After seeing Alice, Duncan remembered the thing he'd forgotten: today, he was supposed to observe the soldiers' training!
He tidied up his appearance, then drove with Alice to the Special Operations Force's training grounds.
Beneath the Special Operations Force's indoor training facility was an underground firing range, but half a year ago, it had been demolished and expanded into a vast new space.
This had become the training ground for the Vanguard members Umbrella Corporation planned to send to another world. It was also where they tested new equipment.
The first Holographic Virtual Reality Game System, developed with help from the tool Ultron, had been installed here. The server room connected to 200 game helmets, and the soldiers had to train in the game for at least five hours, followed by another six hours of training in the real world.
They usually did physical training in the morning, game training in the afternoon, and a little more shooting practice in the evening.
On Saturdays and Sundays, they studied theory. They'd kept up this routine day after day for four months.
Most of the time, the two hundred soldiers fought each other. Occasionally, they took on war scenarios: battling robots, zombies, and odd-looking alien creatures.
Of the two hundred, one hundred were elite Clone Soldiers who had survived six months of training in Third World countries.
The other hundred were ordinary people who had undergone rigorous training. For the time being, they were led by retired officers from various regions. They all enjoyed fighting in the virtual game. They faced no real danger, and it helped them relieve stress. Aside from the lingering electric shocks that simulated the pain of being shot, there was little to complain about.
In the hundred-on-hundred battles, the Clone Soldiers—who had been implanted with memories and