7 Chapter 7: The War Game

War had always been a game in all of human history. It's a game for survival, for resource, for land, for glory, and even for mates.

The human legacy was built one war all the way until the modern times. Then, the age of capitalism and globalization came. The aggressive tendancies were redirected in other areas as wars became too costly and expensive to be fought. Games, movies and other entertainment mediums tell the stories of old, but leaves out suffering and pain (except for the occasional back pain).

As far as Rydel knew, War Games was one of the biggest immersive gaming experience in the post modern age. With a complete body and movement scan, one's physical attributes are input into the machine mainframe. Selected weapons and their information are then uploaded onto the mainframe alongside the players. The premise is simply an virtual reality war game with varying objectives and depending on ones physical as well as mental abilities.

This is the closest one can get to real war and combat without shedding blood.

Rydel had never played this game as he is never a big gamer himself, but some of the tournaments are streamed across the galaxy and it's extremely entertaining at times even for an outsider like him.

Pro War Gamers actually get paid quite well from all the streaming revenue, sponsorship and contracts. Rydel knew of a few casual players and they always show up to lab with a few light bruises around their body from their weekend benders.

'Battle scars.' They always laughed it off as such.

Maybe he will try to get into this game in his free time, for combat training purposes? Rydel wondered, but he will see how he feels after a day of training.He is training for capacity today, the morning session is one focused on keeping up the number of teleportation and the speed of opening and closing his hands. Then he will work on some general physical strength in the afternoon.After breakfast and getting changed, he brought the projector onto the training grounds and looked at the plan. It actually seemed remarkably simple:

Juggling.

And the instruction is as follows: Use rocks of similar sizes, maintain a juggling motion for multiple rounds. Ultimate goal is one hundred continuous rounds.

Having being taught how to juggle by his high school science teacher for stress relief, Rydel felt like he is going to nail it. He picked two rocks the size of mugs and laid it out in front of him.

'Right. Let's do this.' Rydel reaches out and grabbed the first rock. As he applied even pressure on the rock, it disappears.

Following the instructions of the first 'How To Juggle' he could find on the internet, he kept his arm somewhat straight in front of him and threw it straight up in the air. The rock reappeared and projects upwards just as he expected, but the hardest part is yet to come.

Something that he has never done with the Glove of Summoning is catching an object in motion. Hell he didn't even try to just grab the air and see what happens.

As the rock reaches its peak, so does Rydel's stress level.

As the potential energy slowly reconverts into kinetic energy and the rock accelerates downwards, he held out his hand and tried to snatch the rock, or ,more accurately, snatch the area of space the rocking is going to drop through. He didn't grab onto anything and the rock simply dropped on the ground and rolled for a few feet.

'This is kind of expected.' Rydel reaches for the rock as it slowed to a halt and held it again. He went for another try but added a bit too much exit velocity that the rock turned and drifted towards where he is standing, forcing him and pivot around and dodge the attack coming for himself.

A few more attempts later, it seems like he is not making any progress. It's time to make things simpler. As far as he knows, the biggest limiting factors for him currently is judging the distance of objects and also applying the right amount of velocity when releasing them.

Since these are the biggest challenges, a logical method would be to specifically target these weaknesses and then find the next limiting factors.

'The distance judging should be quite easy...' Rydel thought back to his days playing sports and coaching the kids as those skills proved to be more useful than ever, 'I will just have to be able to grab things when they are moving, or when I am moving.'

Then, he went for a jog.

Except he is going to try to grab things placed on the side of the roads and in the wild as he went along. It's a great exercise alternative that also forces him to keep a clear mind and focus on judging the distances and reach for the targets.

A short twenty minutes later, he had grabbed rubbish, rocks, stones and some broken pieces of metal that was dumped on the side. He is finally starting to get the hang of things before getting tripped over by a bump and fell flat on his face.

