Sevs had to give it to command; they didn't waste time. After the celebrations and ceremonies, they were all sent off to their chosen schools. Turns out Carl was able to go through a different school for sergeants, but they fast-tracked Sevs right to officer training.

From his understanding, if this was a normal military they would have all gone through their training and then shipped off to whatever units needed them. While that did happen when necessary, the people here were too used to fantasy adventurer groups. It also helped that through some system magic, their training would all take about three months.

Sevs didn't understand how that would be the case as Robert's heavy training couldn't be nearly as complicated as Soshal's intelligence training. However, when he was about to enter the training simulation pod, he noticed that the tech had to load it with a lot of energy. A lot more than he had for the others.

"What's the ratio of cost for each training?" Sevs asked.

The tech seemed surprised but answered anyway. "It depends. The full command is one of the most expensive. It's about three times that of pilot training."

Sevs just nodded and slid into the pod. That was an unusual choice for training. Normally it was dependent on time. But here each training took the same time but cost differently.

There were times he had seen the system do similar things, but that was usually in fantasy worlds. They tended to be a training crystal that, when absorbed, a skill was imparted. Sometimes they were quest rewards. Sevs thought a bit about quests. It was something he hadn't thought much about here as they weren't very common.

So far, he had only done a couple of quests, and the only reward was a slight increase in skills and survival. Maybe as they started doing more complicated missions away from just guardian, the ship, things might change.

These were just idle thoughts that Sevs let pass as he fell into the simulation.

***

Blinking away the darkness, Sevs found himself on a field. It was dead center between two lines of soldiers with muskets. The world was frozen around him. Trying to get out of the line of fire, Sevs found that he couldn't move either.

Looking down, he saw that he was wearing the red uniform that matched the line on the left. On the right were a bunch of blue uniforms. He only had a second to take in his situation before a prompt appeared in front of him.

Ensure the red army wins.

It was a simple command, but he wasn't in an easy position. As soon as he finished reading it, the prompt disappeared, and the world unfroze. Sevs was ready for this and threw himself to the ground. He was just in time as he heard the wiz of balls of lead fly over his head.

Not wanting to risk sticking his head up as the next line fired, Sevs crawled over to his one line. The soldiers didn't seem to notice him at all. He checked for rank insignia and didn't find any on any of the soldiers. He was able to get through the line. Looking behind the line, he looked for a command tent or something.

There was nothing. Turning around, the entire red line spread out to either side. The only defining feature was a flag bearer on the right side of the line. As Sevs made his way over there, the line kept cycling through. The back lines reload as the front passes empty rifles back when empty.

Surprisingly few men fell. The muskets were very inaccurate and rarely even came close to hitting the targets at this range. The soldiers didn't seem to mind at all, and neither side took any initiative to move closer.

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Making it to the flag bearer, Sevs looked to see the other side. They had the exact same numbers. At the far end, he could even see a flag bearer. There was a general standing next to the blue flag bearer, but he was moving mechanically like all of the simulation troops, just calling out the timing of the firing. That was something Sevs's trooped didn't seem to need.

Sevs's task was to ensure that the red army would win. There was no time limit or any restrictions. There were many ways to do this. The obvious one would be to go behind enemy lines and take out as many as he could. They seemed to ignore him completely. However, seeing that this was a command training simulation, that didn't seem like the answer.

Instead, he asked his flag bearer a question. "How long have you been here?"

"The battle has been ongoing for 2 minutes 45 seconds," Was the robotic reply.

Sevs moved down the line and tried asking the same to one of the men reloading. They ignored him completely. He grabbed a rifle and fired it into the blue line. He had no way of checking if he hit, but if he did, it had no effect. Sevs frowned thoughtfully. It seemed that he only had one way to influence the battle.

Returning to the flag bearer. He asked them to order the men to step forward. The flag bearer changed the pattern in which it was waving its flag in. A few seconds later, the red line was much closer. They had lost around 20 seconds on their volley by Sevs count. The blue army didn't react and just kept firing.

Huh, Sevs thought. As they were the same numbers, a charge didn't seem like it would help very much. However, if he did nothing, that was not ensuring that the red army would win. With an idea, Sevs started having his army move to the right. A sideward move didn't stop them from firing at all, so he kept repeating the order.

Eventually, the armies were firing at nothing as they were offset. Sevs had his army pivot, so they were firing into the flank of the blue army. The maneuver took some time, but now they were hitting the blue army without any retaliation.

The red army advanced and started to curl, slowly enveloping the flank of the blue army.

The rest of the battle didn't take very long. Sevs questioned the usefulness of this exercise. How hard was it to defeat an enemy that didn't react to anything he did?

When the last enemy fell, he respawned in the center again.

***

This time when he started moving the soldiers to the side, the blue army rotated with them. It wasn't able to move very fast, but just enough to not have the same thing happen again.

So this time, Sevs split his forces. The blue army kept the half he was with in front of them. Sevs had his half slow back away so as not to be destroyed. The blue army was decimated from behind by the other half of the red army.

***

Now the blue army bent to keep both halves of his army in sight. Still firing into ranks twice as deep was enough to finish them off. But for the first time, the red army took heavy losses. Again it reset.

Each time he figured out a new strategy, the blue army became more responsive. Eventually, each of the blue soldiers could do a lot of things that his soldiers weren't able to. Still, he managed to find new formations that let them win. Each time the margin for victory got thinner and thinner.

Eventually, Sevs lost. He knew it before the battle was even half over. He had overextended a feint and the blue army and took advantage of it. His soldiers weren't able to get back in position to take charge. It was frustrating to only be able to give commands through the flag bearer, as even the most basic commands had a significant delay. As the troop formations became more complicated or split, the commands needed to be even more complicated.

This time when Sevs respawned in the center, the blue army didn't have any new abilities. Sevs didn't make the same mistake and rolled right over them. Then the army advanced again. Sevs started to lose more and more. But he was able to recover when given a second chance.

Until he wasn't; once the blue army had sub-commanders, it took him three tries to finally win, and it was a close thing. The next time the blue army advanced in capabilities, Sevs lost five times in a row. Each one was close, but nothing he seemed to do was enough.

The sixth respawn Sevs finally had an upgrade to his own troops. There were a few options to choose from. He chose quicker communications. That only got him through another few levels. There were just too many things to pay attention to.

The next upgrade, he got sub-commanders. They were largely incompetent and couldn't think for themselves, but now he could queue up orders for groups of men. Each time he progressed to the point that he lost five times in a row, he got another upgrade.