The Arena has three parts. Now, Jean was standing in the Simulation Room.
The Simulation Room could simulate anything Jean wanted. More importantly, everything was fake, so Jean could die a thousand times in the Simulation Room and she would be perfectly fine outside, at least physically. Most people might be emotionally scarred if they were really killed a thousand times, but that wasn’t much of a problem for Jean either.
Everything was free. The Simulation Room was used to make Voyagers stronger. This was to the best interest of the Protectors. They didn't bother setting any limits.
Jean swiped her hand in front of her, and a half transparent panel appeared. On the panel, Jean could control the statistics of what she wanted to simulate.
She started with the best.
“Simulate Protector Corporal.”
Jean wanted to see how her full power would go against the lowest rank of the Protectors.
A Protector in white armor appeared a distance away. Just like Welch, he was armed with a blade and a gun. The only difference was the face mask of his helmet was shut close.
Jean tapped her watch, and everything in her watch was emptied out. 195 Purifier ships appeared in the skies. All of their guns were aimed at the single Protector on the ground. Purification beams, capable of turning a planet into crisp in a single strike, was brought online. Swarms and swarm of interceptors dove down on the man in white. They were joined by fleets of scouts and mirages. Beside the Purifiers, the full might of the Warden Fleet was unleashed. Although they were out of nukes, they still threw all of what was left of their arsenal at the Protector in a single round.
Beside Jean, on the ground, lines and lines of Wardens and Purifiers popped up. S-3s shook the ground. Legionnaires stood tall. A handful of colossi and immortals moved forward with their weapons firing.
For the moment, everything the Purifiers and the Wardens had was dumped on the Protector. Even Amon couldn’t take this amount of beating safely.
But the Protector could.
All the ammunition smashed into the Protector and exploded. The resulting explosion erased everything within the twenty mile radius of the Protector. Thankfully, Jean thought that might be the case, so she had the Protector simulated a safe distance away.
But when the smoke cleared, Jean saw the white figure floating in the air. He wasn’t even moving. There was no visible gadget or anything that made him fly, but he was in the air nonetheless. His armor was as shiny as ever. It seemed like all the bombardment didn't even leave a scratch mark.
One million CAS indeed.
The Protector didn't hesitate. A simulation, he had no real conscious. Instead, he went straight to action.
The man reached back and pulled out his rifle. It was a moderate looking gun. In fact, it was even smaller than a Gauss rifle. But in reality, the two were by no means comparable.
The Protector took aim at the general direction of Jean and her forces and pulled the trigger. A stream of white energy, purer than anything else in the world, flowed from the Protector’s body into his weapon. With the energy in place, the rifle started charging.
It sounded like a lot of steps, but all of them were completed in less than a second. Before Jean could see or do anything, the round was already out of the chamber and was ripping its way toward Jean. Anywhere it reached, space itself was torn apart. Countless mini black holes appeared and were quickly fixed.
“Brace for…”
That was it. Because before Jean could finish her order, the blast was already in front of her. Just as Jean turned the plasma shield level on her armor to the highest, the blast exploded and wiped out everything Jean had. Every single ship. Every single Warden. Every single Purifier. Jean herself was evaporated within a second of the rest of her forces. Neither her armor nor her zerg enhancement changed things in the slightest way. At this caliber, a CAS of 259 and a CAS of 10 were no different.
Moments later, the victorious Protector disappeared, and Jean reappeared. She was just forced out of the simulation, because she was killed, and she had to sign back in.
It was a straightforward defeat. Jean’s best forces didn't stand a chance against even the weakest Protector, and there were a billion Protectors.
There was no disappointment. There was no anger.
It just enforced her plan to lay low and slowly gain strength.
Now that that was done, Jean went on to some old friends. She had to get a better understanding of CAS values and getting killed by someone 4,000 times stronger wasn’t exactly that helpful.
The first thing Jean had simulated was the original Queen of Blades. This was Kerrigan before she got turned back to human. As soon as she appeared, Jean could see her CAS value.
300.
The same as a new necromancer. In other words, 1,800 gold coins.
It wasn’t surprising. Even now, Jean was no match for the old Queen of Blades. She went on and tested a lot more units and individuals from the Starcraft world.
Marine: 7
Zealot: 18
Legionnaire: 32
S-1 strider: 10
S-2 strider: 35
S-3 strider: 80
F-1 fighter: 85
B-1 battlecruiser: 250
B-2 battlecruiser: 350
High Templar: 50
Delta: 250
Kerrigan as Xel’naga: 1100
Amon: 1000
Her eyes twitched slightly at the last one.
Viper: 300
Some of the numbers surprised her, but she quickly realized one important thing. For even the slightest difference in the CAS value, the difference in real power is enormous. For example, just because a B-2 had a CAS of 350 and Amon had one of 1000 didn't mean three B-2s could beat the hell out of Amon. Perhaps 300 B-2s might stand a chance.
Jean still had a long way to go.
Arena. Colosseum.
Jean tapped a few keys and was immediately teleported into the Colosseum. She has had plenty of experience with combat, but she wanted to see how Voyagers fight. From her knowledge, the recruit mission was the only mission where she would be the only Voyager in the universe. In every other mission, she would be working with, or even against, other Voyagers.
She had to get some experience with them, and what was a better place to do that than the Colosseum?
As soon as she entered, a wave of noise exploded around her ears.
“Berserker! Take her! Rip her throat out!”
“Vines! Strangle him!”
