16 The Starfighter Tournament

At the start of spring, during Erich's second year at the Naval Academy, something interesting happened. By now, Erich was ranked number 10th on the leaderboard, and, most of the Students were making bets as to whether or not he would graduate the top of his class.

Though, despite his best efforts, Erich was having a difficult time getting past tenth place, and just when he had begun to feel as if he had no hope of climbing to his desired position in what little time remained before he graduated, a sudden announcement was made by the headmaster via the Academy's internal network.

"On May 22nd, 2500, we will be hosting a virtual reality starfighter tournament between all the Naval Academies within the Empire. For those cadets who have been selected for service within the Starfighter Corps, you are encouraged to participate in this tournament. The champion will be awarded with 1,000,000 points, and 250,000 credits."

The sudden announcement of a Starfighter tournament was almost too good to be true. Just when Erich thought that he would not be able to graduate at the top of his class, the heavens had given him a golden opportunity to do so. With the first place prize of 1,000,000 points, Erich would jump straight into the top three ranking of all Naval Cadets in the Empire. From there, it was a stone's throw away to the number one position.

And while the points immediately drew Erich's eye, he had to admit the 250,000 credit prize was also an enormous help to a man without a family. Credits were the primary currency used by the Empire for all transactions. Until now, the only income Erich had was through his monthly stipend, which he used primarily to feed himself. However, 250,000 credits were quite the vast sum, and would allow him to live comfortably for several years.

Thus, this was a grand opportunity, one which he did not plan to miss out on. With this in mind, Erich immediately signed up for the starfighter tournament, which would be held in virtual reality in the coming months.

As for how he would prepare for this event? There was no greater test than accessing the Interstellar virtual reality network, where he would compete against other players in dogfights. Though if Erich did this, he would not just be fighting against fellow cadets, but also veteran pilots and hobbyists. Giving him a wide sample pool of talent to train himself against.

And while Erich was passionate about this god given opportunity, he had no idea that it was all organized by the Grand Admiral as a way to assist his favorite Cadet in gaining the highly coveted position as the top graduate of his class.

---

Before Erich knew it, May 22nd had arrived, and thus, he spent the day in his room, attached to the virtual reality network. As he entered the Academy's lobby system for the tournament, a wide variety of competitors not just from his own naval academy, but the 99 other facilities which existed across the Germanic Star-Empire immediately greeted him.

The looks on everyone's faces were the same as the expression that he himself wore: Excitement… Adrenaline and Endorphins pumped through Erich's blood, as he waited for the free-for-all dogfights which would determine the first bracket of competitors.

Each pilot would be paired up with a certain number of his rivals, and whoever was the last man standing would advance into the next bracket of the tournament. Billions of Cadets were competing in this event, but because an infinite number of bouts were capable of being completed at the same time, they were effectively able to host the tournament in the span of a single day.

The rules were simple: a cadet was only permitted to use a dagger, which was the primary starfighter of the Empire. He could use any special abilities he might have inherited, either from his parents or the genetic serum, and could use any other means at his disposal to win the battle royale. There were virtually no limits on what could be done to achieve victory.

Thus Erich had an enormous advantage over his rivals due to his ability to control machines with his thoughts, and his ability to see seven seconds into the future. However, in a battle royale that consisted of thousands of hostile starfighters, anything could happen, especially since he was not the only one with a few tricks up his sleeve.

---

Immediately after entering the virtual reality world, Erich found himself in the middle of a dagger's cockpit, within an asteroid belt. The environment of each match was procedurally generated, and, if one was truly unlucky, they would have to compete near a black hole, or even a star that was about to go supernova.

Because anything could happen in the vast emptiness of space, the simulator took these many probable scenarios and added them into the matches. While Erich had begun to set his engines to maximum speed, he noticed a countdown on his Heads Up Display, more commonly known as HUD, which signaled how long it would be until the match started.

As the countdown got closer to zero, Erich felt his heart palpitate. This was it… Now was the time to sink or swim. And he did not intend to drown by any means. Thus, he kept his head on a swivel as the counter reached zero, before initiating his afterburners, which sent him barreling through the asteroid field as he search for his nearest target.

Navigating through an asteroid field at sub-light speeds, with the possibility of an enemy lurking around every corner, was by no means a relaxing environment. In fact, Erich was sweating profusely, which was transmitted into the virtual world.

After nearly five minutes of avoiding space debris, Erich's radar picked up a signature for a spit second before it disappeared. Realizing that something wasn't right, Erich activated his special ability, which he referred to as "foresight." Not only did he see seven seconds into the future, but he also saw the multiple potential realities that were likely to occur during this time.

