The selector stopped upon on a team name he wasn’t familiar with, but when he saw the team get up and teleported to the preparation room, Luon wryly smiled. The team was Team Tiger Force, and the person leading it was that tiger beastmen Luon’s team battle against during their first commander class.
Luon had to admit that at the time he would only be almost equal to the tiger beastmen’s abilities. It would have taken him a little less than half an hour to win. But after time had passed Luon’s combat ability grew at a rapid pace which surprised many of his peers. Luon didn’t know why it was so easy to do so, especially in the field of Mana control. He felt as if there were chains around himself and he was slowly becoming free. After the incident with the Clamaris, Luon felt that his ability to manipulate mana grew more profound for some reason.
If they had to battle again, Luon believed that he would able to wipe the tiger beastmen out without breaking a sweat in a matter of seconds.
It wasn’t that he was weak and hadn’t grown since last year, Luon was just that much better than him.
The match started, and unlike the interception strategy before, they started off by using the rush tactic that Zythos preferred to use.
Although their opponents managed to scout it beforehand, the tiger beastmen were fast and strong. Their physical abilities easily allowed them to reach the opposing base. The tiger beastmen smiled arrogantly as the group dived into the last line of defense, however, before they were able to decimate their foes the simpleton and overly arrogant tiger beastmen weren’t able to detect a lethal landmine trap and they fell down without being able to resist leaving only 1 commander on their team with nearly zero resources. Sure enough, they lost the match which resulted in the other classes victory.
When everyone saw their pathetic defeat, several of their classmates laughed while Zythos’s group could only grit their teeth from the pathetically lousy display their members had done.
After that match, every single group in Luon’s class became more careful of those cheap tactics. Luon saw many teams rush their opponents, amass a group of one type of unit that was hard to deal with or they had used annoying units to harass and dwindle their opponent’s resources. As Luon continued to watch the matches, he dryly laughed at the cheesy strategies they used.
There was no sure win plan, anything can happen on the battlefield. However, the previous matches maneuvers piqued Luon’s interest so he began to think up of some counters that could be used to win them matches like that.
Only after nearly half the class had their turn did Luon’s team, Team Ascension was picked. Their opponents were called Team C Delta Plus.
Luon and the others vanished into the preparations rooms as they saw the timer over their heads start to countdown from the one minute mark. Luon turned and faced his team and asked, “Are you guys ready?”
They nodded as the countdown timer ticked, the match, according to their plan had Luon as the command and initial first few minutes was used to construct objects and play for the late game.
While they were waiting for time to pass by Luon noticed a small display in the room, he motioned his friends and pointed in that direction as he asked, “What is that?”
When they got closer they found out on the panel was the names of their opponent, some details about them and a picture of them. Luon didn’t know about this panel when he was watching the games from the spectators stands as the preparation room had no cameras.
Luon thought that the purpose of this panel is so the students can strategize based on their opponent details. The opponents he was facing were extremely muscular, 4 out of the 5 people on the team were relatives, they were tall, Asian, and they looked the same from his perspective.
The commander was unfamiliar to Luon, but with their line up, Luon felt that they were going to use a rush tactic.
The first thing Luon decided to do once the match starts is send Tyron to scout out their plans while he builds a defensive perimeter.
As Luon started to formulate a series of plays in his mind he lost track of time, a minute was really short, and Bendan had to nudge him back to reality before the match started.
The surroundings changed, and Luon and his team were spawned on a canyon. After an abundant amount of matches Luon had played, he decided that he had enough experience to decide on creating a custom map.
The design of the map was a valley with steep cliffs that made scaling it difficult. It was a simple layout that forced the enemies ground units to enter a choke point where Luon’s forces to rain terror from above.
However, they’re a few flaws to this layout. First of all, because it’s difficult to enter it was also difficult to leave. With only one pathway all the enemy had to do is guard the path from a distance. Secondly, because of the widely spread cliffs, it was difficult to defend against people who were able to scale the walls as they could come from almost anywhere. And last, of all, scouting became even more challenging to do without the ability of ground scouts. Since there was only one pathway Luon could only scout with air units, if he had used the ground ones, they would be easily intercepted.
Fortunately, Luon had some partial solutions to these problems, so the flaws weren’t that bad. Luon wasn’t planning to leave the base in the first place because he was building a significant force.
As for the cliffs, Luon decided the first thing to do was build some scouts that were able to cling against the wall and report to him if there were any enemies, also with Gizmo on the cliff region, Luon felt that the enemy wouldn’t be able to get in close.
For scouting he had Tyron equip an invisibility artifact which he made from the scraps in the first few minutes of the match and sent him out, even without it Tyron always had the mask, but that was his trump card.
There was a reason why he didn’t have Tyron pre-equipped with an invisibility artifact before the had match started, it was because Luon became really experienced with making them, it didn’t take long compared to constructing a robot.
Once the match had started right away Luon summoned a lot of workers and scraps, he also summoned several pre-completed parts for an invisibility device, so it took him only a minute to set that up.
Luon gave Tyron the invisibility device and sent him off to scout. Gizmo patrolled the cliffs, and Bendan stood in the middle of the pathway anticipating the arrival of the enemy.
