Mahon took a deep breath before entering the classroom. Zac patted him on the shoulder and smiled at him as they walked to their usual place. The room was silent, and Yordar was waiting in front of his blackboard. As he saw Mahon entering, he nodded to him and Mahon slightly bowed back. It was subtle and went almost unnoticed, but Mahon knew the professor hadn’t forgotten about him.

They sat down and waited for the other students to come inside. A cortege of assistants was already sorting papers and stuff near Yordar, but the professor himself only had eyes for the students. When everyone was inside, Yordar spoke to the whole classroom.

“Today is the day of another strategy test. As always, there will be a written test and an oral test. Do your best.”

The professor gestured to his assistants and they started to pass out the papers. When Mahon received his test, he barely read the first part before writing with energy. There were questions about Amentiae's weakness and although they were harder than during the last test, it was trivial for the past Last Red commander. Amentiae in Nightmare and in Ratho were the same, fortunately.

After that, it switched to more open questions about fighting scenarios. Mahon had to suppress his instinct that told him to call for retreat as soon as he looked at the first exercise. He knew it was flawed now.

With calm, he took a scrap paper and started noting the operating forces. He took his time to list every unit and its adjusted power in Nightmare. He was not sure of what he was doing, but he hoped that by translating Ratho’s scenario to a Nightmare one, he would be able to solve it.

Unfortunately, there were dozens of parameters to take into account. Even if he knew the relative power of a unit, he had to modify the distances accordingly as one moved much faster in Ratho than in Nightmare. He also had to take into account a small delay in reaction time. In Nightmare, he couldn’t order his troops around and made them change direction all the time. But, in Ratho, the teams were much more agile and could rearrange themselves in quick fashion.

Another thing to consider was the difference between First Blue Warriors and First Red warriors. It was mainly power in Ratho, whereas in Nightmare much more were impacted such as speed, resilience, agility… But even with all these factors, he felt better about using Nightmare as a reference. He had tried to unlearn everything and follow along with Yordar’s lessons, but it had been too hard. The professor also didn’t have the time to explain to him in Nightmare terms what that meant when he had more than two hundred students in class.

At least Mahon knew where his problem laid. There were two main points when one took a strategy decision, gauging and selecting. Gauging meant evaluating the warriors, the battlefield and the stakes, whereas selecting meant taking an informed decision based on the previous analysis. Both parts were equally important, but they needed completely different skill sets. Gauging meant to be able to judge and assess one’s strength and weakness. Thus, it required a lot of experience and observation skills. From a perfectly known basis, it was possible to adapt to the situation and add or remove some strength.

A unit of First Blue are tired from two days of walking around? Maybe they are ten percent less effective. Or twenty. Only experience could help you in these kinds of situations. Mahon had tried to learn the new basis for different types of warriors or Amentiae, but he had failed every time to adapt appropriately to small changes from the basis. And even the knowledge of the basis was often mixed with the ones from Nightmare resulting in even worse results.

On the other hand, selecting was the same in Nightmare and Ratho. Once Mahon knew what he could do and what were the strengths and weaknesses he had to deal with, it was easy to rely on his experience fighting Amentiae. Selecting was all about knowing what choices were available to you. The more possibilities you knew, the more diverse your strategies would be. Sometimes there was only one successful outcome and even if you had perfectly gauged the situation, you would be left at a dead end if that strategy wasn’t known to you.

Mahon was way ahead of any students in this category due to his tumultuous past. But that meant nothing if he was not able to gauge properly. Such was the relation between gauging and selecting. As he tried to take Ratho to Nightmare changes into consideration, Mahon finished computing the numbers for the third time and dropped his pen.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was still at the first exercise and every time he ran a simulation, he ended up with a different result. And he had absolutely no confidence in any of the previous solutions he had come to.

This test would again be a complete disaster, and Mahon finally opted to switch his strategy. Yordar wanted to test him and he knew Mahon came from Nightmare. He was perhaps even more aware of the problem Mahon was facing than himself. After a short break, Mahon decided to consider the problem in front of him as if it happened in Nightmare.

Retreat it is then.

He wrote his explanations and how he would proceed with the decision and switched to the next exercise. Aside from one case, he ordered for retreat in every scenario. That’s what he would have done if he had to deal with these situations in Nightmare.

Soon after, the test came to an end and Mahon hesitated to give back his answers. Was it what Yordar expected of him? Mahon had thought the professor would test him by himself. He was limited in a written test given his situation. Mahon decided to trust the professor, or trust himself in how he could convince the man during the oral test, and handed back his copy.

Like last time, once the copies had been picked up, names were called and one by one the students went to their respective areas to be tested by the assistants or Yordar himself. As expected, Mahon was part of the students assigned to Yordar. He patiently waited his turn until Yordar summoned him. He mentally prepared himself and walked into the room.

“Hello, Mahon. It’s nice to see you.”

“Hello, professor Yordar.”

“No need to be so formal, just call me Yordar.”

The professor gestured for the folded papers in front of him.

