Chương 198: B2 Chapter 197: 0 / 47

Meno expected Hyperion to take them somewhere with actual KKFs. Instead, Xarr led the group onto a laboratory floor packed with people in white lab coats moving between workstations, wall-sized displays, and half-disassembled VR capsules with diagnostic equipment hanging from them. Some had their outer shells removed entirely, exposing cable bundles and sensor arrays Meno had never seen in a consumer unit, while others looked like they had been cut apart and rebuilt three different ways.

Hyperion was either modifying Soma hardware or reverse-engineering it. Probably both. The moment Xarr entered, conversations died and people stopped moving. Half the lab turned toward him like the headmaster had walked into class during an unsupervised break.

"This is lame," Meno said.

"I wanted to see a KKF in real life."

"Can someone explain what a KKF actually is?" Karmabeast asked.

"I've been listening to Phantom this, Phantom that for an hour. I need pictures."

"Yes, PBG," Arayu said.

"We need the patch notes for this exciting new chapter in our lives."

"It's like Mush but real. Get it?"

"No," Karmabeast said.

"Chest Monday, legs someday," Thorn mumbled. Xarr kept walking as if none of them existed until they reached the only fully assembled capsule on the floor. The capsule was trash. The shell looked old, the padding was thick in all the wrong places, and the control housing had the chunky design language of something Soma had stopped selling years ago. A bald woman in her forties hurried over with a tablet and began introducing herself as some kind of chief something. Meno retained Zirya and discarded the rest.

Hyperion built the most advanced military machines on Earth, yet they had brought him to a capsule that looked like it came bundled with a discount chair. Xarr continued toward the glass-walled office at the back.

"Are you guys poor?" Meno asked.

"What is this? I wouldn't even want to farm boars in this."

"This is a Soma-X4," Aurelia said.

"An old model."

"Yes," Zirya said.

"Modified baseline. We are testing how much older hardware can be repurposed to reduce cost. The primary capsule suite is on a higher floor and requires additional clearance, but this unit is sufficient for the simulation series."

"Meno, you should donate your old X7 to Hyperion," Aurelia said. Zirya pointed at him.

"Shoes and jacket off. Get inside. We need a baseline before you touch anything more advanced, and I hope you understand this is not a game." Meno frowned at her.

"The last time I piloted a Phantom, I used an XUltra with performance goo that nearly fried my brain."

"Nearly?" Zirya asked.

"Get inside. I was having dinner with my family when I got recalled because of you."

"Don't do it, PBG," Thorn said.

"This is the classic low-carbs, high-sugar trap."

"I'll do it if someone tells me what we're doing," Karmabeast said.

"Just watch me, Arayu. I'll destroy their simulator." Arayu considered him.

"I wanted to ask before, but who are you exactly?"

"What?!" Karmabeast blurted.

"Stop," Zirya said, pointing at Meno again.

"He needs to be the one to do it." Meno sighed, took off his jacket and shoes, and climbed into the capsule. The lid closed over him, and a white room loaded around his body before resolving into the simulation. One look down confirmed he was definitely not in a Phantom. The frame was barely larger than Thorn, with smooth metal-grey armor, humanoid proportions, no visible thrusters, no obvious weapon systems, and nothing else worth getting excited about. Then Meno moved, and the capsule lag hit him immediately.

Going backward from a real capsule to this felt like returning to his old haptic chair and headset. Every input arrived slightly after he wanted it, while fine corrections had a softness that left his whole body disconnected from the frame. In a real fight, that was easily a -50% Action Speed debuff whenever timing actually mattered. Chain Madness would be completely unplayable in this thing. At ten attacks per second, the tiny drift would compound until one swing eventually came off-line. Everything was trash.

Trash, trash, trash. The frame was trash too, with no boosters, no movement tech, and nothing resembling what he had just spent an hour explaining. Hyperion had given him garbage equipment and was about to judge what he did with it. Classic puzzle trap. They would give him some task with an intended solution, then measure whether he followed it, which meant the intended solution was almost certainly wrong. Meno would use the Aurelia strategy: overreact to everything.

Zirya's voice entered through the comms, crisp and clinical.

"Test one. Adaptive Fortress. Your objective is to penetrate layered defensive systems and neutralize the central beacon. The installation uses rotating armor, interceptor drones, active-defense lasers, decoy emitters, and electronic countermeasures. Begin when ready." This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. The arena appeared around him.

A huge fortified beacon occupied the center, surrounded by enough moving parts to look like somebody had fed three raid bosses into a blender. Armor plates rotated around the core while drones launched from recessed bays and thin defense lasers swept overlapping arcs across the room. Something had to power all that garbage, so Meno looked past the defenses and found thick cable bundles running from the beacon into an oversized utility box built against the arena wall.

The drone launchers fed in the same direction, and several shield emitters appeared to share the connection. Kill it. He crossed the room and punched through the utility housing. Everything shut down at once. The drones dropped, the rotating armor froze, the defense lasers vanished, and the beacon went dark. [TEST COMPLETE] Objective Neutralized Time: 00: 03. 84 There was a brief silence over the comms. Meno flexed the frame's fingers.

"You forgot to remove the OFF button. Try harder." Zirya ignored the complaint.

"Next trial." The world changed, and a gigantic spherical machine appeared suspended in the middle of an industrial chamber. Armor segments unfolded around it in moving layers while drones launched from ports across the outer shell.

