10 Chapter 10: Progression

Dolon didn't really keep her promise of coming back in ten days as the War Game Tournament takes on a longer length of time and format.

There would be a day off between each match of the tournament to allow the players to spend plenty of time on recovery and planning out the strategies for the next match. This move was simply to help the more individual players without club support and the facilities to properly recover a chance to compete with the top pro players. But she didn't just let Rydel go on that promise of a good fight.

By this time, Rydel had already gone through three mesocycles of her training programme, improving upon his control, accuracy, capacity and the maximum amount of weight he could summon by the session without accumulating too much fatigue.

When he is not actually training to use his artifacts, he was focusing on training his physical body and thinking of ideas to help him better use the artifacts in 'extra-normal' situations. Right after his the accuracy training in his second cycle, he has started on figuring out a way to calculate an optimal release angle and showing it to him instead of doing all the maths in his head. But to do that he needs to incorporate some advanced imaging algorithms as well as brain wave collection devices.

The end goal is to have something that he wears that can be turned on and off. The helmet needs to respond to his thought of a location and translate those brain waves into a projected location on the glasses right in front of him. Then the same location information needs to be fed into a control algorithm to generate projectile data.

Rydel knew just the right kind of people to talk to. During his undergraduate days he has worked with supervisors in areas of advanced automated learning algorithms. Despite him not really dipping his toe in augmented reality (AR) devices, his supervisor has made a fortune in that business.

A few phone calls later, they have managed to work on this as a cute little side project. He has reached out to a few people from his past in similar fashion regarding other areas of the magic helmet of his. Combining the quick exchange of ideas, some well documented literature and open source codes, a prototype is born.

The set up is still focusing on being able to communicate the thought from the brain to the computer and then allow for a projectile to be calculated. Rydel carefully attaches the electrodes onto two shaved patches on his head, sat down in front on one of the tables in the kitchen and took a deep breath to prepare himself. He opened his eyes and started to focus on what he wanted.

Very much like how he controls the artifact, the electrodes are best suited to pick up clear concise thoughts. Hesitation and lingerin doubt simply adds noise to the system. He looked at some exotic fruits on a table a few meters from him and think of grabbing an apple from the bunch. The screen flickered as signals are started to be translated, but nothing was picked up.

'Ah crap.' It is only then that Rydel realized the camera is not aligned and facing the same way he is. He carefully twisted to point the lens towards the desk tried again. As he focuses on the apple, the object recognition algorithm immediately picked it up, measure the distance using the slight differences from the two cameras and presented a distance measurement.3.6 meters.

That sounded about right.

Rydel started to get a bit excited and almost lost focus of the object, thankfully someone much smarter than him has put a storage function into the algorithm. With the distance measurement, a projectile is also calculated and shown on the screen, if the apple is what Rydel wishes to throw something at.

It is.

Rydel picked up a spoon, looked at the projection of the flight path and threw the spoon. It came no where near as it immediately deviates from he path and buried itself deep into the soft walls.

'Great. It works.' Ol walked into the room to get a drink and saw Rydel with the whole experimental set up and cut wires everywhere, 'what are you intending to do?'

'Well I want to use brain wave tracking to translate the signals into a real time location and use the location data to calculate the optimum projectile for my throws.'

'I see. So some sort of engineering?'

Apart from trying to use his engineering background to 'cheat' away at the artifacts, he has actually become really productive for a short while, burying himself in the deep schedules and actually really enjoying this whole process.

When everything is going really well, a package delivery was sent to the base.

'Hi! You have an Amazing Prime Delivery!'

A message popped up on the screen on the wall of Rydel's room, but he didn't remember ordering anything. It is a half-man sized box. Rydel dragged the thing into the living area and started opening it like kids on Christmas days. With a few simple cuts, the box unfolded itself completely, revealing an even smaller box and a hologram projector.

