The next day, Jonathan and Philip headed to the training pods together. Philip stopped him before he could climb into his pod.

“What took you so long to finish the tests, anyways?” Philip asked. Jonathan could tell that it had been weighing on him for a while.

In a school that ranked everything, Jonathan had been the very last student to finish the qualification exam and enter the virtual world. Bringing up the rear in the very first contest had obviously put a stain on his record and lowered his classmates’ expectations. Now, of course, Jonathan was happy to let his performance do the talking.

He didn’t owe an explanation to people he barely knew who were gunning for his position. But Philip had been firmly on his side the whole time. He deserved at least a little bit of an explanation.

“Every test was a free practice session, with a free energy recharge,” Jonathan replied. “Why rush past it into a virtual world where you have to pay for everything?”

He thought about mentioning his goal of passing every test with a perfect score, but decided against it. He’d just won a big fight, there was no need for any pointless bragging. If his efforts really had put him ahead of the rest of his classmates, that would show up in the results soon enough.

Philip laughed. “I wish I’d thought of that. You picked up more merit points in one fight than most of our class even has in their accounts.”

While true, he was overstating the matter a little bit. The Royal Academy didn't have any interest in letting a student coast to a good ranking after receiving one big windfall. The merit points given out for homework completed and for successful challenges would only be increasing over time. Not to mention that quests in the virtual world would be ramping up with a vengeance now that every student had access to them.

Jonathan had given himself a nice head start. He was still far from locking in first place for good. If he slacked off, it wouldn't be long before the rest of the class was nipping at his heels.

"You can go find a fight of your own,” Jonathan said. That was the other thing. He’d won the first duel, but naturally other students would be participating in duels from now on as well. As he'd just experienced, fortunes could be won or lost in a single fight.

Philip scoffed. “I need to find somebody willing to make a bet with me.”

“You could always set a challenge match,” Jonathan said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Philip replied, “but scamming people the way you did is the way to get a big payday.”

Jonathan shrugged. He hadn’t set out to scam anybody. If things had worked out that way, well, he wouldn’t complain.

“You should try Chad,” he said. “I bet he’ll be looking for a big win to earn his points back.”

The rest of their class would be cautious after watching a student lose so many merit points in an instant. If Jonathan knew Chad, though, he'd be ready and eager to try to earn those points back in one fell swoop.

“Kick him while he’s down, huh?” Philip asked. “I like the way you think.”

With that, they logged into the virtual world. When they arrived at the central meeting hall, Philip brought him to the front desk.

“It would be a waste of time to have you hunting down small fry,” Philip said. “We can jump straight to the battle team formation mission.”

Jonathan looked at his roommate in surprise. Jumping into the team formation mission was no small thing. Passing it would lock them into their battle team for the duration of their time in the academy, and if nothing unusual happened they would continue to fight side by side on the front lines for the Orion Star Kingdom.

Jonathan knew his win in the duel had been impressive, but he’d thought they'd start by teaming up to tackle some two man missions to see how well they worked together before they made everything official.

It wasn’t impossible to dissolve a battle team, but it was difficult. It also carried a heavy social stigma. Joining up wasn’t a decision to be made on the spur of the moment.

“All right. I'll join your team?” Jonathan asked. He hoped Philip had at least done the paperwork.

To his surprise, Philip shook his head. “I want to join yours.”

Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “How come?”

He might technically be a higher rated student at the moment, but that could always change. For his part, Philip had more experience in the virtual world and a far superior educational pedigree. Jonathan was surprised that he was willing to take on a subordinate role.

“Between your sync rate and how badly you kicked Chad around,” Philip said, “you’re not leaving the top spot any time soon.”

Jonathan just looked at him, still unsure.

“Besides, running a team is mostly planning and paperwork,” Philip said. “I know where my strengths are.”

Jonathan chuckled. He didn’t love doing paperwork himself, but he didn’t mind shouldering the burdens of leadership.

