VR WARS Volume II - Coalition Army

AFTERMATH

A few minutes later, the entire UAT witnessed the fall of their commander; having gone above and beyond, Angelo fell right when the fireworks began exploding in the sky, bringing the battle to an end at last. After five hours of intense fighting, a winner had been decided.

The Azorean students grieved their commander’s loss in one second, then celebrated their hard-fought victory in the next. They had reached their goal; the end of the forest, all three hundred and sixty students. The ones that stayed behind had effectively cleared the primary objective of escaping the Teutoburg forest deathtrap and the secondary purpose of maintaining 50% of their force intact, established by the System beforehand.

Commendations were given to the officers in charge of that evasion by the UAT’s administrative members, especially to Ricardo, Leonardo, and Katherine, who, despite having to face a force of a thousand fresh enemies, didn’t waver and plowed through their lines with zero loses. Even more, praise was given to the elite cavalry who, once ostracized, were now seen as the heroes of the battle. It was their sacrifice that allowed for this victory.

Yet the ceremony only reached its climax when the commander-in-chief woke from his slumber. Angelo, having unleashed all of his willpower and fought for hours, had his energy entirely depleted so, instead of regaining consciousness after being killed in the “game,” Angelo quickly fell asleep, still plugged into his virtual reality interface.

Not wanting to wake him up, everyone waited.

Only after the arrival of the technicians responsible for overseeing the university's PXF’s, did Chief-Supervisor Conner gave the all-clear signal for the students to forcibly wake up their commander and give him the biggest heartwarming welcome anyone could receive. A hero’s welcome. Even the course director, Paulo, and university principal Meneses, who had previously shown their discontent towards Angelo, had to swallow their pride and accept the simple fact that he was a man who got the job done regardless of his behavior.

And his awakening only solidified his right to command.

“…and last but not least, in Group F, the selected universities are the Polish Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) and the University of the Azores, Terceira branch (UAT).”

Everybody rejoiced as they watched the official broadcast announcing the universities to qualify for the next stage: Coalition battles. A stage that took the battles to a whole other level, as each country could now deploy – if they had qualified – up to three universities on the field at once.

And Portugal was no exception to the rule.

Qualifying from Group B with three wins, the University of Lisbon (UL) was the first to make it to the second stage. A few days later, in Group E, the University of Coimbra (UC) with the same score made it as well. Following the UAT's success in the most recent clash, the country had, at last, its army for the upcoming wars.

Facing the possible destruction of any career in their future, if they did not win the prize, every student’s resolve was absolute.