After that, I dragged Cassandra away for special training. Eva remained at the "hotel" to attend the banquet the two were supposed to join—thanks to Anderson’s insistence.
I felt a little bad for Cassandra, but we’d be doomed if she didn’t reach a decent level of piloting skills before tomorrow’s race!
"P-Please go easy on me..."
Thankfully, she seemed to have already accepted her fate.
Honestly, if the Aegis GP’s registration hadn’t already been closed, I would’ve asked to switch up the positions immediately. But now, there was no way around it.
We had to work with what we had.
And the fastest way to train her in such a short time was, of course, hands-on practice.
"That’s why I already borrowed Eva’s Hunter Frigate! We’ll be training with it nonstop until the preliminaries start—in less than a day!"
Right now, Cassandra and I were just outside the Military Base, floating in space nearby. I had piloted the ship here, but as soon as we arrived, I moved to the co-pilot seat, allowing Cassandra to slide from the back into the pilot’s chair.
Unlike the Range Falcon, the Hunter Frigate was cramped. We could stand up and move around, but only one at a time.
To put it simply, if the Range Falcon was a bus, then Eva’s Hunter was a taxi. That should give a clear idea of just how hard it was to change seats inside.
"Eh? Eh?!" Cassandra’s eyes widened in panic.
After all, I hadn’t explained a thing. I just dragged her here without warning.
Well, unlike practicing with cars, training with spaceships was a lot easier.
It’s hard to crash in open space, after all, since ships could move in 720° without issue.
In fact, even if I deliberately tried to slam the ship into a structure, the onboard AI would automatically override the controls to prevent an accident. That alone proved how safe it was—but of course, that was just the game’s safety setting.
In reality, stopping a massive chunk of metal from slamming into a space station wasn’t exactly a simple task. Ships can’t just pull off an emergency stop out of nowhere.
"Well, just relax." I grinned, patting Cassandra’s shoulder. "I’ll go over the basics first, so pay attention..."
Piloting a ship was actually easy—as long as you knew what you were doing.
If I had to describe it as simply as possible...
It’s like controlling a ball suspended mid-air by poking it from different sides.
But, of course, to do that accurately required some memorization and skill. That’s because pilots had to use various instruments to control their movements.
Fortunately, Eva’s Hunter Frigate was equipped with the most basic control system.
There was:
— A main joystick in the center, positioned between the pilot’s legs.
— Two pairs of pedals.
— A small toggle at the edge of the seat.
— And a control panel with about 108 switches and buttons.
However, once the ship was moving, you could pretty much ignore the control panel and focus on the controllers.
"You already know that in space, ships can go up, down, left, right, and even rotate while still moving forward, right? That’s because of preservation of inertia and—"
Knowledge was the basis for everything else. I made sure to explain it as clearly as possible, spending half an hour on that alone.
Of course, I started with the basic theory before moving on to practical application.
"The strength of the main thruster depends on how deep you step on this pedal. The auxiliary thrusters—used for turning or banking—are controlled with this one. This pedal doesn’t distinguish between left or right—that’s where the joystick comes in."
Moving the joystick activated or deactivated specific thrusters.
For example, pushing it forward turned off the front-facing thrusters, allowing for maximum acceleration.
Pulling it back had the opposite effect, deactivating the rear thrusters and activating front-facing thrusters to decelerate.
At the same time, tilting the joystick left rotated the ship counterclockwise along its vertical axis. Tilting it right rotated the ship clockwise.
Meanwhile, the pedals shifted the rotation axis from vertical (z-axis) to horizontal (x or y-axis), allowing for more complex maneuvers.
As such, hand-eye coordination, muscle memory, and intuition played a huge role in piloting.
For me—someone ranked Top 10 in the global open-world rankings—flying a ship was already second nature.
In fact, sometimes, it felt less like piloting and more like moving my own body through space.
"Uhh... This turns left? Eh?! Oh no!"
"..."
But as expected, Cassandra struggled immediately. She might have been a princess, but that didn’t mean she was good at everything. Neither was she a genius in the making.
’We’ve got a bumpy road ahead...’
I sighed, feeling a sense of impending doom.
---
The practice ended up being a brute-force approach in the end.
After 10 hours of training, Cassandra finally grasped the basics—really just the bare basics. That was when I loaded up the program I had prepared for her practice.
The program was simple: it recreated the track of the Aegis Grand Prix Preliminaries using a large, semi-transparent white tube projected through the VBA Module and the Navigation system.
