Part 11
“However, there will be times when I will do everything I can to convince you combatants that the exercise is real. That will include your not knowing if psionic contacts with the outside world are genuine or simulated by me, you will not be able to perceive any non-combatants who have been Translocated beyond Hiliani in the exercise, and if the exercise is held when the children are awake and they are Translocated to the shelter, you will not be able to perceive them. And of course, on those occasions, some of the attacks that are no longer effective against the simulated demons will be effective again, to prevent my ruse from being revealed as it was tonight.
“I’ll leave you to discuss your performance amongst yourselves.
“And by the way; well done.”
With that he was gone.
“How about a cheer for our new young warriors?!” Bezedil called, and everyone did give them a rousing cheer.
“Thank you.” Reggie said, speaking for the four of them when it was quiet again enough for him to be heard.
“We might not have an exercise for a while after this.” Mark chuckled. “I think it might take Quewanak some time to figure out how to counter your spell. I sure can’t think of a way yet! And he never has his demons counter anything we do unless he’s actually found a way to counter it in reality.”
“The easiest way would be for him to simply kill the four of us at the beginning of the attack.” Helemia mused. “So we should teach it to as many of you as we can right away.”
So I’m sure Quewanak will find a counter quite quickly. On the other hand, we do
Quewanak and any demons who may be listening and that Ria
exercise was four days later, in the late afternoon. The four children had just finished sparring and were relaxing on the grass when there was a
group appeared around the table. Then most of the other powerful members of the
concluded.” Quewanak stated
to see the display spells and
there. Would you like to see it?” Quewanak continued, as the
they appraised the display, which replayed the few
positions and deployments that targeted the
everyone who could cast the Brain Bomb right away.”
non-combatants before they got her. That left us to form the command group. Talia and Alilia stayed up there and cast the
would be the demons’ logical next move.” Quewanak said with a shrug as he scratched his chin
commander demons out there somewhere have a way of observing or monitoring the battles here, since they responded to what we did in the last one even though every attacking demon was killed. And we have to pre-suppose some constraints on their resources or they’d just overwhelm us with millions of enemies every time. So in this scenario, the war in the rest of the world can’t be going that great for them, since they can’t consistently allocate enough forces or enough power to guarantee them victory against us. You have to figure that they’ve learned through repeated observation of the battles here who the most dangerous among us is. Then last time we four popped up at the end of the battle and ended it with the Brain Bomb. Since we were new to them and the Brain Bomb was new too, and none of the rest of you used it
what all of you are going to do before the exercise begins, I don’t let my simulated demons act on anything I know that they would not. They learn
around. “That they didn’t know the rest of us could cast the Brain Bomb yet, that is. We managed to
were killed.” Valentia nodded. “But I have a hard time feeling like we won