James Foster's finger lightly tapped on Brian Carter's profile picture. Very quickly, a large amount of data about him appeared next to the three-dimensional projected avatar, and the most eye-catching part was at the very bottom: his grades from the past six years.

Looking at these, Paul Turner's face was already showing a faint trace of anger.

—According to the information shown here, not only is this Brian Carter not a so-called genius, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call him an idiot.

On the eleven-line transcript, for all subjects requiring written exams—such as Warship Structural Studies, Logistics, Defensive Tactics, and the like—he failed every one in the first two years. It wasn't until the third year that he barely passed one or two, and even now, six years later, all his grades are just scraping by.

The most unbearable to look at were his results in man-machine simulated battles. In the top few boxes, the second digit was almost always between 2 and 5. Even now, there were still a few subjects with scores below sixty.

If it weren't for Emily Thompson's meaningful glance, and if it weren't for the need to save James Foster's face, Paul Turner would have almost scoffed out loud.

A cadet for junior warship commanders who hasn't graduated in six years, and still has subjects that haven't met the standard—can such a person really be called a genius?

At this moment, however, Emily Thompson's gaze was fixed directly on the last few boxes: the four subjects of simulated opponent battles—Single Ship Tactics, Small Fleet Tactics, Personal Combat, and even Mecha Combat. All of them were above eighty!

Among them, the first to sixth rows were all three-digit numbers, and in the remaining five rows, every midterm was a perfect score. As for the graduation exams, the only reason they weren't perfect was due to various point deductions, such as improper attire or being late. In short, if you added the two together, it would still be a three-digit number.

“Your Excellency Principal, I see that aside from the simulated opponent battle subjects, all his other grades are simply appalling. Is there some reason for this?” Shifting her gaze away from the projection screen, Emily Thompson looked curiously at the bald old man before her. James Foster was definitely not crazy, nor would he take them for fools. Since he dared to claim that Brian Carter was an even more talented fleet commander than the Federation's famous general Yvon Welkom, he must have his reasons.

Giving Emily Thompson an appreciative look, James Foster smiled and said, “I know you both must find this strange. With grades like these, anyone would be considered useless—how could such a person be called a genius? But what if I told you that all his man-machine battle scores were achieved at 3S difficulty level?”

A strange light flashed in Emily Thompson's eyes, and Paul Turner also showed a look of shock.

3S level—that is already the highest difficulty in man-machine simulated battles. It requires at least a hundred top-tier computers networked together to reach the highest level of intelligence!

Perhaps this still doesn't fully convey how terrifying the 3S difficulty is. Let me give two more examples—even for the regular advanced fleet commander class exams, each man-machine combat subject only requires a score above sixty at B-level AI difficulty. And the Federation's famed general Yvon Welkom, renowned throughout the Orion Arm, could only barely pass at 2S-level AI, and even failed to meet the standard in subjects with less complex calculations, such as single ship battles and small fleet warfare.

—The difficulty of 3S level is evident from this.

That Brian Carter was able to achieve such scores against AI of this caliber is truly astonishing!

Some might ask: since the tactical level of intelligent computers is so formidable, why not just let computers command battles? Why do we need these commanders at all? The simple explanation is that in high-difficulty man-machine simulated battles, the human side's commands are all issued through computers, and the AI can anticipate these commands in advance and choose how to respond, without waiting for the opposing fleet to make a move.

Moreover, the battlefield is ever-changing, and the humans operating these warships are nothing like mindless, emotionless NPCs. Even the best computers can't calculate every variable.

Artificial intelligence can easily defeat humans in man-machine battles. But on a real battlefield, even a slightly more skilled commander is beyond the reach of AI. This was proven thousands of years ago.

“His other written exam grades are indeed terrible, and there’s no special reason for it—that’s just how he is. But once it comes to actual combat, he’s unbeatable. Over the past six years, all his opponents have been our academy’s top and second-ranked students, whose abilities are on par with those elite students from the Federal National Defense University. Yet in front of him, they were utterly defeated.”

James Foster lifted his chin, looking proudly at the two before him: “And that is why I say he will be the most talented fleet commander in the Alec Federation in the past three hundred years. If he’s not a genius, then no one in this world deserves to be called one.”