Jonathan wasn't mentally ready to tackle another big group of enemies. He was also starting to run a little low on spiritual energy. Fortunately, he was able to pull up the recording of what he'd observed from on top of the skyscraper and pick out a few isolated enemies to target.

Taking down individual void beasts wasn't much trouble. Especially when he got the drop on them. Jonathan spent ten minutes racking up four more kills and even regenerated a bit of spiritual energy along the way.

For the final ten minutes of the exam, he decided to make one more big push. After all, he wouldn't receive any bonus points on the test for finishing with spiritual energy in the tank.

His last target would be a sturdy building that a team of enemy mechs had turned into a miniature fortress. The computer-generated mechs weren't as resilient as the void beasts or the spirit beasts, but they worked together. At least, they worked together in small teams. If there had been a city wide organization of enemy troops, he would have been hounded by enemy attacks since he took out that first sniper.

In any event, each kill would count for about the same amount of points. In addition, the setting of the exam was that the city had long been abandoned by friendly civilians and had become an enemy stronghold. Jonathan wouldn't be rewarded for engaging in property destruction, but he wouldn't be punished either.

It was time to use that rule to his advantage.

Judging from the sign above the front door, the enemy hard point used to be a bank. It should be a bit sturdier than the average civilian construction. As far as Jonathan was concerned, the heavier the walls, the better.

When he'd observed the building from above, he'd seen two mechs standing guard outside. Now that he was on a lower level, he could confirm what he'd suspected before: another four mechs were inside the building, behind improvised fortifications.

Mech combat wasn't all about slugging matches or firing accuracy. It was also important to know how to use the environment. As pilots improved and were able to use more powerful mechs the surroundings might change from a bank to a military fortification to a starbase, but the basic principle was the same. Plasma bolts that spent their energy burning through concrete were plasma bolts that weren't chewing through enemy shielding.

In this case, the enemy mechs had knocked down a bunch of interior walls and set up firing positions behind the resulting rubble. It wasn't perfect cover, but between the imperfect protection and their numerical advantage, Jonathan would have a hell of a time taking them out by charging through the front door.

Accordingly, Jonathan introduced himself to the enemy team by raining a flurry of plasma bolts on the sentries out front. He was hitting with maybe one shot out of three, which was fine. Those hits fizzled harmlessly against the enemy's shields, while the misses crashed into the building behind them.

The sentries reacted quickly to the incoming barrage. The two of them spread out and crouched down before returning fire. They'd piled up a bit of rubble outside. Jonathan made sure that his shots either hit the sentries or the building behind them. He didn't want to waste energy making the rubble bounce.

Neither Jonathan nor the enemy were particularly accurate. The building beneath Jonathan's feet shuddered as stray plasma bolts crashed into it. On the other side, Jonathan's shots were taking chunks out of the bank's walls as often as they were splashing against the sentry's shields.

So far, everything was going according to plan. Jonathan raced along the roof, maintaining his distance from the bank, and leaped into the air. Rubble pelted the back of his mech as the building behind him collapsed, sending debris flying. Jonathan didn't pay it much mind, focusing on keeping up his rate of fire.

He kept moving, circling around the bank from a distance and leaving a trail of collapsed buildings behind him. The mechs from deeper inside the bank had joined the fun once they had a better idea of where he was. His constant movement had kept most of the plasma bolts from hitting him, but he had also used up an awful lot of his spiritual energy. He wasn't quite running on empty just yet, but keeping up a constant stream of covering fire all by himself was taking a toll on his reserves.

A red warning light flashed in the corner of his vision. His beam rifle was overheating. Jonathan was a little surprised that it had lasted so long. He changed direction, charging straight for the bank and sending a final flurry of shots into the increasingly battered building as he drew near.

In the vast open space of the earlier tests, a charging mech had been nothing more than target practice for an enemy who could move and shoot at the same time. When the enemy mechs had decided to build up useful fortifications, though, they'd given up their mobility. A clever human enemy might have noticed that Jonathan had burned out his rifle and decided to change tactics.

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For the test, though, the system had arranged enemies that were reasonably skilled, but not particularly clever. The sentries out front shot at Jonathan as he zig-zagged forward, then drew their beam sabers and prepared to receive his charge.

Jonathan had been honing his skills using every single minute of training that the Royal Academy allowed. He wanted to fly as high as his talents would take him. He wanted to take advantage of the Divine Piloting System that he'd inherited. He wanted to wipe the smirk off of Chad Worthington's stupid face. Introductory enemy mechs were no longer serious opponents once he closed into close range.

