An hour later, the panicked Commander returned to the waiting room, and Max gave him a curious look.
"There is something wrong with the device. I have been locked in there for almost a year. How is the station? Has it fallen? Thank the creators that you returned here to wait for me." He rambled.
Max smiled. "It has been one hour. It's not even lunchtime on the first day yet. It seems that the Koleska mind can't process the information without the sense of time, so you experience the whole event as a constant time stream, where the human mind instinctively knows once we return that the time never actually passed. We were just force-fed the information.
Tell me, how much of the combat training do you remember? It's the most basic close combat fighting style I know, and it is useful both unarmed and in a Mecha." Max asked.
"How could I not know it after an entire year of intensive training? Who programmed that Devil instructor? That creature is scarier than the Arisen." Yuri muttered.
Max checked the settings to see who he meant. The program was still at its default setting, which was General Tennant training Nico and Max, so Yuri might have a point. The training was a bit intense for the average person.
"But did you master the skills? With only one hour passed in the outside world, it is a very effective technique for training students, assuming that it doesn't traumatize the Koleska." Max informed him.
"Why don't we spar? It is the best way to know if you can truly use a technique that you have been told about." Yuri suggested, then changed the settings in the room to create a soft sand floor and an arena marked with ropes, much like a Sumo ring.
The two Commanders faced off against each other across the ring, and Yuri gave the fist-to-chest Kepler salute.
"To the first fall. It would be bad for our image if we injured each other." He announced, then launched an attack.
He was fast, and his form was impeccable, but he wasn't nearly as fast as Max was or as strong, so Max slowed his response and blocked, then counterattacked to see if he really had learned the basics.
His technique was definitely the Kep Maga style, and he fought as well as any infantry soldier without a system, perhaps better, given his species. He also learned quickly, and he could tell right away that Max was holding back.
"You don't need to fear hurting me. I can tell that you are more talented than I am, but one fall won't hurt anything but my pride." Yuri chuckled.
"How about this? I will increase my speed until you have trouble keeping up, and then I will end it. I can see that you learned what I taught you very well." Max suggested.
They traded a few more blows while Max increased his speed, and the shock that the Koleska Commander was feeling began to surpass that he felt when he first returned from the training.
Max kicked the Commander's legs up in the air and used a restrained hammer fist to the chest to knock him to the ground, then stepped back and gave him a military salute with his fist to his chest.
Max helped Yuri to his feet, and the Commander dusted himself off.
"No wonder you are so dangerous in a Mecha. You are incredibly fast and strong. The Gravity Generators can only keep up to a certain standard, and beyond that, inertia will take effect until it overcomes our Pilots' strength." He sighed.
"We are enhanced well beyond the baseline of our species. That is why we are picked as Pilots. But that is far from my maximum physical limits." Max explained.
"Truly?"
Max leaped up to the ceiling, flipped and pushed off to come back down, then landed in the classic superhero pose, on one knee with one fist in the dirt.
Yuri stared at him in shock, and Max could tell that his eyes could barely track Max's movements through the air after he leaped upward.
Now he understood why they needed to upgrade the Koleska to keep up with the Mecha. Not only was the training lacking, but so were their reaction times and perception.
"Do you think that the students would agree to some sort of training like that to increase their combat skills? Nico, my second in command, believes that it would help decrease combat casualties and increase the overall quality of the Pilots on the defensive lines." Max asked.
Yuri was silent for a while as he considered it. "If they could be brought up to a fully trained state in one single day and then would only need practical experience, it would save a lot of lives. They are given six months of training in the military before being sent out, but I spent more time than that just mastering your close combat skill. I can approve this as a trial, and if it works, then they might approve allowing more units to try to learn your human ways."
Max smiled in victory. "I am glad you agree. There is an intensive training program for Pilots in there, labelled skills upgrading parts one through four. Each will take about six hours, so if you run them back to back, it's one day. Once they have finished that training regimen, they should be considered to be as capable as possible for their physical abilities."
"How long would it take to get more of these devices?" Commander Yuri asked.
"We can make them with our Replicator machine. So, only a few minutes."
That brought a surge of joy to the Koleska Commander, though if you were going by body language, the mostly immobile chitinous shell would have still just been giving off a blank stare.
"I'm glad that you enjoyed the news so much." Max laughed.
"I really must ask, how did you master Koleska body language so well? Can you detect our pheromones? I was informed that isn't possible for humans." Commander Yuri asked.
"No, it's a particular talent of mine, an individual mutation of sorts. There isn't a good word for it in your language." Max shrugged.
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