He figured they would make a good team. The two of them got along, which was important for any group project. More importantly, Philip was a loyal, honest, straightforward kind of person. Sure, he was ambitious and competitive. But he channeled that competitive drive into straightforward competition.

No doubt they’d be having a very different conversation if Jonathan had lost his duel. But he’d won, so there they were. Philip wasn’t interested in reaching the top through any kind of sneaky backroom deals. He’d probably challenge Jonathan for leadership if he thought the gap in fighting strength had closed, but Jonathan could live with that.

He reached out and clasped hands. “Teammates, then.”

Of course, it wasn’t quite that simple. The virtual world would let them register as a prospective team just by filling out a form, but in order to achieve official status they would have to prove that they were worthy. The first step was to accumulate a required list of virtual materials. Philip had that covered, his weeks spent grinding in the virtual world paying off.

The more challenging step was to fight a team of enemy mechs. Every battle team had their own small base within the virtual world. They weren’t just handed out for free, though. Instead, when a team attempted registration, the computer system would generate a base and a team of enemy mechs to go with it. If you managed to drive the enemy mechs away then the base was yours, along with the official recognition of your team.

Jonathan filled out the necessary forms to start the process. It was his first experience in the duties of a team leader. Once he’d handed over the material Philip had gathered, he received a system notification in his heads up display. Along with the text message, a small map of the outskirts of the area appeared, an otherwise unremarkable location marked with a red X.

Jonathan turned to Philip, only to find him looking cross eyed as he processed the information that had just been sent out. He waited for a moment for Philip to finish reading.

“Ready for a fight?” Jonathan asked.

“Are you kidding?” Philip replied. “My hands have been itching ever since your duel finished.”

The two of them loaded into their mechs and launched into action.

They appeared in an area of scrubby forest and low rolling hills. In one direction the trees started to thin out until it turned into the sandy maze of canyons Jonathan and Philip had fought their way through last time. In the other direction, off in the distance Jonathan could see the vegetation slowly growing more dense as the forest found more fertile land for growth.

According to the map, their prospective base was a few kilometers ahead, smack in the middle of the hilly terrain. Most likely it was built into the side of a hill, although Jonathan wouldn’t know for sure until he laid eyes on it for himself. Their mission briefing gave them enough information to point them in the right direction. Everything else was their own responsibility.

“So, what’s the plan?” Philip asked.

Jonathan considered their options. Going up against an enemy that was dug into a fortified area, the safest approach would be to replicate what he had done during the open world test and tear down the fortifications. Once the enemy forces were buried in rubble they could just wait for the crushing forces to finish them off, or perhaps dig them up to administer the coup de grace if they were in a hurry.

As Jonathan understood it, the default construction of a battle team’s base wasn’t particularly well fortified. Two mechs intent on tearing the thing down wouldn’t have too much trouble carrying out an impromptu demolition.

There were two problems that made him shy away from that plan. First, the base that was handed over to the players might not be the same base that the computerized enemy got to use. While the virtual world was designed as a reasonably faithful representation of reality, the Royal Academy wasn’t above fudging the numbers a little in order to provide students with an appropriate level of challenge. Jonathan didn’t want to build a strategy around property damage when for all he knew the base was indestructible before they took it over.

On the flip side, they were assaulting what would become their own base of operations. If they managed to bring the thing down around the ears of their artificial opponents then that was all well and good for getting past the fight, but Jonathan had no doubt that they would be stuck with the bill for cleanup and reconstruction.

He wanted their team to be able to focus on conquering new martial challenges and exploring the leading edge of the content that was made available for first year students. He didn’t want to have to grind for cash just to get their base back into a presentable condition.

If they were trying to win without doing too much damage to the base, then any kind of long range strategy was out. Jonathan was confident in his aim, but getting into a rifle duel against somebody who was crouched behind protective fortifications was not his idea of a good time.

“We charge in close, then kill them before they kill us,” Jonathan said.

It was a simple plan. There wasn’t much there that the two of them could screw up. There also wasn’t much to give them an edge over their opponents.

“All right,” Philip said. “No messing around.”