My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible - Chapter 488 Training Friends (2)

Chapter 488  Training Friends (2)

The eight of them spread out as they climbed, instinctively creating a spherical formation around the point where Liam hovered, waiting.

Matt positioned himself directly above Liam, perhaps fifty meters up. Kristopher took a position below and to the left. Alex mirrored him on the right. The girls distributed themselves around the remaining angles, creating a three-dimensional net with Liam at the center.

“Much better already,” Liam’s voice came through the communication system, carrying genuine approval. “You’re thinking spatially now. This is how you use the exosuits properly.”

Harper’s voice was slightly strained, probably from the mental effort of maintaining formation while hovering. “Okay, so we’ve got him surrounded. Now what?”

“Now you attack,” Liam said simply. “But coordinate. Don’t just rush in one at a time like before. Pick a signal, move together, force me to deal with threats from multiple vectors simultaneously.”

The eight of them exchanged glances across the distances separating them, their helmets’ HUD systems highlighting each other’s positions with friendly markers that made coordination easier than it would have been with naked eyes.

Matt’s voice came through first. “On three?”

“On three,” Kristopher confirmed.

“One,” Alex started the count.

“Two,” Stacy continued.

“Three!” Kristy finished, and they all moved.

Eight trajectories converged on a single point from eight different angles, their flight systems pushing them forward at speeds that would have been impossible to coordinate without the exosuits’ enhanced perception.

The HUD systems tracked approach vectors, calculated intercept times, and displayed real-time positioning data that let them adjust their paths to avoid colliding with each other while maintaining the coordinated assault.

Liam smiled and simply dropped.

The movement was so sudden that their attack vectors, calculated for his current position, all intersected with empty air.

Eight armored figures shot through the space where their target had been half a second before, their momentum carrying them past each other in a carefully choreographed near-miss that would have been a catastrophic mid-air collision without the exosuits’ precision control.

Liam had descended perhaps twenty meters, and he hovered there, apparently content to wait while they reoriented.

“Good speed, good coordination,” his voice drifted up to them. “But you’re still thinking in straight lines. In three-dimensional combat, straight-line attacks are predictable. You need to curve your approach, change your trajectory mid-flight, make me guess where you’re actually going.”

Matt, who had shot past Liam and was now considerably above him again, immediately saw the opportunity. He killed his upward momentum, rotated in mid-air with a grace that the exosuit made effortless, and dove straight down.

But instead of maintaining a straight dive, he activated the suit’s lateral thrusters mid-descent, creating a spiraling corkscrew trajectory that was considerably harder to predict than a simple vertical drop.

Liam tracked the movement, his head tilting up slightly, and when Matt was perhaps ten meters away, he moved sideways through the air with a speed that made it look like he’d simply teleported five meters to the left.

Matt’s spiraling dive carried him through empty space, and he pulled up hard to avoid overshooting, his flight path curving into a wide arc that took him well below Liam’s current position before he managed to arrest his downward momentum.

“Better!” Liam called down to him. “The spiral was good thinking. Made your approach less predictable. But you committed too early. I could see where your trajectory was going to end up and simply moved out of the way.”

Kristopher had been watching Matt’s attempt while thinking, and he was already processing the feedback. “So we need to attack with curved trajectories but also maintain the ability to adjust mid-approach. Make it impossible for you to simply dodge because we can course-correct faster than you can reposition.”

“Exactly,” Liam confirmed. “And more importantly, you need to do it together. One person attacking with a curved approach is still just one attack vector. Eight people attacking with curved approaches from eight different directions, all adjusting in real-time to where I actually am rather than where I was—that’s considerably harder to deal with.”

Stacy’s voice carried a note of determination. “Okay. Everyone spread out again. Same formation, but this time we curve our approaches and keep adjusting based on where he actually is, not where we think he’ll be.”

They repositioned quickly, the formation reforming with an efficiency that suggested they were starting to internalize how to move in three dimensions. The markers on their HUDs updated in real-time, showing each person’s position relative to the others and to Liam at the center.

“On three again?” Harper asked.

“On three,” Alex confirmed.

The count went faster this time, their confidence building despite the repeated failures. When Kristy hit “three,” they all launched forward, but this time none of them flew in straight lines.

Matt spiraled down from above, his trajectory a helix that made his exact intercept point difficult to predict.

Kristopher came in from the left with a sweeping curve that looked almost lazy until you noticed how his speed was constantly adjusting. Alex mirrored him from the right, his path a mirror image that would converge at the same moment from the opposite angle.

The girls had apparently coordinated among themselves, because they came in with synchronized wave patterns, their paths weaving back and forth but always trending toward the center, creating a kind of three-dimensional net that was constantly tightening.

Liam’s smile widened as he watched them approach, and for the first time since the training had begun, he actually looked engaged rather than simply instructive.

He moved. But this time, he didn’t just dodge. He dove toward Kristopher’s curving approach, which immediately forced Matt to adjust his spiral to avoid losing his angle.

That adjustment put Matt on a collision course with Stacy, who had to break her wave pattern to avoid him, which opened a gap in the net that Liam immediately exploited by accelerating through it.

He was outside their formation before they even fully registered that their coordination had been disrupted, hovering perhaps thirty meters away, watching as they all scrambled to reorient.

“Much better!” Liam’s voice carried genuine enthusiasm now. “That actually required me to actively counter rather than just dodge. The curved approaches made prediction harder, and the fact that you were all adjusting meant I couldn’t just pick an empty spot and move there. Keep doing exactly that, but tighten your timing. You need to converge faster, give me less time to disrupt the formation.”

