First Battlefield Commander! - Chapter 133

Chapter 133: Registration

After completing their intensive training and returning to Alliance University, Lian Sheng and her peers found the students who had participated in the mountain combat exercises still enduring their ordeal. According to tradition, they still had five more days of training left.

With so few students on campus during this period, the Military Academy couldn't conduct normal classes, so regular courses were converted to self-study sessions. Additionally, the school had hired several retired soldiers to temporarily serve as instructors, responsible for the newly added physical training classes—a final cram session in preparation for the mech selection competition. Students who wished to participate could freely choose to join.

As a particularly striking anomaly in the Command Department, Lian Sheng had been attending classes with Zhao Zhuoluo and his group these past few days.

However, these students who had been full of energy during training—fearless of harsh winds and blizzards, burning the midnight oil with boundless vitality, capable of reaching the heavens and conquering the earth—had, upon returning to school, seen one-third of them catch colds.

The onslaught of illness was fierce, and the patients' conditions could be described as severe. Lian Sheng was startled because she feared chills and fevers; every winter when such conditions appeared, casualties were almost inevitable.

Doctor Lin seemed accustomed to it, not even batting an eye as he tapped his fingers and arranged everything. To ensure the medications wouldn't affect their performance in the upcoming competition, he had them come in daily for physical checkups, avoiding drug treatments as much as possible.

Not long after returning to school, registration for the mech selection officially began.

Lian Sheng and Zhao Zhuoluo's group arranged to meet in the cafeteria to sign up together. As Ye Buqing said, based on observations of past data, people with similar registration numbers were less likely to face each other in the preliminary rounds.

The mech selection competition's format relied heavily on luck, so wherever they could exploit superstitions, they wouldn't let the opportunity slip.

Lian Sheng made a point to research the relevant details.

The mech selection competition was a large-scale inter-school tournament, with both the preliminaries and finals lasting an entire semester each.

According to the information she found, because the number of applicants was so large and the students' quality varied widely, the registration system would first use academic merit points as one of the criteria to secretly divide participants into three groups.

The organizing committee had limited staff, and the number of matches they could oversee each day was fixed. But to quickly eliminate the lower-tier competitors, different groups were assigned different numbers of matches.

In the early stages of the preliminaries, low-scoring students would mostly be matched to a large number of matches in a short period, often facing opponents from the high-scoring group. Since the early preliminaries used a single-elimination format, the low-scoring group's numbers would drastically shrink in the shortest time possible.

Then, the same treatment would shift to the mid-scoring group.

Within a week, nearly half of the participants could be eliminated, with the low and mid-scoring groups making up about 90% of that number.

Thus, students at the top of the points ladder would have a very relaxed early competition period. They would rarely need to compete and would almost never face opponents with similar point totals.

Only when the number of participants dropped below 300 would the system begin true random matching. Through mutual elimination matches, the finalists would be decided.

At this stage, a double-elimination format was used—meaning a participant had to lose twice before being eliminated.

"The preliminaries aren't too bad. Based on this year's training results, Alliance University shouldn't have any problems," Ye Buqing said, resting his chin on his hand. "The real trouble is the finals—there are several particularly unpredictable opponents."

The number of participants from each school in the training camp was highly indicative. While participating in this training, they had also been diligently collecting data.

Though it was the same competition, the formats for the preliminaries and finals were completely different. What was particularly interesting was that while the mech selection preliminaries were individual battles, the finals were team-based.

To ensure enough participants for the finals, there was an additional rule in the later stages of the preliminaries: if a military academy's remaining participants numbered fewer than five—making it impossible to form a team for the finals—all students from that academy would be automatically disqualified.

The organizing committee's stance was very clear: they needed individual fighters, but not lone wolves. Teamwork was also one of the skills a mech pilot needed to demonstrate, and if you couldn't provide it, they naturally couldn't accept you.

However, even military academies with overall weaker standards might produce one or two exceptionally outstanding students. For various reasons, they might not have had opportunities to showcase their abilities before, nor sufficient channels to do so. But if they suddenly emerged as dark horses on this grand stage, they could attract extra attention.

In the later stages of the preliminaries, to achieve mutual benefits for all parties, frequent student transfers between schools would occur.

The organizing committee also encouraged this phenomenon—outstanding students deserved better resources.

In Lian Sheng's view, the preliminaries tested not just individual strength but also the military academy's overall capability. Its purpose wasn't to rank students but to select twelve academies capable of providing elite team lineups.

Of course, this format also had its critics.

The most infamous incident occurred near the end of one year's preliminaries, when competition between schools was at its fiercest. The system matched two students from the same academy against each other. They had no choice but to eliminate one another, resulting in their academy's participant count dropping below five—immediately disqualifying them from the finals while sending other academies through.

Though the preliminaries hadn't even started yet, they were already preparing with the finals in mind. Just as Ye Buqing was about to explain the intelligence they'd gathered, Zhao Zhuoluo looked up and asked Lian Sheng, "How many points do you have now?"