Of course, the track is randomly generated—but who am I? I’m one of the no-life’s who cleared the main story countless times! I have already memorized what tracks appear in what year, and in what section of the event!
All Cassandra had to do was follow the path to the best of her ability and complete the track as quickly as possible, and we should be able to bag victory!
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What? Practicing on the actual track beforehand is cheating? Well, I got the data from my own head, and I didn’t do anything illegal to obtain it.
So, no—I don’t consider it cheating!
I was just "lucky" to have perfectly guessed the racetrack’s form. Luck is a skill, after all!
"No, don’t bank too hard on this corner! Try this—like this!"
"Damn it! This is a straight path, so floor it! No need to slow down!"
"GAAH! It’s a zigzag! Why the hell are you going through it in a straight line?!"
Of course, not everything went smoothly.
Her first lap took 30 minutes to complete—more than 25 minutes over the average track time.
It was bad. No sugarcoating that. But considering this was her first time piloting a ship, it was actually... decent. It’s like a baby completing a 100-meter dash, a miracle!
With countless laps, she slowly adapted to the track’s quirks. From 30 minutes per lap, she dropped to 20. Then 10. Then 7.
And finally—she broke past 5 minutes!
Cassandra had finally reached the level of a normal racer!
I glanced at the clock, checking the time—it had been 30 hours of nonstop training.
"With this, we should be able to clear the preliminaries without any trouble..."
But when I turned toward Cassandra, I frowned.
"Hit the throttle here... gentle brake to the left... Don’t... don’t..."
She mumbled as if she were sleep-talking, her grip locked around the joystick.
"..."
I guess I pushed her too hard.
30 hours of nonstop practice had fried her brain. She looked like a zombie—a beautiful zombie, but a zombie nonetheless.
"Alright, Cassandra. That’s enough for now. Let’s head back and rest—we’ll resume training in six hours!"
There were still 18 hours left before the preliminaries began.
Thankfully, we could just use the nearby warp gate to reach the destination instantly, so we could delay our departure as much as possible.
’But before that...’
We couldn’t go out in public as we were. After all, Cassandra’s father was still hunting us down.
I needed to do something about that first—but luckily, I already had an idea.
"U-Uhm... Arthur?"
A hesitant voice pulled me from my thoughts.
I turned to Cassandra, who gripped the joystick tightly. Her face had turned blue. With trembling lips, she slowly asked...
"W-Where’s the brakes? H-How do I stop the ship?"
"...Shit."
The next 30 seconds, from the moment she asked that until I wrestled back control and managed to dock safely, were the longest 30 seconds of my life.
I suppose min-maxing does have its downsides...
After dropping Cassandra off at her room, I walked alone—heading toward a specific location.
Of course, I wasn’t going back to my hotel-like confinement room. Instead, I was heading to a certain office.
As I made my way through the hallways, every guard I passed stopped in place and saluted. I guess being the president’s only heir does have its perks.
Finally, I arrived before the door to President Anderson Phi Astoria’s office.
Before I could even ask the guards to open it, the door slid open automatically.
At the furthest end of the room, a familiar figure sat behind a transparent table. Hundreds of floating holographic documents surrounded him, obscuring his face from view.
"What’s wrong, Arthur? Don’t tell me you’re backing out of the bet?"
Without even glancing up, President Anderson asked casually.
"Why would I back out of a bet I’m guaranteed to win?" I smirked, but I didn’t take the bait.
Instead, I went straight to the main topic. "Actually, I’m here to ask for a favor."
"A favor?" For the first time, his hands stopped moving.
His sharp green eyes locked onto me, scanning me as if I were some unfamiliar creature.
"Well... Let’s hear it first. What is it?"
"I want you to hold back the Meyers Royal Family. Keep them from interfering with us for the entire duration of the Aegis Grand Prix."
Of course, I knew he was already aware of our situation.
He definitely knew Cassandra’s true identity and that we were being hunted.
But since he wasn’t doing anything about it, that meant he was choosing to ignore it—at least for now.
After all, interfering with the Meyers Royal Family wouldn’t bring him any profits.
"And what’s in it for me?"
As expected, when this question came, his smile changed. The fatherly expression disappeared—replaced by the shrewd gaze of an experienced merchant.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself, before laying down my cards.
"In exchange, I’ll tell you the location of an ownerless variable wormhole within the Astoraxia Galaxy—!"