“Sorry for putting you through the written test but I can’t discriminate between students… Anyway, let’s see what you’re capable of. Draw one.”

Mahon hid a sigh of relief as he picked one sheet at random and read aloud the scenario. The armies were not too big and it looked like an easy situation. He then proceeded to explain what he would do in Nightmare. But Yordar interrupted him.

“Please start as if you were in Ratho.”

Mahon then tried to apply some of his translations of power to the scenario at hand, but under the silent scrutiny of Yordar, he lost all confidence. However, the professor gestured for him to continue.

“Go on, go on, I want to see your complete thinking process.”

Mahon gauged every unit the most he could and even if he knew it was possibly all wrong, he persevered and then selected a strategy from the situation he had analyzed. Yordar nodded to himself and muttered something that Mahon didn’t get before fumbling among piles of documents.

“Where did I put them? It was there just a moment ago…”

Mahon waited in silence, unsure of what to do.

“Oh! Here they are!” The professor pulled out a small folder and took out papers from inside it. “Here. These are situations from Nightmare drafted by a friend of mine.” He sorted some papers and picked one. “Try this one first. I believe it’s the easiest.”

Mahon looked at the sheet for a few seconds before he came up with the solution. Surprised at the quick answer, Yordar focused on what Mahon said and nodded along. When Mahon finished answering, the professor was already handing him another problem with a smile.

Like that, Mahon solved a dozen problems. It was all standard situations a First Black or a Last Green should be able to solve in an instant. Mahon took the time to explain his decisions, however, as it was the main point of the test. He detailed how he gauged the unit and smoothly transitioned to the different options available to him. From there, he justified why one was better than the others before concluding the exercise.

Yordar’s eyes were shining and his smile had grown bigger and bigger with each solved problem. He had given the paper one after the other and nodded approvingly at Mahon's answers.

“Let’s try harder ones, now.”

He pulled out another set of sheets from the folder and handed some of them to Mahon. The problem was described in multiple pages and this one alone was undoubtedly harder than the whole previous set. But Mahon was a Last Red Nightmare commander. He had solved way more complex problems facing real Amentiae hundreds of times. The numbers and estimations ran through his mind as he effortlessly did what he had done for the past twenty years.

Solutions emerged naturally to him as if his brain was one step ahead of his own thinking, but he ignored them purposefully in order to explain in detail his thought process. The problems were effortlessly solved one after the other and Mahon didn't stop speaking for more than a second in the last dozen minutes.

Finally, Yordar gave Mahon a problem that made him pause. Not because it was much harder, but because it was a situation he knew. He had fought this scenario. The more he looked into it, the more he was convinced it was his battle. He had only been a Last Black at the time and that had been the fight that had promoted him to Last White. Memories flashed by, and he stayed silent long enough for Yordar to intervene.

“Hard one?”

Mahon promptly recovered and focused back on the situation.

“No, no, it’s just… Where did you say you got this?” He said as he pointed to the documents in his hand.

“A friend of mine fought in Nightmare for a long time. He had much interest in strategy and I believe he made up some scenarios himself and some were from his own experience.” Yordar’s eyes scrutinized Mahon with attention. “Did you fight that battle?”

Mahon acquiesced silently while processing what Yordar had told him. The professor looked at another sheet and surprise flashed in his eyes as he continued.

“It’s written that it happened eight years ago. Not a lot of people survived this long in Nightmare…”

Mahon realized his mistake immediately. To his knowledge, only four people survived more than eight years in Nightmare. One was the man that had trained him twenty-two years ago, but he had died and left Nightmare a long time ago. He couldn’t have known of this battle. The three others were Mahon himself and his two Last White Nightmare commanders, Margot and Elmer.

Margot was now dead, so that only left Elmer. Elmer looked like an old eccentric man, though, so if Yordar knew all that, then he could figure out who Mahon really was. Even if the name Mahon was widely used among the warriors of Nightmare, it hardly mattered in this case. Did he already give himself away? Before he had the time to come up with a crappy excuse, Yordar spoke.

“Eh, don’t worry. You don’t need to tell me your secrets. Let’s go back to a problem from Ratho now. I want to try something.”

Yordar looked around for a bit and grabbed another paper than he gave to Mahon. He then moved beside Mahon and sat in a nearby chair.

“Try this one. You’re allowed to ask me any questions as long as it is related to gauging. But you select and conclude by yourself.”

Mahon eyed the professor and acquiesced. He immersed himself in the task and soon he asked his first question.

“If one hundred is the power of that unit when it is in its best condition. How much would it go down when taking into account that they walked a full day just before, they might be hungry given the little time they had to eat and prepare themselves, they are facing what seems to be an army twice their size and they’re located far away from their commander?”

Yordar nodded approvingly. “Between 84 and 86.”

“You don’t know exactly?” Mahon asked, surprised.

Yordar grinned at him before answering.

“Oh, I do, I do. But you don’t need to be more precise than that to solve this problem.”

His eyes shone with challenge, and Mahon smiled before diving back into the documents.