Nearly 5 Minutes had passed and the two of them, Luon and Thomas, and an army of robots they brought in for help, had already constructed a robotics facility that would continuously produce robotic warriors, this was where Thomas will spend most of his time during the match.
With Thomas’s help, they could make humanoid droids, animal type robots, dragons, and other types of robots. Sadly all of these were either remotely controlled or mounted by a human Luon had summoned using points. The government has a lot of restriction in regards to AI robots.
Just as the factory was finished, Luon received some unfortunate news from Tyron.
“They’ve set up an interception line,” said Tyron. After Tyron left the valley of the base, he entered a forest which their opponents had selected as their terrain.
Luon thought as much, if they were planning on making a rush, then Tyron would have seen them setting out 4 minutes into the battle, and the very fact that they chose a forest landscape made it difficult to scout out their actions they were clearly hiding something.
At first, Luon considered using the forest landscape but thought that the high cliffs were better for range attacks, all he had to is build a wall to hide what they were doing. Luon asked Tyron, “Can you sneak by? Describe the situation for me.”
Tyron replied, “Can’t. It seems they’ve set up an electrical field. In the front are the four soldiers suited in heavy armor and behind that is the electrical field.
Luon frowned and thought, ‘Electrical field? That must mean that those people wearing the suit of armor must be slower than they look because that’s only used to catch people that were too fast for them.’
As Luon starts to think about what to do. One of the men glance in the direction where Tyron was causing him to freeze up, Tyron thought, ‘Calm down, right now I’m invisible, there’s no way he can see me right now. Calm my heart, close my eyes and blend with the environment.’
Tyron stayed still ignorant of his surroundings as he closed his eyes. Seconds later he heard a sound of something hitting the tree beside him, it was about a few centimeters away from his face.
One of the brothers asked the one tossed the object, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just thought I felt something over there, I guess it was just my imagination,” said the brother.
Tyron tried to calm himself down as he slowly opened his eyes and glanced at the spot he heard a sound from. Before Tyron was a sharp steel knife sticking out of the tree stump.
Tyron heart rate went up a bit before he managed to calm himself down, he then started to ask Luon for some instructions.
As Tyron was communicating with Luon, the brother who had tossed the knife began to approach his direction. Tyron stopped all of his actions, even though he was invisible he was afraid of letting even a single ripple of air expose his location.
The man stood next to Tyron and pulled the knife out before putting it in his pockets. Tyron felt relieved and hoped for the man to go away, however, his hopes weren’t answered. Instead, the man startled to strip off a portion of his gear as he then began to urinate before Tyron’s eyes.
The man looked up as he relieved himself, however, if he had looked down instead he would have noticed that several parts of the liquid splashed on Tyron’s face.
Tyron was mad, he wanted to attack the man when he was at the most vulnerable moment, The first strike would have cut it right off, but he managed to hold himself in and waited silently.
In reality, there was no need to relieve themselves in the simulation while in the Vortex Container, all of this was already systematically done as the body condition is monitored by the system. Although you could feel the urge to do so when the moment came you didn’t need to do anything.
However, some people weren’t able to break the habit of relieving themselves in the simulation since everyone had done so when they were first incubated. It was like taking a shower and doing your business at the same time, once you start the habit it might be difficult to prevent.
After the young man was done with what he needed to do, he turned away and began to equip his gear. Quicky Tyron checked his BMPU for instructions on what to do and found that Luon had messaged him to attack the group from a distance to evaluate their defenses and to see if he could weaken them.
Tyron almost wanted to scream, ‘Couldn’t you tell me that a minute earlier?!’ He might’ve not only done a large amount of damage but ruin someone’s manhood while not being shamed like this. Tyron pulled out an arrow as he didn’t have a knife and started to creep towards the defenseless man while hiding his killing intent.
At this moment one of the brothers who saw their brother’s actions said, “Man, that’s gross, don’t you know that women are watching this match? How could you do that.”
The man stopped midway of equipping his armor before he responded with laughter, “Hahaha, that’s okay the system will only show action packed scenes like fights, base construction, and close counter espionage like a spy about to be caught if he was a few meters away from someone. None of that happened to me because all I did was do my business, so there’s no way I’m on camer-”
At this moment Tyron who heard his words raged as he bellowed, “Die!” Everything was recorded to his class and the other class, it will forever be in the replays and Tyron couldn’t help but lament at his thought. With all of his might, he stabbed the arrow into the man’s neck ending his life as his body vanished signifying his elimination.
The other brothers were alarmed as they screamed, “Enemy attack!” They started to throw projectiles at Tyron which he retaliated with his bow. He dodged several of attacks as he let loose three arrows which were all accurately lined up with each other. All of them his the same spot on one of the brothers but to his dismay did no damage to the fancy looking armor.
“Tsk,” Tyron clicked his tongue and retreated, there was no way to penetrate their armor with his arrows, and he had eliminated one of them already, so there was no point in staying.
As Tyron left there no way for them to stop him with their slow movement speed, so they gave up and reported it to their commander.
With the first blood drawn the battle had truly started.