'Alright. Release velocity.' As Rydel returned after gaining some new found confidence, losing it and then gaining it again, he started plotting out drills to target the next quality. It turns out he just needs to get back to real juggling and nothing trains coordination and body control than that. He used to be able to do it standing on one leg but now he even struggles with the most basic of patterns. It seemed like Rydel had a lot of work to do.

After a long day of skill training, Rydel's left hand actually showed signs of overuse as it overheats and becomes clunky when he reaches his limits. The constant focus required after returning to using the artifact drained him really quickly so he had to call it a day nice and early. He went back and did a very short general strength and conditioning training session before hitting the shower and going back to his room.

He got back just in time for a preview show of the War Game as a notification popped up on his screen ever since he searched about the War Game earlier that day. Seems like he forgot to get rid of the cookies from his earlier searches. Cookies, even an enemy of the beings in the post-modern age.

'New Season! New rules! Better rewards! You don't want to miss this preview show!'

Tempting.....Rydel sat there right in a dilemma between the work he needs to do and something he wants to check out. After some mental battle, he decided to split it right down the middle and stream the show on the side as he starts to work, which is always the best way to work.

'Welcome back to yet another season of the War Game, everybody! For the tenth year in a role, we welcome warriors from all around the galaxy as they battle in multiple warring objectives over the next seven standard days. Sitting beside me as usual....'

As the passionate human War Game host rambles on about the exciting things coming in this season, which means virtually nothing to Rydel, he decided to get a quick start on his work. But shortly after, a montage of last year's highlights was played and an interactive map was also put on the screen as an option for Rydel to look at.

'As we look back at the final play of last year, after two intense matches of Elimination and Demolish mode, the final match Capture mode literally went down to the wire. The pool of three thousand players, divided into three factions all aiming to capture the most strong holds possible. The location given for this match was a model of Hebo 3. Each of the occupied a major moon each for the gas giant with twenty or so objectives of varying resistance and resource and tactical value scattered both around the gas giants and some minor moons....'

When the giant star map is projected over literally all the space on Rydel's desk, he couldn't help but notice the three different regiments all denoted in colours of blue, green and red on the mini-map slowly crawling around the map and starting spreading around the planet system like hot gases in a chamber. But unlike the random chaotic motion of air particles, these moves are calculated, precise and coordinated.

'The Blue Regimen, led by one of the top clubs like the Turbby Raiders from Aquaria faced the Red Regimen led by Dynasty from Earth and the Group of solo-ers from the across the galaxy making up the Yellow Regimen. Red and Yellow quickly establishes a brief union due to their position on the map as well as the overwhelming strength of Turbby Raiders. Despite being made up of many solo players, Yellow Regimen has shown incredible discipline in organizing their ranks and their general was undoubtedly the Investor with his usual vanguard Lightning Rod leading the charge. This is a deadly combination capable of even taking down the best of the clubs and as they both return to the War Game once again, could they replicate the miracles of last year?'

'Lightning Rod? Could that be Dolon?' Rydel snapped out of his work and went into the search engine and looked up Lightning Rod as a professional War Gamer. Just as Rydel guessed, Lightning Rod is a professional War Gamer from Aquaria who specializes in close quarter combat, bombing raids and....'Trash talk? That's definitely Dolon then.'

When the Capture began, the Blue Regimen that was spawned on the moon closest to Hebo 3 quickly uses this advantage to take over the few resource stations floating around the giant gas planet. They divided up their forces all lead by elite members of the Turbby Raiders and did what they do best: raiding.

Within 2 hours of the start of game play, they have managed to take control of all ten resource generation stations on Hebo 3, leaving only the asteroid belt and some minor moons for the other two. Knowing early conflict will not allow either of Yellow and Red to stand a chance, an alliance had to be formed as they started to peacefully share the limited resource stations outside the moon.

In War Game, each player's weapons and spacecraft is a continuation of their game progress in the Free Roam Galaxy mode, where they craft weapons and trade of spacecrafts. Most of the players capable of influencing the War Game at the annual tournament are equipped with the top tier space crafts specialized for either space combat, location bombing, cargo transport and air support.