For most of his life, Erich had neglected this ability, but after being disowned by his parents, and determining that the only way he would be able to obtain happiness through life was through relentless effort, he had begun training his abilities like a mad man and now he could quite easily decipher which outcome was the most likely to occur.

Thus, in a microsecond, he had determined that the nearest enemy was hiding on the other side of an asteroid which was nearly 500 kilometers away, and had turned off his engines to avoid detection. The moment Erich passed by the asteroid, he would be gunned down by the man who was lying in wait for him.

Realizing that this was the most likely possible outcome of the multiple visions he had seen, Erich locked onto the asteroid which the enemy was hiding behind with his targeting array, and launched an antimatter missile at it.

Without even realizing his trap had been seen through, the enemy pilot was blown to smithereens, along with the asteroid that his starfighter sat upon. Immediately Erich was awarded with 500 points, which went to his ranking on the leaderboard.

Excited that he had the potential to earn far more than 1,000,000 credits overall from this tournament, Erich began adeptly navigating through the asteroid field, with his mind, rather than the joystick, as if his starfighter was just an extension of his body.

The movements he made were completely unnatural, and had thrown off many of his pursuers. In fact, after being chased for well over ten thousand kilometers by an enemy, Erich suddenly reversed his engines with his mind to counter the force in which he was travelling through space. Which allowed his craft to come to an abrupt, and sudden stop. In the second that he did this, the pilot who was pursuing him shot right past his target, allowing Erich to lock onto him with a missile and blow him up.

It was not just the students of the Academy who watched the virtual reality tournament unfold, in fact, it was broadcasted across the interstellar network, allowing everyone to witness this newest generation of starfighter pilots to display their abilities, and while there were quite literally millions if not billions of instances to choose from, the one which Erich was competing in drew the attention of many people, particularly because of the bizarre way which he managed to pilot his craft.

everyone immediately began to flood the comments of the livestream with remarks about Erich being a cheater, until one person in particular defended him, someone which nobody in the Empire thought would ever come to the mutant's defense. Erika Krieger typed a comment on the livestream which surprised everyone, one which thoroughly disproved the cheating narrative.

"He is not cheating! I looked into this man's background after he knocked out that cadet nearly a year ago and went vrial. Erich Jaeger has two special abilities, telepathy, and cyberkinesis. In other words, he is effectively able to communicate with his competitors, and manipulate his star fighter in ways it was not designed to perform with nothing but his mind. No doubt, while he is controlling his starfighter, he is also disrupting his opponent's focus with a tidal wave of mental harassment. It is no wonder why he is able to so effortlessly shoot down his peers…"

It was exactly as Erika had hypothesized. While Erich was manipulating his starfighter with his mind, he was also mentally harassing his opponents with an unprecedented degree of vulgarity. Something which would get on the nerves and disrupt the focus of most beings in the universe.

While taunting an opponent with a particularly vile comment about the man's female relatives, Erich shot across his bow with his plasma cannon, which had dealt the final blow to his target's shields. He immediately followed up with an attack from his three laser repeaters, which shredded through the armor of the starfighter, and effortlessly blew it up. After all, the plasma cannon had a limited number of shots that could be fired with each cell, and thus he had to conserve the more powerful weapon for the rest of his opponents.

However, Erich had no time to celebrate this victory, because the moment he shot down the other pilot, someone launched a missile at him. Just before the antimatter missile collided with Erich's starfighter, he deployed his countermeasures, which drew the missile away.

Realizing that he had narrowly escaped defeat, Erich in a bout of anger targeted the opponent with his mind, and told him something so unspeakable, that it had thrown off his focus, where Erich then lit him up with his laser repeaters, thus blowing the starfighter out of the sky.

With this, Erich had scored his 1,000th kill, and had become the last man standing, thus advancing onto the next round of the Tournament. The world watched with awe as Erich expertly defeated his opponents while suffering minimal damage.

The grid was flooded with angry comments about how overpowered Erich's cyberkinesis was, but nobody except for the top brass of the Germanic government knew that he actually had a tertiary ability, one that had saved his hide in that match more times than he could count.

As for Grand Admiral Alaric au Emrys, he smiled and nodded his head in approval at Erich's performance, while watching the livestream with his beautiful young wife sitting in his lap. Alaric shouted in joy as he cheered for Erich's victory.

"Well done, kid! Well done! I knew you had it in you!"

And while the Grand Admiral was excited about the skills Erich had displayed as a Starfighter pilot, someone else was just as thrilled as he was while watching the livestream. Erika did not realize it, but at that moment, she was the happiest she had been since she ruined Erich's life several months ago. She did not say a word as she watched the match come to an end. Instead, she simply smiled while eagerly waiting to see the man she once harassed to the point of hopelessness, climb to the top of the rankings, and perhaps even win the tournament altogether.