Public Channel

Instructor Chen glanced at the time. About right. He used his personal comm's authorization to boot up the system.

Kai Ang crouched off to the side, wearing an expression of rare misery.

"What's with you? Didn't you scout this place a month ahead and hire people to remodel it yourself?" Instructor Chen found his demeanor absolutely hilarious, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him upright like a giant Maine Coon cat.

Kai Ang barely caught his military cap before it tumbled off his head from Instructor Chen's yank, still looking thoroughly despondent. "These little brats better not waste all my careful planning..."

The disastrous desert-map loss at last year's military academy league had left a deep scar on Kai Ang.

"That loss came down to tactics, analysis, and morale all failing at once." Instructor Chen pointed at his comm. "What's there to worry about this time? Xu Lingqu's on the team."

"You're saying this place is modeled after the league map..." Xu Lingqu started to ask, but her comm suddenly buzzed to life, the subsystem kicking in. A map projected in front of everyone, showing the real-time locations of all 280 students. Most were marked in green, while their own teammates stood out in pink.

The two other splinter groups were way too far from them.

There were 20 entrances in total, and each entrance branched into three paths leading to three different material points—60 material rooms in all. Just moments ago, the rooms had swapped positions in a blink.

Looking at the students' distribution on the map, it was clear most groups had stayed together as a full squad to search. Some spaces were empty, some were crowded. Some students had watched the material rooms vanish and reappear elsewhere; others had missed it entirely.

60 material points, 20 entrances. The map tagged each entrance with a number from 1 to 20, but the material points were unlabeled. The instructors hadn't yet announced the refresh rules for which exits would open.

"Can the room-swapping pattern be calculated?" Xu Lingqu mused, then turned to Lin Xiao.

Lin Xiao blinked. "We'd need more swap cycles to pin down the pattern."

The safest approach right now was to stay put on this path, wait for the rooms to auto-refresh, and check if the incoming room held the material they needed. If it did, grab it; if not, back off and wait for the next one—then head to the entrance and wait for the exit refresh.

If luck ran bad, who knew how long they'd be stuck here. The mech pilot assessment might end before they even got out.

Just then, a window popped up on the system. Clicking in, they found they could type.

[Damn, did they build this public chat just for us?]

[Ahhh we can actually chat now?]

[Are the instructors bored of watching us wait and figured we'd kill time by talking?]

[What are you all thinking... this is obviously for us to exchange intel]

That last comment stalled the rapid-fire chat for a second. The instructors wanted everyone to share intel? But wasn't this the trial period? Weren't they all rivals? Could they really just swap information like that?

Xu Lingqu noticed the interface only had this one public channel—no separate squad chat window.

She typed a direct question to the leaders of the other two groups: "Shen Shouli, Xu Xiqin, got the target materials yet?"

Her name appearing froze the chat a second time, then completely derailed the topic.

[Tell me I'm not seeing things—is Commander Xu talking above me?]

["Commander Xu" is such a cheesy name. She's our great commander]

[Shame on you all. She says one word and you lose your minds?]

[Commander, what materials did you find? Our squad has no analyst and nobody remembered the list. Help!]

[She's saying they split into groups? Smart. We should've split up too—could've unlocked three material points at once]

Xu Lingqu stared at the screen, afraid to miss their replies for even a second. Then two pings came through.

[No]

[Sis, it's not what we need. TT. We didn't go in the room; we stayed on the main path]

Her teammates had no private channel, but they got distinct alert tones in the public chat.

They hadn't found the right materials—which was about what Xu Lingqu expected. With her luck, scoring one material straight away in the combat division had already been a windfall.

A thunderous rumble shook the air. None of the five were inside a material room at that moment, and they turned to see a small house sink into the "ground" and vanish. Then the sound echoed through the labyrinth—the second material-point shuffle had begun.

About five minutes later, it ended. A new material point materialized before them, and the location tags on the map shifted dramatically.

Xu Lingqu looked at Lin Xiao. "How long since the last transfer?"

Lin Xiao answered instantly, "Seven minutes. Seven minutes per cycle, but the last transfer itself took only two minutes. The real terrain here is quite different from the Underground Labyrinth on Sky Network. Let me think—Sky Network used full auto-refresh at fixed five-minute intervals, but here the transfer times vary based on distance. That means we can roughly estimate transfer distances from those times, and combined with the map refresh pattern, I think I can... I can determine which specific material point will appear on which path at any given moment."

Her eyes lit up more as she spoke. Xu Lingqu nodded, then stepped into the new material room alone to check. It wasn't any of the materials they needed, so she backed out.

She opened the public chat, ignoring everyone else, and messaged Shen Shouli and Xu Xiqin: "New strategy: if we run into any material our group needs, just take it directly. No more dividing targets by group. Once you get something, announce it here."

The original split had existed only to avoid duplicate pickups. Now that they could communicate, that worry was gone.

Xu Lingqu added: "We already have the iridium-silver."

That single line set the chat ablaze.

[Is she allowed to just say that?]

[Why not? She's already got it in hand]

[But doesn't that expose which material point she was at? Anyone who needs the same thing can hunt down her old spot. Our analyst says it's calculable]

[You actually believe Xu Lingqu? What if she's lying on purpose to mislead us?]

The public channel erupted into a quarrel over that one sentence.

Wang Qihu was about to tear into whoever had made that baseless accusation against Xu Lingqu when she posted again.

[This assessment requires cooperation.]