school. That was in addition to the improvement that focused instruction offered over unsupervised training. All in all, it was a good deal for the students.

There were two ways that their performance in the virtual world would affect their class rank. First of all, they would be graded in class, of course. Second, thirty percent of their overall grade would be based on the virtual resources that they managed to accumulate, an evaluation of their independent progress. At the beginning of the year it would be possible to collect most of the required resources alone. Later it would require two person teams and then from the second half of the year until they graduated six man teams would be the norm.

All in all, the assessment of their overall performance in the virtual world counted for about three times as much as any other single class’s grade. And that was the lesser half of the virtual world’s importance.

The key point was that training in the virtual world was by far the best way to improve their personal combat prowess. Other classes would teach the theory of war and educate the cadets on standard military tactics, but only the virtual world would allow them the experience of piloting mechs in combat. In later years they’d also get a chance to train with real mechs, but for the first year almost all of their combat evaluation would be performed in the virtual trainer.

Instructor Brindley also introduced the basic structure of the resource collecting tasks that would be available. The newbie area where Jonathan had first spawned would be the center of the virtual world for all of the first year cadets. And the center of the area was the mission hall that Philip had introduced to Jonathan the previous day.

There were standing missions. That was, rewards issued for eliminating recurring nuisances like the tentacled void beasts. You didn’t have to do anything in particular to obtain the rewards. As Jonathan had experienced the previous day, all you needed to do was kill the pests and then go let the mission hall know what you’d done.

While useful, those were the lowest level of missions. More important tasks that involved hunting down a particular item or a particular target carried higher reward, but also higher risk. The danger to their virtual mechs would be higher, of course, but also cadets could only participate in such missions by notifying the mission hall and putting up virtual currency as a surety. Fail the mission and you didn’t just have to pay to repair or replace your mech. You also lost the money you’d put up.

Even higher level missions would only open up once cadets had earned a certain level of trust from the mission hall. It would be a while before first year cadets would have the chance to take on such tasks.

The virtual world offered an enormous environment for students to explore and challenge themselves. It also offered virtual arenas to host duels between students.

Jonathan felt a pair of eyes burning into the back of his neck as Instructor Brindley started to introduce the dueling arenas. He looked back to see that Chad was giving him a dirty look. Before he could decide if he was going to do anything about it, the instructor asked if there were any volunteers who wanted to test out the dueling function.

Chad’s hand was in the air almost before the instructor had finished his sentence.

“I’ll give it a try,” Chad said when called upon. “I’d like to see what the top student can do.”