Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary-Chapter 250 Obstacle Race (2)

Avery entered a state of hyperfocus the moment that the countdown for him to begin the timed race ended.

He rarely had need to utilize the full capabilities of his physically enhanced mind and body. Doing so was overkill most of the time.

Yet, for this competition, he was not going to hold anything back.

The other vessels and pilots he was up against were some of the very best, and if Avery did not want to seem inferior to any of them, he needed to give it his all.

’They gave me three seconds before the drones started moving. How generous of them.’ Avery thought as he pushed the Dauntless’ thrusters and began flying through faux asteroid field.

Being closed in on from three different sides, Avery had to momentarily slow down and readjust his heading.

Rapidly he wove through the ever-shifting drone field without once coming to a complete stop or turning around.

Despite having been relaxed at the beginning and not intending to do much, Kasandra decided to help out where she could and focused on the drone’s movements and searched for any exploitable patterns while Avery concentrated on piloting.

’They’ve either been equipped with incredible sensors or aren’t moving in response to the Dauntless’ movements.’

Seeing as how there were no rules against doing so, Kasandra had released some decoy beacons that were transmitting the same signature as the Dauntless.

Had the drones been adjusting their positions based on the path that they were taking, this should have confused some of them and had them move to intercept the beacons.

Since this didn’t happen, the most likely answer was that they were following a preset pattern.

Kasnadra came to this conclusion for a few reasons.

It would be nearly impossible to have real people manipulating the hundreds of thousands of drones in real time, and installing sensors on each of them capable of differentiating between the Dauntless and their high-quality decoy beacons would have been a truly exorbitant cost. Something that Kasandra doubted the committee running this event would have been given the budget for.

Considering that the other participants had been restricted from watching the event until after their turn, this probably meant that the drones were moving according to a set pattern.

Kasandra’s hands and mind raced as she input the sensors’ data and ran hundreds of programs at once trying to predict the moments of the drones.

During this time, Avery focused only on trying to reach the end of the course as quickly as possible. Making it to about the halfway point just a bit over seven minutes into his time.

Considering that the obstacles were becoming more difficult to avoid the farther he got, he figured that at his current pace he was going to finish a bit over the fifteen-minute goal he had set at the latest time he was trying to achieve.

’That’s not good enough. I can’t just keep reacting reflexively. I need to look ahead at least a few seconds and predict what’s going to occur before it happens.’

Avery’s concentration had already been heightened to a degree beyond normal human capabilities, but he continued to strain his mind further.

Soon he felt his body heating up and he started to sweat profusely. His blood was already pumping faster thanks to his artificial second heart. Yet as he forced himself to think and move faster, his body responded by increasing his blood flow even more.

This put Avery at his true peak performance, but the strain on him was immense. He could already feel his energy starting to drain even though he was sitting down. That was simply how much pressure he was currently putting himself under.

His already impressive clear speed took a jump up, and Avery started making his own moves several seconds beforehand, as all of his senses worked double time to watch and predict the movements of the obstacles trying to prevent him from going forward.

As he was doing this, Kasandra was busy finishing creating a model that would estimate the likely patterns that the drones were moving under.

Of course, she was not trying to do this for every drone making up the simulated asteroid field.

She merely wanted to find a path to escape, only focusing on the ones within a certain range.

This would naturally leave some room for unexpected variations, but since time was a major limiting factor here, she had to work fast and cut some corners.

"I got it!" Kasandra shouted when she finally figured out the movement patterns of the drones.

Her outburst did not slow down Avery’s concentration, and while he registered that she had said something, he did not hear her words because of how intensely he was focusing on the task at hand.

However, when the Dauntless’ mapping program opened up on the viewscreen and started indicating a route for Avery to follow, he certainly noticed.

"I think that I’ve figured out how the drones are going to be moving, so get going. Follow the directions on screen and you should be able to get out of here without much trouble." Kasandra said, wearing a smug grin.

Without any hesitation, Avery followed the directions laid out before him. He trusted Kasandra and the work that she had done. If he started to fall behind, he would just chalk it up to his own failure and at being unable to execute the necessary maneuvers to follow the path being displayed.

Immediately the Dauntless’ movements changed. Avery was no longer just flying around with speed and precision but was charging straight through without worrying about what was in front of him.

Thanks to Kasandra’s hard work, he started slipping right through the drones before they closed off certain paths and would sometimes charge directly into a wall that would open up right before he impacted into it.

The ever-shifting field was now like an open book to him, and he pushed on without hardly being slowed down.

’Whoa! That one was close.’ Avery thought as his shields scraped against one of the drones that he had just flown past.

Some of the openings that he was flying through only had a few centimeters of clearance for his ship.

It was not easy to keep the Dauntless steady enough to avoid crashing into any of them. In some ways, Avery was having to put his skills more to the test now than before.

Still, he managed to keep up with most of the directions displayed on the viewscreen and only had to change his route a couple of times when he missed some very small openings.

Eventually he had made it ninety percent of the way through the course, and it seemed like he would be able to blaze through the homestretch and complete the event at around twelve minutes.

Except, something drastically chaged in some of the drones’ behavior once he reached a certain point.

Until now they had simply been moving around to get in his way. Something to be expected of in this obstacle race.

There was a surprise waiting for every entrant at the end though, and it was now Avery’s turn to experience what the planning committee had in store for the participants.

Around a third of the drones making up the end of the course suddenly stopped moving for just a second and their forms rapidly changed.

Their large bodies started to become slimmer and obvious weapon systems jutted out from all sides.

They were no longer merely going to be simulating chaotic and fast-moving asteroids but were now going to act as automated territory defense weapons.

While most pirates preferred to set up shop quietly and were prepared to abandon everything at a moment’s notice, there were some that liked to prepare automated weapon systems that the drones were currently mimicking to dissuade any unwanted visitors.

’I knew that they were going to have something up their sleeves to make this more difficult and interesting.’ Avery thought as the Dauntless’ alarm started blaring as it detected hundreds of weapons locking onto them.

Immediately Kasandra released flares, chaffs, and decoy beacons to throw off the aim of the weaponized drones.

While the rounds flying at them were meant for training and would not cause any real damage to the Dauntless, there was no doubt going to be some sort of penalty for being hit. And in the worst-case, they might be disqualified if their ship was deemed to have been disabled or destroyed by enemy fire before they could complete the course.

Thanks to Kasandra taking over the defensive subsystems, Avery did not have to slow down for even a second to worry about them.

Instead, he diverted some power to the weapons and started firing without restraint.

Had the organizers not wanted them to fight back, there would have been a rule against doing so. That meant he was free to eliminate the hostile obstacles all around him.

Naturally this meant that he could have blasted his way through from the start, but that was not really in the spirit of the challenge and likely would have extended his time anyway.

Evey moment he would have needed to spend on aiming and firing would have taken away from his ability to maneuver, and it would have lowered the thruster’s output by using some of the Dauntless’ power that was going towards them for the weapons instead.

The situation was different now, however.

Passive objects were one thing but being shot at stifled Avery’s progress a lot more than using some of his ship’s energy to fire the weapons. ƒгeewёbnovel.com

It was better to eliminate the threats quickly, rather than just continuing to avoid their relentless barrage.

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