Every year, the Alliance Military Academy ushered in a large-scale assessment, selecting 30 students out of the more than 4,000 enrolled in the same cohort to enter the Alliance military in advance, cultivating them as key future leaders for top-tier positions.
The medical department’s independent assessment was quite special and had just concluded last month. Immediately following that was the formal Alliance reserve military selection assessment, which integrated mecha operation, combat, command, and strategy. The assessment cycle lasted as long as half a month, and the content was divided into three major sections.
Single-person mecha operation capability test, mecha maximum upper limit evaluation, passing straight through the infinite-obstacle hell-grade training ground within 20 minutes; failure resulted in direct elimination.
1v1 mecha combat ring gauntlet matches, with twenty people forming a group; the 200 people who successfully held the ring and won until the end advanced. The score was worth 50 points, graded comprehensively by the judges.
Four-person team randomly grouped, simulated actual combat, requiring them to travel to an unknown planet selected by the examiners to find embedded amethyst crystals and successfully bring them to the finish line. The score was 100 points, graded comprehensively by the judges.
The top 30 scorers across both rounds would become official Alliance reservists.
Shi Yixing wore the Number 1 monitoring bracelet, standing right in the dead center beneath the podium. The moment he raised his head, he could see Helin Zhou’s cold face.
Unlike the noisy chatter of the others, Shi Yixing stood alone with an eerie quietness, lowering his gaze to ignore Xiaze Zetian’s scorching stare. Ever since his impulsive confession and its resulting rejection last time, he had already turned down Xiaze Zetian’s dinner invitations on multiple occasions; he was no saint, and naturally could not manage to act as close as before.
Even as a younger brother, they should… maintain a distance.
Helin Zhou, seated in the center of the podium, rose to his feet, his deep gaze sweeping indifferently past Shi Yixing down below. The students off-stage abruptly quieted down, countless eyes falling upon the tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted white tiger alpha. Feelings of worship, respect, and awe were concentrated entirely upon him.
“Are you all ready?” Without any equipment amplification, the alpha’s bell-like voice chamber boomed with deep resonance. The empty training ground was so expansive that an echo could even be heard.
“Ready!!” The students instantly boiled over with passion, igniting as they raised their arms and shouted in response.
Helin Zhou flicked his wrist, tapping the black mechanical bracelet. “Click” Three red laser beams flashed, and a giant blue-purple vortex portal lit up across the empty grounds.
“Those who are ready can summon your mechas and enter now. The bracelet will automatically initiate a countdown, and upon passing, it will display a green ‘Qualified’ prompt. The passage remains open for 24 hours. Everyone, begin.”
Nobody knew what kind of challenges lay on the other side of the vortex, and the terror of the unknown shrouded them. When told to actually go inside, they looked at one another, and not a single person dared to take the lead.
“Huh? At least let us see what’s inside to guarantee our safety, right?”
“Yeah, we should be allowed to check out the venue first!”
“There’s no need to hide things or hold back now, is there? Practical operations can’t be faked by anyone anyway, plus there are monitoring bracelets. We should look at the venue first!”
“Bang” A ink-black rabbit-type mecha landed steadily on the ground, darting forward dozens of meters before anyone else could finish arguing, as a dark afterimage melted directly into that mysterious vortex of mist and vanished. As the dust and powder cleared, three to four thousand alphas were still standing dazed in their original spots.
A handsome curve hooked at the corner of Helin Zhou’s lips as he resettled into his seat, his tone indifferent: “If you don’t even have the courage to face the unknown now, how will you carry out missions out in interstellar space in the future? Those who wish to give up, please remove your bracelets and leave on your own.”
No sooner had his voice fallen than another large batch of beast-form mechas entered the vortex black hole one after another. A lizard mecha crawling forward on its belly, winged avian flight mechas soaring inward, roaming pythons, octopuses, plant seed pods…
Ten minutes passed. Helin Zhou raised his hand to tap the tabletop, his voice echoing with a low declaration of termination: “Alright, the rest of you—you are already eliminated. 24 hours was just a front; you couldn’t make a decision within ten minutes.
You have already lost your qualifications. Do I need to teach you just how precious ten minutes are on the battlefield?”
The alphas who had been frightened to the point of weak legs on the open ground accounted for a full tenth of the total head count. The bracelets on their wrists vanished automatically, and regretting it now was already too late.
A holographic projection illuminated the sky, displaying the high-definition view of the other side of the unknown vortex for everyone to see.
Fiery flames and magma felt scorching hot even through breathing; beneath the suspended, floating rock formations was a bottomless abyss of lava, where boulders instantly melted into gray ash and murky black smoke the moment they plunged in. “Swish” A dark afterimage sped past the fluorescent screen at extreme speed.
“Ah! Bang-splash!!” A green-skinned lizard mecha lost control and slammed into a cylindrical moving obstacle, where stone pillars spinning at high speed crushed and exploded its mecha body from both sides simultaneously. The mecha was scrapped, mechanical fragments scattered into debris, and thick fog filled the air amid rising gunsmoke and gunpowder. With no way to discern directions, a pungent, spicy, choking, and foul odor spread for several miles around.
“Are you fucking kidding me, crazy moving stone pillars—I’m going to fight you to the death!!”
“Shit, I’m stuck damn, there are stone-egg worms!” Behind the mystical stone-pillar forest lay a massive expanse of viscous, black morass with no end in sight. Milky-white, oval-shaped, fat, and plump crawling worms floated on the surface of the water, spitting out black bubbles that burst into dark green, viscous slime—more than enough to corrode low-quality metal materials with low saturation resistance.
“How the hell are we supposed to get past this magma?! Don’t the winged ones have an advantage? That’s unfair?!”
“Bang, boom-boom splash!” A soaring crimson phoenix bird in mid-air spread its wings to leap across the black-water morass, only to be unfortunately struck by a flying flame meteorite. Its mecha wing was smashed open with a gaping hole, sending it wobbling and plunging as metal parts dropped vertically and scattered in all directions. However, this was merely the beginning “Crack-snap “ Purple lightning flashed as if equipped with a radar, locking onto their positions with precise targeting to chase and strike them.
“Holy shit, fucking pretend I didn’t say anything, run for your lives!”
“This is perverted pushing us toward death? Lightning, water, fire, physical obstacles, combining every training ground together to torment us?”
“I’m going to die. Who designed this venue? The first round is aimed at eliminating half the people, right? Too ruthless.”
“Ahead… someone has already crossed the lava magma.”
Mechas heavily damaged and injured students were automatically teleported back to the training ground, while their bracelets automatically unbound, declaring their failure and elimination.
At the very top of the holographic projection, red numbers showed a countdown of 5 minutes, 32 seconds, and 02 milliseconds the time it took for the first person to enter the examination hall. Shi Yixing had five and a half minutes remaining; time ticked away second by second, and students were being forcibly sent back continuously. As of now, not a single person had successfully cleared the course.
The black rabbit-type mecha closest to the finish line moved at a speed so blinding that a complete, clear image had never even been captured. Its speed advantage was already glaringly obvious, making it overwhelmingly superior, at least among this cohort of peers.
Leaving everyone else far behind, Shi Yixing had just dodged a fireball artillery shell and traversed the fiery lava. Wherever he passed behind, rocks tumbled and melted into ash within the magma. The stepping footholds on the surface of the liquid shattered and grew terrifyingly fragile the moment they were touched; without a certain degree of speed, passing through was practically impossible.
Survival of the fittest: only mechas and mecha pilots capable of comprehensive versatility and withstanding harsh environmental challenges were qualified.