Inside the middle of the Colosseum, two figures were fighting. One was a seven feet tall man. Tattoos were all over him. He was holding onto a giant archaic that was almost as tall as him. He was placed in a set of black armor. As he swiped his weapon, shades of red flowed out of the archaic. He charged forward with all the fury in the world.
A large billboard demonstrated his name and mission count.
Berserker. 4.
Facing Berserker was a young girl in a green dress. A single wave from her hands sent green veins bursting out of the ground and darting at Berserker at lightning speed. Each vine carried enough power to punch through layers of metal.
Vines. ---.
In the Colosseum, Voyagers could choose to disclose their real mission count or just conceal everything, but they couldn’t lie. In this case, Vines chose to keep her mission count a secret.
As the two fought, hundreds of Voyagers were sitting around the Colosseum, observing. Some of them were especially aggravated as they screamed either words of support or curses, sometimes both. This was because they bet gold coins on one of the two fighters. Maybe it was a wise choice. Maybe it wasn’t. Point is, they had real interest tied to the result of the fight.
Two more numbers were on the billboards.
6,000 was below Berserker. 3,000 below Vines. Berserker was an experienced fighter who had quite a few victories under his belts. Many of the Voyagers have either won money or lost money because of his victories. Vines was unheard of. Of course, there was the possibility she was really powerful, but things like that rarely happen.
Rarely doesn’t mean never.
The number under Berserker jumped to 6,500. Vines smirked as secretly as possible, but that smirk was seen by her experienced foe. Using the moment of distraction, Berserker launched forward with his blade diving down. For most of the fight, Vines has been keeping Berserker back with rapid ranged attacks. This time, the melee combatant wanted to close the distance quickly and end this fight once and for all and return home with 1,500 gold coins. Even for a Voyager who has had 4 missions, 1,500 coins were still a lot.
But just as Berserker’s archaic was about to touch Vines’s neck, the girl grinned. Suddenly, a pre-prepared vine poked out from the ground and pulled Vines back by her waist. The archaic missed. At the same time, four vines that were previously carefully hidden on Vines by the girl’s green dress bursted out at Berserker. Their tips were as sharp as the archaic.
“You bastard!” Berserker screamed, but he was too close to the vines to dodge all of them, and he himself was in motion toward the vines. Inertia was a dangerous thing.
At the last moment, Berserker waved his archaic and intercepted two of the vines out of mid-air. He twisted his waist in the air and dodged the third vine by a centimeter. But the fourth one made its way through Berserker’s armor and into his chest.
It was obviously Vines has been setting this up for a while. Her attack penetrated Berserker’s armor easily. Even as the vines broke through the armor, all the tattoos on Berserker shined and formed something of an energy shield close to the man’s skin, but that was ripped apart mercilessly as well.
But the battle wasn’t over yet. Berserker didn’t pass four missions by easily giving up. Although this was a virtual battle and he himself wouldn’t lose anything due to a defeat, he knew a lot of his fellow Voyagers would be furious if he lost their money.
Half kneeling on the ground, the large man grabbed onto the bottom half of the vine in his body and pulled it out brutally. The resulting hole was much bigger than he imagined, but he quickly realized why as he saw a circle of thorns around the middle of the vine that has extended itself outward so it could be stuck onto the most amount of flesh on the way out.
Cruelly effective.
“Cute,” Berserker commented as he stood back up. The wound was bleeding, but he didn't give it another look. Instead, he took out something from his watch and pressed it against his wound. A hissing sound appeared, and Berserker’s face twitched, but his body didn't flinch. Moments later, the object he was holding evaporated into dust. The wound on his chest was nowhere to be seen. “but that’s not nearly enough.”
In the City of the Voyagers and with access to countless options, it was only reasonable for everyone to buy as many life-saving merchandises as they could. In the case of Berserker, the Healing Stone was one of his toys. It could mend most wounds quickly.
The entire time as he healed, Berserker’s eyes were trained on Vines, expecting her to seize the opportunity and push her advantage. Instead, Vines just laid back and held her ground.
“Something’s wrong!” Berserker wasn’t stupid. Quite the opposite, his battle instincts were off the chart. He held onto his archaic tightly while scanning the surrounding for any incoming attack.
He saw nothing.
Because the attack wasn’t from the surrounding.
An excruciating pain exploded inside his body. Berserker’s eyes widened as a dozen tiny thorns extended outward from his stomach. His armor, tattoos, and muscle integrity made sure any external threat would have a difficult time entering, but his intestines weren’t as heavily defended. The thorns ripped his intestines to shreds almost immediately.
A pained scream came out of the man’s mouth. Berserker took a few steps forward and raised his weapon, but just as the audience had their hopes up, their champion collapsed on the ground, dead.
Tiny dots of green were around his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth.
In a mixture of complaints and cheers, mostly complaints, both Berserker’s corpse and Vines disappeared.
Inside the backstage of the Colosseum, both Berserker and Vines appeared right next to each other. As soon as he saw his foe, Berserker’s eyes turned red. He has just disappointed a lot of Voyagers, some of whom were long time supporters of him. Being killed from the inside wasn’t that pleasant either. But he didn't try to lay a finger on Vines. The Protectors have stated that killing in reality in the City of the Voyagers was prohibited.
Vines didn't even look at Berserker. Instead, she was too busy counting the 3,250 goin coins she just got.
One fight. Ten minutes. 3,250 coins. 3.25 times the reward of a recruit mission, which usually takes the Voyager years. No wonder the Colosseum was one of the favorite places for Voyagers to go to.