Rydel gently activated the hologram projector for the message and waits patiently. After a few seconds of brief flicker, a recording of Dolon appeared on top of the box.

'Hey, rookie! I hope you haven't broken anything yet. And by that, I meant anything in the base, not your body.' Dolon has somehow managed annoy Rydel with the first line of dialogue, 'anyhow. I don't know if you have actually player the War Game before, but my status as a pro allows me to get ya this gaming suit. There is a full set up already in one of the empty rooms and that's where I used to practice or play in. Put it on and add me in game at Lightning Rod.'

As the messages finished playing, the smaller box unfolded to reveal a bright pink gaming suit underneath.

Rydel held the soft materials in his hand and quickly stuffed it back in the box before picking it up and sprinting back to his room. The suit is surprisingly comfortable and fitting as it stretches perfectly to cover every inch of the body. With a push of the button, any sort of loose clothing automatically closes in and fit all around him.

He didn't need to look in the mirror to know how ridiculous he looks while being so comfortable at the same time. At this moment in time he has been training for sports and fitness for about five years now and the muscular outline is certain visible thanks to the suit.

However, despite Rydel's reputation as a function over looks guy, the current outfit of his is still slightly outside of his range. Somehow he felt like this is Dolon's deliberate doing.

He poked his head out of his room to make sure nobody will catch him in this state before he quickly ran towards the spare rooms in the compound. The first one was completely empty to his surprise. He scanned all the walls of the room hoping to find some sort of set up perhaps stuffed away in the walls but came away with nothing. The same procudure lasted for quite a few other rooms as the corridor is much longer than he expected.

It is supposed to house all twenty of the bearers and most rooms are empty still. With each empty room he came across, the stress level increases exponentially as the probability of him being spotted with a pink body suit increases.

'You in a rush. I in a rush too!' Torelamri's voice thundered from just beside him and made Rydel jumped, 'what are you doing?'

'What. the.' Rydel turned in a panic to find Torelamri right by his feet, 'I, uh, am trying to find Dolon's War Game room?'

'I don't know where that is. This is my workshop.' Torelamri put his hands on his hips in protest but is obviously not used to this human body language as his fit's slides along the hair and drops back down to his side, forcing him to pick it up yet again.

'Ah, my bad.' Rydel backpedaled away from the entrance and continued his search, 'What are you making this time?'

'Complicated stuff.' Torelamri went into the room and pulled the door shut, 'Very difficult.'

It only took him ten minutes running around in the corridor until he found the gaming room of Dolon's. It's quite far away from everyone else's in the middle of nowhere. He walked in and switched on the bio-lights. A slick cubic set up with multi-directional treadmills in the bottom and all angle movement scanning was just the first things he noticed. A hologram message floats in mid air over the centre of the cubic frame, which the top of it goes all the way up to about three meters.

The message says 'Stand here' in English, and the equivalent in both Aquarian and Rockie languages. Rydel followed the instruction and stood where a pair of footprints is shown. The patterns on the ground than changes and the whole room slowly brightens up from pitch back and Rydel found himself in the middle of a virtual space within a few minutes.

He is literally standing at the sign in page. The logos are floating directly in front of him as the background composes of the galaxy slowly drifts around. Instead of wearing a headset with projections, the whole room is surrounded by either miniature projectors or screens so one can move around freely without the burden of something strapped to their head. Rydel slowly raised his right hand to point towards the create a character page and a mouse appeared on the frontal screen, matching his movements exactly.Begin physical movement screening.

A female voice echoed around the room as the scenery changes from the ambient background to a track stadium as the grounds underneath him changes colour and even texture to match the tarmac surfaces of running tracks. Please perform gait, stride, sprint, change of direction....The emotionless voice instructed Rydel to perform a series of movements.

With each step, an avatar forms around Rydel's body and tries to closely match what he is doing.

He copies the gait movement with pin point accuracy, but as Rydel moves faster and faster, some lagging has started to show. As a result, Rydel will just have to repeat the action a few more times until it finally catches up.