The two sentries made some effort to work together, at least. They held their beam sabers at the ready and stood close enough together to support each other. They also both went for his feint, allowing him to change course at the last second and plow the shoulder of his mech into the chest of his chosen victim.

The two of them went to the ground in a cacophony of crashing metal. The other mech's arm was splayed out, its beam saber lost in the fall. Jonathan didn't waste any time. He used his mech's free arm to lever its upper body off the ground, then stabbed straight through the enemy pilot cabin. The enemy mech shuddered, then went still.

Crashing footfalls rang out behind him. Jonathan rolled his mech to the side, just in time for a plasma blade to flash through where he had been and gouge out a trench in the street below. Jonathan shoved with his arms and juiced his movement with a bit of help from the flight pack to propel his mech upright. He landed in a solid stance, cracks radiating out from beneath his metal feet.

The other sentry was still recovering from its missed strike. Jonathan brought his beam saber down in an overhead chop. The other mech only managed to get its arm in the way. The enemy's shield flashed, absorbing just enough of the energy of the hit to keep him from chopping its arm off. It was still knocked back off balance. The follow up sweep of his blade sent the mech staggering back. Jonathan shifted his grip and lunged forward, stabbing his blade straight through the pilot compartment.

Even before the dying sentry hit the ground, a hail of plasma bolts rained down on Jonathan from inside. The bank building was over four stories tall. Large portions of the inside must have been hollowed out in order to allow the enemy mechs to fit inside. They would have had to be careful to avoid doing structural damage. Jonathan didn't feel any such compunctions.

He'd be shot dead long before he could get into arm's reach if he charged straight at their prepared firing positions. Instead, he ran around the edge of the building, dragging his plasma blade through the wall as he moved. The energy meter measuring his remaining spiritual energy ticked down towards empty. The plasma blade would make short work of ordinary construction materials, but using it for an extended cut like this used up energy at a ferocious pace.

Jonathan made it all the way down one wall. He turned and continued, making it halfway along the next wall before his efforts were finally rewarded. All of those plasma bolts he'd fired earlier had already damaged the structure of the building. Now with a systematic furrow carved through much of the outer wall, it finally gave up the ghost.

Jonathan shut down his beam saber and backed away. The enemy mechs had been having a hard time hitting him with their plasma rifles, as he had largely avoided their line of sight. Now that the building was coming down, they stopped firing entirely.

Jonathan watched with satisfaction as the bank collapsed. Jonathan stood firm. The dust cloud parted around him, the scouring grit deflected away at a nominal cost in spiritual energy. After the draining ordeal, Jonathan’s energy reserves were low enough that he hated to part with even such tiny increments, but he didn't have a choice.

With only minutes left in the fight, Jonathan was in no shape to hunt down any further targets. His energy reserves were almost gone and his weapons were barely functional. He also hadn’t yet tallied up full marks in his last battle. The thorough collapse of the massive building would have killed any ordinary people stuck inside, but mechs were made of sterner stuff.

Fortunately, at Jonathan’s level mechs were still somewhat constrained by ordinary physics. While dropping a building on their head wouldn’t prove fatal immediately, the pressure of tons of rubble pressing down on them would wear away his enemy’s energy reserves eventually. A higher level mech would be able to shove the rubble aside and return to the fight, but Jonathan’s opponents would be lucky if they were able to dig their way back to the surface.

Well, not that lucky. Jonathan was standing watch, after all. His vigilance paid off as he saw some rubble shift just as the time was about to expire. Jonathan raced toward the disturbance. He arrived just as the enemy mech broke through and drove down his bam saber without hesitation. Thanks to all the work the rubble and debris had done wearing away the enemy’s shield, there wasn’t even a flicker of interruption before the saber plunged through the pilot’s compartment.

A moment later the scene around Jonathan froze. He waited with bated breath for the System’s evaluation to appear.

[Final free form combat examination... passed! Your score is 100%. Would you like to proceed to the virtual world?]

Jonathan let out a whoop of celebration. He’d passed! On his very first try, he’d managed to get full marks. All of the hard work that he’d put into acing the earlier exams had finally paid off.

He did his best to calm down, but he could still feel a big grin on his face as he selected the option that would grant him entry to the virtual world. After weeks of listening to Philip’s stories about the virtual world, Jonathan was finally going to get to see it with his own eyes. Well, his own virtual eyes. He’d get to experience it first hand, anyways.