45 Retreat

"Schwaah!"

The air pressure exerted between Daniel's and tthe AI's mech generated several sonic booms as the both of them fought in close-combat with their beam sabers.

Unfortunately, even though Daniel had thought that he would be able to gain momentum through the artificial intelligence's previous distraction from the homing dagger, the latter's ability to multi-task went above Daniel's expectations.

While using its body to dodge from the dagger, the artificial intelligence took out his beam saber from the back of its body at the same time, directly countering Daniel's attack as the latter flew towards him at breakneck speed.

"D*mn!" Daniel gritted his teeth as he exchanged a few rounds with the mech. "I should have allocated more time to weapons training instead of simply focusing on hand-to-hand combat!"

Unfortunately, it was too late for Daniel to lament about his past mistakes since he is now being forced back by the mech in front of him only after several blows. For some reason, the mech controlled by the AI seem to be able to exert a much higher force than him even though they were operating the exact same mech type!

"I'm going to lose if I don't do anything at this point!" Daniel thought to himself. "Well, here goes nothing!"

Suddenly, just as the both of them were about to score another blow against each other, Daniel immediately released several flares from his arms and legs, completely obscuring his body from his opponent as the white mist propelled towards the artificial intelligence, masking Daniel's path of retreat.

It's fortunate that this is simply an exercise as Daniel's method wouldn't work in real-life combat since Minerva would instantly spot everything within the field even without visual confirmation of the target. Luckily, since this is only a training module, neither mechs were connected to the mainframe of Minerva and thus could only rely on themselves and their mech's functions in order to fight one another.

Daniel managed to retreat and increase the distance between him and his opponent by one kilometer, which is enough time for him to grab his own long-ranged sniper rifle from his back and charge it to 100%. Though, the artificial intelligence have already swapped away the mist surrounding him by then and is now chasing towards Daniel's direction. Within three seconds, the AI would come within reaching distance again!

To prevent himself from getting hit, the artificial intelligence zig-zagged around, moving diagonally towards random positions while reducing the distance towards Daniel, making it really hard for Daniel to aim and get an accurate shot.

"Well," Daniel thought to himself. "Let's hope that all the times I've wasted playing FPS games with Jake would help me with this situation!"

With that in mind, Daniel took a deep breath and watched the auto-tracking fuction on his aim-bot try to get a clear shot at his opponent. Even though his tracking aim-bot is able to predict an opponent's location within the next second, thus allowing for a person to compensate with its movements, the unpredictability of the AI's movements made it almost impossible for the aim-bot to predict the AI's future location. When Daniel realize that the aim-bot wouldn't be able to get a clear confirmation in time, he simply used his intuition and directly triggered his shot, blasting a straight lazer beam into the horizon instantly.

Compeletely due to dumb luck, Daniel manage to score an impact on the AI mech's body through his Hail Mary shot, completely incinerating the opponent's left arm in one go before the latter manage to dodge. Unfortunately, Daniel did not have the time to revel in his victory as his opponent didn't even need to take time to recover and directly confronted Daniel the second after losing its own arm!

Since Daniel was still using both his mech arms to hold his sniper rifle, he could only use that to defend himself against his opponent's incoming beam saber attack. Without suspense, as Daniel retreated while holding out the sniper rifle to defend himself with both hands, the beam saber directly slashed through the rifle, destroying the weapon instantly, thus forcing Daniel to throw away the weapon which had just been sliced into two.

Fortunately, the sniper rifle's demise brought enough time for Daniel to raise his shields again. However, it did not give Daniel enough time to take out his own weapon as well. Therefore, Daniel could only brace against the AI's impact as the latter's beam rifle started chipping away at the force field's energy.

Without suspense, the artificial intelligence managed to chip away Daniel's defense with just two slashes with its beam saber. Even though Daniel's shield function is not out of commission, he managed to grab his spare beam saber in time and defend against the mech's third slash. Though, since Daniel hadn't been in the best stance as he defended, he was directly pushed away by that slash, making him fly backwards from the momentum of the previous impact.

The AI directly took this chance and pulled out a small laser gun that had been strapped on his waist, shooting at Daniel intermittently as the latter continued to fall towards the ground below while spinning rapidly.

When Daniel finally crashed against the ground a few hundred meters below, the system inside his mech gave him a rather bleak damage report.

Before Daniel could even make a scathing comment to the emotionless system within his mech, the artificial intelligence landed heavily on the ground before him. He held out his beam saber and aimed it directly towards Daniel's neck as it said with an emotionless tone, "Candidate Daniel 0777. You have lost. Please surrender."

"..." Daniel tried to move his body only to feel a sudden pain on his right arm. It seemed to be similar to the phantom pain that amputees feel after losing their arms back in the 21st century, when mechanical replacements were not invented back then. Feeling indignant, Daniel didn't say anything and tried to eject himself from the mech only to realize that the ejection function isn't working either due to the previous impact towards the ground.

Daniel could not help but curse at the fragility of his own mech as he stared angrily at the artificial intelligence currently staring down at him emotionlessly. Although the AI itself doesn't contain any emotion like arrogance, Daniel still felt as though he is being looked down upon by the other mech.

Unfortunately, his opponent did not give Daniel any time to resist anymore. Without warning, it directly slashed against Daniel's mech, chopping off both his arms and legs before grabbing his torso. The mech then pulled Daniel right in front of his face as he spoke again, "Do you surrender, Daniel?"

"... I surrender." Daniel gritted his teeth and finally spouted out after weighing the pros and cons within his head. The instant after he said that, the artificial intelligence pulled his dilapidated mech body along and flew all the way back to the parking lot.

The AI gently placed Daniel's mech on the ground, letting Daniel eject himself from the chest of the mech. After coming out of the mech he walked down its dilapidated body and jumped onto the ground only to find a few people already waiting for him outside.

Without anyone's prompt, the people before Daniel started clapping at the same time.

"Congratulations on breaking the 30 second mark of surviving the AI's training module, Daniel." The admissions officer who had accompanied Daniel here all the way from the admissions office said with a smile. "With your results, you have landed yourself square ahead of most first-year students within the EU Military Academy."

"How long did the fight last for?" Daniel asked, feeling slightly gratified that at least he did better than many others within the academy.

"42.03 seconds." The person standing next to the admissions officer said with a light smile. "That's better than 85% of all first-year students' results during their admissions exam."

Daniel nodded at the young man next to the admissions officer while thinking to himself, "That means if this were an exam, I wouldn't be able to even get an A!" Feeling slightly disappointed in himself, he didn't realize the meaningful smile that the young man gave when the latter saw the former's subtle expression.

"Well, if I were to tell Daniel now that we have operated the training module in Hard mode, whereas most admitting students would only have fought against an AI in Easy mode, he wouldn't be feeling as disappointed as he is now." David thought to himself when he saw how disappointed Daniel looked.

It was also at this time that David finally walked up to Daniel and held out his hand to ask for a handshake.

"My name is David. Welcome to the EUMA, young Daniel."

Next chapter