Despite claiming that he could handle Atlas' intention to crash into them, Avery had broken out into a nervous sweat. One wrong move here could lead to a real disaster.

His mind was racing, taking in the movement pattern of his opponent.

He needed to dodge the charge at the last second, and counterattack at the same time to make sure that Atlas did not pull any other dangerous stunts afterwards.

Since the start of the event, Avery had already been compressing his sense of time, forcing his body and mind to go beyond what was possible for a normal human.

Even with the augmentations he had received, this was not easy to pull off, but he needed to push himself further here.

'Focus. Don't let anything escape your notice.'

Heightening his senses to their limits and beyond, Avery started to notice things that he never had before once Atlas' ship was only a couple hundred meters away.

There was only a fraction of a second not until the two of them would collide at this rate if neither of them diverted from their current paths.

Naturally, Avery had no intention of allowing his vessel to get hit. He would be at a major disadvantage since his opponent's ship was more heavily armored than his.

His originally plan had been to start wobbling to disguise which way he was going to move and then bank to the left at the last moment.

After that, he would fire his plasma launchers as they passed by and shoot off rounds from his scatterguns once the Dauntless had gotten a bit further away.

Except, now that they were this close, Avery could feel that Atlas had no intention of crashing into him. This was all a bluff and a trap.

'I don't know if it's intuition or what, but I feel like I can see the flow of energy within his ship.' Avery thought, astounded by what he was experiencing right now.

Still, there was no time to analyze what sort of unusual sixth sense he was currently experiencing.

Instead, he decided to fully trust his judgment and aimed to crush Atlas' strategy.

At the very last moment, Atlas revealed a pair of powerful forward thrusters that had been stored in hidden compartments.

These rapidly killed most of his momentum and allowed him to hastily shift his vessel so that he would end up under the Dauntless.

Most people would never be able to handle the necessary movements to successfully complete this maneuver or withstand the sudden and intense g-force.

Nevertheless, this was one of the secret weapons that Stifur had designed their ship with. Allowing it to make sudden and rapid movements despite its size and heavy armor.

Of course, just getting into this position would not have changed things if all Atlas had left were his laser blasters.

These four main weapons were strong, but they lacked the immediate power to quickly finish of the Dauntless which still had access to more powerful weapons.

However, while Atlas had feigned that he had run out of missiles, he actually had kept his last two in reserve to deal the finishing blow.

His lack of missiles might make things difficult for him going forward in the event, but he would worry about that later after defeating Avery.

'You were pretty good kid, but you're still too green to beat me.' Atlas thought as he pulled the trigger on his seeker missiles.

Yet, something completely unexpected occurred.

Atlas had figured that Avery would attempt to dodge his charge at the last moment, and he had judged by how the Dauntless always kept slightly to the left that that was the direction Avery planned to go.

But Avery had not diverted his course at all. Instead, he had continued to fly straight ahead, as if he was fully prepared to collide with Atlas' ship.

Then, like he already knew Atlas' every move, Avery fired off shots from his two scatterguns. Having aimed for the missiles that had only just left Atlas' ship.

Two explosions and a hail of projectiles engulfed the vessel, and Atlas felt himself shaking in seat from the impact.

It was unbelievably lucky that he was not deemed to have been destroyed, but his shields were down, and the heavy armor plating serving a shell for his ship was calculated to have taken some heavy damage.

For Atlas' part, he had no idea what had just happened. To him, it seemed that Avery had somehow looked into the future and perfectly countered his strategy.

Being the experienced mercenary of many battles that he was, Atlas nearly immediately shook off his shock and prepared to continue to fight, but it was already too late.

Avery had already whipped around and was firing on the unshielded ship.

Despite his best efforts, Atlas' vessel was deemed to have been destroyed only a few seconds later. When Avery landed a shot with one of his plasma launchers directly where the Stifur craft's generator was located.

Had this been a real fight, Atlas and his three crew members would have gone out in a fiery explosion that killed them instantly.

"We won." Avery said, half astounded, and half elated.

There was no doubt that Atlas had been the strongest adversary he had ever fought before in a ship-on-ship battle.

Honestly, the fact that he had won was a major upset in the competition.

Avery was in third place while Atlas was in second.

So far, he had only scored higher during the first competition. Which had been the one Atlas' ship was the most disadvantageous in.

Now though, when it had come down to basically a head-to-head fight, Avery had come out on top. Proving his own skills, and the power of his vessel.

"How did you do that at the end?" Kasandra wore a befuddled expression on her face.

She had anticipated Avery's initial plan, but he had gone in a utterly different direction right at the last moment.

She found his actions to be incompressible and illogical. Had Atlas truly been planning to use his ship as a battering ram, they would have been the ones to be eliminated, and the Dauntless likely would have suffered some real damage.

"I can't really explain it. For a few seconds there, I thought I could see where the power in Atlas' ship was moving. I noticed it being directed towards his missile pods and those thrusters he was hiding. It was really like I just had a sudden epiphany."

Even as he thought back on the experience, Avery could not properly explain it. What he had experienced felt like something more than intuition. He had been certain of Atlas' actions.

"Hm, maybe it's like how I can read people's body language and listen to their breathing and heartbeat to understand what their thinking. Maybe you figured out how to read Atlas' ship instinctively somehow." Kasandra said, suggesting a plausible answer.

Though Avery thought that this sounded partially right, he did not think that it was entirely correct.

What he had done went beyond just merely picking up on another pilot's biases when flying or using sensors to anticipate their next move.

'Well, now's not really the time to worry about this. I took Atlas out, but this event is not over until there's only one vessel left.'

Avery turned towards where the other competitors were and swiftly took stock of the current situation.

Everyone had gotten out of the minefield web that Atlas had set up around half a minute ago.

In the end, the test pilot currently in eighth place and Jack Huxley had been eliminated.

While Liesel, Cerise, and the rank four retired police ace representing De Vlak had survived and were fighting amongst each other.

'It's not looking good for my temporary partner.' Avery thought as he assessed the battle.

Liesel was not doing badly; in fact, she was showing off her skills quite well to be able to keep up with two highly skilled veterans of the Alliance Police.

Unfortunately, the placement when Atlas had set up his minefield had been less than stellar for her.

Being on the outskirts of the net, she had been forced to move in certain ways and had gotten targeted by the others.

In the end, she had needed to forcefully break out and ended up taking hits from some of the mines. Leaving her shields in a less than impeccable state.

Of course, Avery was hardly in any better condition.

He had less than a quarter of his shields' capacity now, and all of his ship's shield cells had been exhausted during the fight with Atlas.

'If I just wait here, there might be enough time to recycle the Dauntless' shields. I can also wait and just let them fight it out amongst each other until there's only one left. Then take on the exhausted victor.'

It was a sound plan, but the moment he thought it up, Avery felt like there was a painful knot in his stomach.

Staying on the sidelines right now would almost certainly see Liesel being taken down.

Sure, they partnership as only temporary for this event, and they would have to fight each at the end anyway, but he felt like he would be betraying himself if he just sat back and did nothing because it was in his best interest for winning the competition.

Though it was only for now, Liesel was his teammate. So, he would treat her just like any other member of his team and give his all to make sure that she got through this. They would be taking first and second place. Avery would make certain of it.