"Fortress Core. The red internal panel must be physically contacted by your frame. The defensive structure continuously rearranges its armor geometry to deny penetration. Direct destruction of the core is not required." Meno watched the machine unfold, then checked what was holding it up. There was always some dumb thing keeping the boss inside the arena. He went full sprint and slammed into the suspension structure. Metal buckled on impact, sending the fortress crashing downward.

Meno tracked the rotating core, shifted into its path, and raised one hand. A moment later, the red panel smashed into his palm. [TEST COMPLETE] Core Contact Confirmed Time: 00: 04. 57 Zirya's voice came back after a noticeably longer delay.

"The purpose of the trial was to evaluate pathfinding through adaptive armor."

"You said touch the core." The next arena was almost empty. A second humanoid frame stood across from Meno, sleeker and more advanced than the one Hyperion had given him, with sensors activating across its body as it shifted into a ready stance.

"Adaptive Hunter. The autonomous frame continuously analyzes pilot behavior and rewrites its tactics based on observed movement. Its predictive model becomes more accurate as the encounter progresses. Disable it by any method available." A calibration indicator appeared over the machine, and Meno understood the setup. It wanted patterns, so he gave it the dumbest one he could think of.

He crossed his wrists in front of him like he was holding invisible reins and started bouncing sideways, knees pumping while he worked his way across the arena in ridiculous little hops. Every few steps he kicked one leg out, switched direction, and repeated the exact same sequence. The hunter adjusted, shifting ahead of each bounce and repositioning before every kick. Meno kept going, slowly dancing closer while the predictive model got increasingly confident that it had solved him.

By the time he reached striking distance, the machine was moving before he did. Perfect. Meno started the sequence again, bounced twice, crossed his wrists, and lifted his leg for the expected kick. The hunter shifted to intercept it. Meno planted the foot instead and punched its head clean off. The body remained upright for half a second before collapsing. [TEST COMPLETE] Hunter Disabled Time: 00: 09. 18 Zirya came back through the comms.

"The system was designed to assess behavioral adaptation under prolonged engagement."

"You can't grow a brain during a fight. If you enter one without it, you already lost." A city loaded around him, smoke pouring between tall buildings while fires burned through intersections. Automated traffic clogged blocked streets, hostile drones moved between rooftops, and pieces of damaged structures collapsed across the road network as simulated civilians fled through the chaos. A rescue marker pulsed somewhere near the center.

"Urban Extraction. A protected survivor capsule is located within the central district. Locate it and cross the designated extraction boundary without losing the survivor. The environment includes hostile drones, blockades, collapsing structures, automated traffic, and simulated civilians. Path selection and threat management are part of the evaluation." Meno checked the objective marker and found it almost straight ahead, with several buildings in the way. He hit the nearest wall to see if it would break. It did.

Cool. There was no reason to use roads when buildings had HP, the civilians were simulated, and nothing in the objective said he had to preserve the city. Meno charged straight through. Six buildings later, he reached the survivor capsule, grabbed it, turned toward the extraction line, and smashed his way through whatever remained between him and the objective. [TEST COMPLETE] Survivor Extracted Time: 00: 24. 63 Environmental Damage: EXTREME Meno looked at the warning.

"Why does environmental damage even have a score if I still passed?"

"It is part of the performance profile," Zirya said.

"I don't do quests. If you want something to stop moving, send me. Otherwise Aurelia or Thorn are probably better options." The city vanished, replaced by a new arena with a single target frame standing inside a shimmering defensive field.

"Test five. Perfect Defense. The target uses an active-defense system capable of intercepting conventional projectiles, countering melee approach vectors, destroying thrown debris, and repositioning to prevent direct contact. Your objective is to register one successful hit." Meno started cartwheeling around the target in a wide circle and tightened the spiral with every pass.

The defense kept rotating and shifting to maintain distance, but each smaller loop constrained its movement more than the last until Meno was close enough to attack before it could create another safe angle. On the next rotation, he drove off both hands halfway through the cartwheel and launched both feet forward. The system had been preparing to counter a melee approach. Instead, Meno became the projectile.

Both feet smashed into the target's face and folded the upper frame backward, ripping the head free and sending it bouncing across the arena. [TEST COMPLETE] Successful Hit Registered Time: 00: 07. 47"The lesson we learned today is that it either blocks all projectiles, or the entire system is useless and you should just make it faster instead," Meno said. The world transformed again. This arena was huge, with a sprawling mobility course stretching ahead toward a distant finish marker.

"Test six. Hyperion Gauntlet. This trial measures continuous mobility performance under changing spatial constraints. Forty-seven obstacles must be navigated between your starting position and the final platform. The course includes dynamic barriers, collapsing surfaces, vertical traversal, hostile fire, limited pathways." Meno glanced left, spotted an exterior wall beside the starting platform, and smashed straight through it without slowing down.

Beyond it was a blank maintenance corridor running around the outside of the entire course. He took the shortcut at full speed, circled behind the finish platform, spread his arms, and simply fell backward across the line with all forty-seven obstacles still untouched behind him. [TEST COMPLETE] Course Cleared Time: 00: 19. 84 Obstacles Completed: 0 / 47"Enough," Xarr said over the comms.

"Take the group to floor seventy and plug them into GM-X23. Notify CNC. Move the mission up. We start now."

"But, sir, that is—""Do it."