After the locomotion movements have been registered, a facial avatar is generated to somewhat resemble Rydel, and somehow it even manages to look better than he is in real life. The depressing reality aside, he has finally created a character in the War Game, and fittingly named himself 'The Glove'.

Username taken. Please try something else.

'Ah shoot. Try this.' Rydel sort of knew that this is going to happen and instead put in 'The Glove of Summoning'. The page loaded for a little while, and Rydel appeared on a space station.

The ground underneath him changes once again to match the hard metal floor of the space stations and a list of instructions is given to him as well as a personal helper AI, which allows for voice commands rather than looking from multiple layers of text bars.

'Friendlist. Add Lightning Rod. Confirm.' Rydel brought up the friend list screen and looked for Dolon's user name. He sent her a request, but has to wait now for a bit. Much like what he does when he get to any new environments, Rydel popped open the map and started wandering around.

The space station he is currently on, named Station A, is situated right in the middle of the Beginner's Galaxy in between a few basic planets. He is currently in the loot and play of the game and is not yet allowed to perform any combat tasks. There are multiple levels and sectors to Station A, as it is the key trading area for all new players, but since Rydel isn't really one to play games and is mostly here cause Dolon says so, he didn't bother walking around. Just as he is thinking about quitting the game for now and wait until Dolon gets back online.

Congratulations! Lightning Rod has accepted your friend request.

'Heyo, rookie!' The moment Rydel swiped away the message bar, Dolon appeared next to him in all her glory. A bright level 99 sign floats above her head as her unremarkable avatar stared at him.

Fundamentally, despite all the enhancements Dolon has gathered over the years for her equipment, there isn't that much difference between her outfit and Rydel's, 'I see you have taken after my naming convention?'

'It does seem rather convenient that way.' Rydel nodded, 'so what are we doing here?'

'Let's get a room.' Dolon answered with a provocative voice and made Rydel's slightly nervous, 'Not metaphorically, not literally.....rather...electronically.'

A room creation invitation popped up in front of him and both of them are suddenly teleported to an empty white space. Rydel almost fell over when being suspended in seemingly an infinite void, but Dolon quickly adjusted the background and they are now both on a planet not that different from Athena 3.

'In this private room, we can alter the in-game physics of the environment to match whatever environment we want, or match whatever crazy theoretical weapons we have.' Dolon went ahead and showed Rydel around the absolute barren wasteland, 'I already have my modded Lightning Rod logged into the system, now if you simply put the all the parameters you were training for into the weapons creator, and you should be able to recreate the glove's abilities.'

Rydel nodded and started remembering his new limits. He can just about handle one ton of weight decently well now as the glove now caps it's maximum weight at about ten percent of the actual object and prevents him from going further.

Then his physical limits is what determines what he can move. With extra training in mental focus and endurance, he can use the summoning in sprouts for a good five to ten minutes and manipulating different objects around.

The skill department improved really quickly at the beginning but sometimes he just have bad stretches of poor control, but he has finally gotten quite good at juggling. After putting in all the local spatial manipulation parameters into the weapons created, he then recreates his glove in the game and assigned the properties to it.

'Done. Now what?' Rydel swings his arms to loosen himself up and asked Dolon what the plan is.

'Now you sync your thought we actions, and we fight!'

'But I have watched you play! There is no way I can fight like you!'

'I can train you! Online! For free!'

'But...I don't think that's something I really want to do...'

'Ahhhh...one day, I will make you beg me to teach you how to fight. But right now, let's just see what progress you have made. I will set your health to infinite, my hits to minimum pain impact and all you have to do is to hit me once. Deal?'

'Once? Really? What's happens if I actually got you....'

'Well,' Dolon says so with a smirk, 'I will give you one of my best weapons for you to play in game.'

'I am a student...not a professional gamer...'

'Which explains why you are a loser.'

'Hey!'