In Capture mode, space combat, air support and cargo are always deemed the most suitable option due to the shear defensive power of the resource stations making it much easier to simply send in elite squadrons on ground fighters to manually break through instead of trying to breakthrough the mechanical and energy shields set up around it.

But it seems not everyone agree with the general consensus.'The first action took place with Lightining Rod leading the charge as always, but she is not equipping with her air combat space craft, but rather the best bomber in the game, the Angel spacecraft from Aquaria. Combining deadly payloads with extreme maneuverability, there is no ship like the Angel. But what's the actual target of her's? What kind of plan did the Investor cook up this time?'

A small segment of the Yellow Regimen broke away from the main formation that's slowly heading towards the mid line of the map. The general strategy of Yellow is simply to speed ahead and gain an early foothold in regions closer to the home base of the Blue Regimen, since they have chosen the Hebo 3 stations as their priority. They simply set up guarding lines and capture their own station on their way there. The fact that Lightning Rod broke away from formation meant the plans of the Investor is already in action. Rydel can't help but wonder what it is.

He zoomed in on the squadron that broke away and pushed the main action to one side. After selecting the space craft of the Lightning Rod, he sees a generic randomly created Aquarian Female avatar sitting at the pilots seat.

She moves around gracefully using all her arms to control the ships movements and finding the shortest way towards her destination. It might not be Dolon by the look of it, since the game obviously hides the face of the players and uses avatars instead. But he can't help but notice one of her arms that Lightning Rod is not using, not dissimilar to Dolon's Artifact bearing arm she typically kept wrapped around her waist.

It is almost confirmed at this point. As the game accurately scans and inputs the movements of the players into the main server, everything the player does will be reflected in games, even for embarrassing behaviors like scratching the private areas or going for a dig in the nose. Therefore no matter how one hides their faces, their bodily movements and actions aren't masked at all.

'Let's go ladies! We know what we have to do!' Lightning Rod lit up the channel with her slightly modulated voice, yet Dolon's amusingly condescending tone sips through, 'Let's show those amateurs what we can do.'

'With all due respect, LR, that's the top two ranked club you are talking about....' Someone in the squadron responded cautiously, 'I know how good you are, but do you really think we can draw their attention?'

'Yeah, what I said.' Lightning Rod smiled and accelerated yet again. With each second, their objectives seemed more obvious. They are currently heading through the thick asteroid belt going right below the horizontal plane and straight towards the home base of the Blue Regimen!

At the Exact Same time, Red Regimen has captured and offered a couple resource stations to the few Yellow Regimen players who's staying behind and guarding the rear. Then the Red Regimen regrouped and started going towards Hebo 3. No, they were going towards the gap between the Blue Regimen's Hebo 3 bases and their starting home base!

Due to difference in strategies and game mechanics, one can either choose to settle their home bases in one location, or chose to move it around. The benefits of a mobile home base is quite obvious, but the in game penalty for that is a reduction in attack drones manufacturing speed and processing rate for other essential resources. The attack drones are automatic minions for attack that has very limited armor and shield but actually packs quite a punch with sufficient numbers.

The Investor was famous for being the one to truly make Mobile home bases viable and even deadly by combining the ships with the strongest thrust with the giant factory floating in space to maximise the movement speed of the home base and turning it into a moving city. This is not his original idea, but it is definitely something that works, if done right. And the Investor is one of the few that can do it right.

In a constant struggle between mobility and rate of production, a careful balance and organisation of resources and transport is required, and the Investor has got his best accountants and managers around to sort that out. He just need to focus on the big picture.

As he looks at the shared intel between Red and Yellow Regimen, the plan he sets slowly went into motion. If Lightning Rod can do what he set her out to do, they should be able to destroy the Blue Regimen in one scoop.

As the final match of the tournament went into it's sixth in-game hour out of twenty four and the resource demand for production increases by a small factor compared to the starting price, the first combat action of the game is about to occur, an air battle between Blue and Red Regimens right outside the atmosphere of Hebo 3!