Of course, they were confident they could make it to the finals.

The condition for ending the preliminaries was when only twelve academies could field five-member teams. However, in previous years, by the time the preliminaries concluded, Alliance University's number of finalists had always far exceeded five. In the best year, they'd apparently sent twelve.

The finals were entered under the school's name, but with an excess of qualifiers, they would internally organize the eligible candidates into teams before sending them out to compete.

Whether Lian Sheng could make it to the finals was significant. Her abilities were a major advantage—not just as an individual fighter but, more importantly, as a commander.

They hoped to form a fixed, distinctive team in advance and have Lian Sheng join them. But if Lian Sheng was still stuck with a few hundred or thousand points, it would be... extremely difficult, and they'd have to reconsider.

Lian Sheng slapped her optical computer onto the table, displaying it for them to see.

The group skeptically leaned in, then collectively held their breath. After counting the zeros and checking the leading digit, they fell into silence.

Liliana had previously promised Lian Sheng to discuss the points adjustment with the school, and the administration had taken it very seriously. The academic system had introduced the points system to measure students' abilities, but if it ended up restricting the growth of outstanding talent, that would defeat the purpose.

As a transfer student, Lian Sheng's lack of points was understandable, and the school really should provide a more reasonable method for evaluating her skills. So, using this training session as a basis, they reset Lian Sheng's points according to the base's scoring.

The base instructors hadn't known about this.

Lian Sheng's physical fitness was weak, but judging from all the training exercises, she had quick reflexes, seasoned combat instincts, superb technique, strong willpower, and great potential. As a Command Department student, she had excellent strategic awareness. At the same time, as the only female in her squad, she served as a strong role model and leader.

Her developmental prospects were highly promising.

Thus, the various instructors in charge had been deeply impressed by her and, when scoring, unconsciously downplayed her physical shortcomings, awarding her extra-high marks.

The school took the average total points of students ranked around her and assigned her that value. Lian Sheng successfully broke through the 190,000-point barrier and was charging toward 200,000.

If there was ever a definition of "meteoric rise," this was probably it.

The four of them looked at her with entirely new expressions.

Someone who had once been an object of sympathy had suddenly struck it rich overnight, even surpassing them—it was a bit of a blow to the ego.

The atmosphere grew strangely quiet.

Roommate C suddenly cried out, "Hubby!"

Several roommates walked over with their meal trays, stopping beside their table. Observing the tense mood, they tentatively asked, "Are we interrupting? Can we eat together?"

Since the start of the semester, the Military Academy students had been elusive, always busy with one thing or another, rarely even crossing paths in the dorm.

Zhao Zhuoluo and Ye Buqing scooted inward, making space, and said, "No problem, we're done talking."

They had just hit a dead end.

The three roommates sat down, relieved.

Only then did Lian Sheng lower her head to look at the breakfast she'd brought over. The weather was already cold, and the buns and porridge had gone lukewarm.

"Tell us about the training," Roommate C said, scooting closer to Lian Sheng. "I heard it was hell within hell? And there were batches? How did it turn out? Hubby, which batch were you in?"

Lian Sheng pondered for a moment, then explained some of the training's rules to them.

The three roommates listened, gasping intermittently.

They were from the Materials Engineering Academy, usually a sedentary bunch. Running 800 meters could take their lives. In their minds, training volume was measured in meters for distance and seconds for time. But for these Military Academy students, the units had jumped several orders of magnitude.

The door to a new world... must not be opened! It had to be sealed shut!

Roommate C shuddered and said, "That sounds really hard!"

Lian Sheng thought of the upcoming endurance matches and sighed around a mouthful of bun. "A piece of cake."

It was easy to imagine that the large endurance matches later would be the highlight of the training. If the instructors hadn't left, it might have been a beautiful scene.

Fang Jianchen added, "A piece of shit cake."

Lian Sheng refused to be outdone. "A piece of diarrhea shit cake."

Roommate C: "..."

For a moment, she didn't even know where to begin her critique.

"Can... diarrhea even form into a cake? Don't lie to me," Roommate C said. "Let's not do this, okay?"

Lian Sheng thought about it and found her correction quite reasonable. So she amended, "A diarrhea shit cake that's been sun-dried."

Roommate C looked down at her meal tray, hesitating to speak. Then she looked up at the expressionless faces of the others, who were eating with relish, and was utterly dumbfounded.

These Military Academy people... were anything but ordinary.

Roommate C said, "From how you describe it, your instructors must be really impressive too."

Cheng Ze said, "Probably Expeditionary Force reserves."

Otherwise, they wouldn't have been qualified to train the elite of the military academies.

"Isn't it weird that they were suddenly transferred away?" Roommate C's voice dropped. "Did something happen?"

"If something really happened, we'd have heard about it. What's there to worry about? Military redeployments are normal, especially for instructors—it's an extra duty anyway," Cheng Ze said. "No matter what happens, the only thing we can do right now is improve ourselves."

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