Elise, who had been quiet throughout most of the training, spoke up. “You forced Kristopher’s approach to make Matt adjust, which disrupted Stacy’s pattern, which created the gap you used. You didn’t break our coordination by overpowering it. You identified the weakest link and exploited it.”

“Exactly right,” Liam said, and there was real approval in his voice. “In coordinated attacks, the formations are only as strong as their communication and timing. I don’t need to beat eight people simultaneously. I just need to disrupt your coordination enough that you become eight individuals attacking me one at a time.”

Matt had rejoined the group now, breathing hard despite the suit handling all physical exertion. The exhaustion was purely mental, the strain of trying to process three-dimensional combat while maintaining coordination with seven other people and tracking a target that moved faster than their enhanced perception could easily follow.

“Okay,” he said, his voice carrying a stubborn determination. “Again. But this time, everyone watch everyone else’s positions. If Liam tries to force one of us to adjust in a way that breaks formation, the person adjacent needs to compensate immediately.”

Kristopher picked up the thought. “And we need to communicate. Call out if you’re being forced off your approach. That way the rest of us know to tighten the net from the other angles.”

“Good tactical thinking,” Liam said. “Now execute it.”

They spread out again, the formation reforming with even more precision than before. But this time, as they positioned themselves, they were actively communicating.

“I’ve got high approach,” Matt called.

“Left-forward vector,” Kristopher responded.

“Right-forward,” Alex added.

The girls called out their positions in quick succession, creating a verbal map of the formation that let everyone track not just their own position but the entire group’s spatial relationship.

“On three,” Harper said.

They counted faster this time, their confidence building with each iteration despite the repeated failures. And when they launched, their coordination was noticeably tighter than before.

Matt’s spiral dive came in faster, his trajectory constantly adjusting based on real-time data from his HUD. Kristopher and Alex curved in from opposite sides, their paths synchronized to converge at exactly the same moment. The girls’ wave patterns were tighter now, the amplitude of their weaving reduced to make their approach more direct while maintaining the unpredictability.

Liam watched them come, and this time he actually had to work.

He dropped toward Kristopher again, but before he could fully execute the disruption that had worked last time, Kristopher called out.

“Breaking left!” His voice was sharp, immediate.

Alex immediately adjusted, tightening his curve to compensate for the space Kristopher was being forced out of. Stacy, who had been adjacent to Kristopher’s vector, widened her sine wave to cover more area, preventing the gap that had appeared in the previous attempt.

Liam shifted tactics mid-movement, accelerating upward instead of continuing the disruption, but that put him directly in the path of Matt’s spiraling dive.

Matt saw the opening and committed, pushing his flight systems to maximum acceleration, his armored form shooting downward like a meteor with a corkscrew trajectory that made his exact impact point difficult to predict until the last second.

Liam twisted in mid-air, a movement that shouldn’t have been possible without something to push against but apparently physics were optional when you were operating at Liam’s level, and Matt’s dive missed by perhaps a meter.

But unlike before, the near-miss didn’t end the engagement.

Because while Matt had been diving from above, the other seven had continued converging from their angles, and Liam’s dodge of Matt’s attack had put him slightly off-center from the formation’s focus point.

Kristopher came in from the left, his curved approach perfectly timed.

Alex mirrored him from the right, his speed synchronized.

The girls were closing the net from below and the sides, their wave patterns converging on Liam’s current position with a precision that suggested they’d finally started thinking of themselves as a coordinated unit rather than eight individuals.

For perhaps half a second, Liam was actually contained, eight trajectories converging on a single point with timing tight enough that simple dodging wouldn’t work.

Then he accelerated.

The movement was so fast that their HUD systems couldn’t track it properly, the targeting markers losing lock as Liam simply wasn’t where the sensors expected him to be. He shot straight up, his acceleration creating a pressure wave that they could feel even through their sealed suits, climbing so fast that he was two hundred meters above them before their collective formation even finished converging on empty air.

They pulled up from their failed attack and looked up at where Liam hovered, a distant figure silhouetted against the pale Antarctic sky.

“That,” his voice came through the communication system, carrying genuine warmth and approval, “was excellent. You forced me to actually evade rather than just disrupt. Your coordination was solid, your communication was clear, and your tactical adjustment when I tried the same trick twice showed you’re learning from each iteration.”

He descended slowly, dropping back down to their altitude, his movement casual and unhurried.

“You’re starting to think like aerial combatants. You’re using the space properly, coordinating in three dimensions, adjusting in real-time to changing situations. That’s exactly what I wanted to see.”

Matt’s voice was breathless, equal parts exhausted and exhilarated. “We still didn’t land a hit.”

“No,” Liam agreed. “But you made me actually work to avoid being hit. That’s progress. And more importantly, you’ve learned the fundamental principles. The rest is just practice and refinement.”

He looked at each of them in turn, his expression genuinely proud in a way that made the repeated humiliations feel worthwhile.

“You did well. All of you. You guys are really fast learners,” he said.

“Now, who wants to go toe to toe with me?” He asked.

They all looked at each other, exhausted. Even though they didn’t do anything physically, they were still feeling tired. It really takes out of them to be able to use the exosuit.

After a few seconds of silence, someone finally stopped forward. And as expected, it was Matt.

“I’m all for it,” he said.