The following day.
The training grounds of Jiangcheng No. 3 Divine Academy.
All of senior Class Two had assembled.
None of them showed the ease they had on the virtual campus. The air was so heavy it was difficult to breathe.
Holographic footage played on a loop above the training grounds.
Three-headed Abyssal Demon Wolves. Stitched Corpse Monsters dripping strong acid. Cyclopes the size of small buildings.
Every roar made more students turn pale.
Their homeroom teacher, Lei Yan, strode onto the platform in black combat fatigues and military boots.
Beside him stood two military representatives wearing major's insignia, their eyes scanning the crowd.
"No wasted words." Without a microphone, Lei Yan's low voice drowned out the projections' roars.
"The military's [Abyss Simulation Matrix] has been linked to your Divine Domain cores. What you're about to face are realistic monster projections reconstructed from frontline data."
His single eye swept over them. His tone was icy. "Don't think projections can't kill. The matrix reproduces physical and law-based damage with one hundred percent fidelity."
"Kin that die in there are dead for real. If your domain gets flattened, you're really bankrupt!"
An uneasy disturbance ran through the students.
"Your assessment rating is based on how long your Divine Domain's defenses hold and how many monsters you kill." He pointed toward the red button beside a connection pod.
"When you can't hold on, press the surrender button inside your pod. The matrix will disconnect immediately."
"But your assessment ends there. Your score is final."
With a rumble of machinery, a tactical leaderboard slowly rose from the center of the training grounds.
Beside it stood the main screen, more than thirty meters wide.
"During the assessment, the system will randomly select footage from your domains for public display on the main screen."
Lei Yan stepped back and cleared the way.
"Enter the pods in student-number order. Assessment begins."
The students lined up and entered the connection pods.
Hatches closed. Deep-blue indicator lights came on.
The assessment had officially begun.
Within three minutes, the big screen was switching frequently between feeds.
The commoner students were the first to face annihilation.
The system randomly selected a girl who had awakened an F-rank domain.
In the footage, twenty-odd frail Novice Orc Archers stood on a patch of grass, holding wooden bows in trembling hands.
Opposite them, the first wave of monster projections appeared: ten [3-star Black Iron Abyssal Demon Wolves].
No tactics. No probing attack.
The wolves became ten black shadows and tore into the Orc line.
Wooden arrows bounced off their tough hides.
One wolf knocked an Orc down and snapped its neck in its bloody jaws.
Flesh and blood flew. Screams carried clearly through the matrix into the connection pod.
"Aah! No!"
Inside the pod, the girl's composure utterly collapsed. Sobbing, she slammed the red button.
The hatch sprang open. She fell to the ground, crying helplessly.
A red rating appeared beside her name on the leaderboard: [Fail].
It was only the beginning.
Over the next fifteen minutes, red lights flashed wildly across the training grounds.
"My slimes got stomped into mush! I surrender!"
"The monsters have torn up my domain's foundations! I'm done!"
Students broke down as their kin were slaughtered without being able to fight back. Pod hatches opened one after another.
The leaderboard was packed with failing grades.
Such was the misery of those at the bottom.
No money for Combat Skill Cards. No resources to forge equipment.
Ordinary awakened kin were no thicker than paper before Abyssal monsters.
Beep.
Fatty Wang crawled out.
His flesh shook as he clung to the hatch and gasped for air.
Standing at the rear, Lin Yuan read Fatty's result on the leaderboard.
[Survival Time: 15 minutes. Kills: 0. Rating: D (Pass).]
"Passed?" Lin Yuan asked.
Fatty came over, plopped down on the ground, and wiped cold sweat from his face. "Barely made it through wave two. I spent the whole two hundred thousand Dad gave me on feed."
Still shaken, he patted his chest. "Drove all three hundred pigs to the front of the line and blocked the entrance with a wall of meat. If the wolves wanted in, they had to eat through the pigs first."
"Damn things took forever to bite through two meters of fat. I dragged it out long enough to scrape past the fifteen-minute pass mark."
He sighed. "Only problem is, my domain's covered in pig intestines now. Makes me sick to look at. I'm not touching pork for the next few months."
It was an absurd tactic. In the face of reality, though, survival was the only truth.
Just then, the screen flickered and switched to Monitor Li Xiuqi's domain.
The B-rank [Bountiful Oasis].
Fifty [Half-Elf Archers] in refined iron armor stood on high ground, their bows drawn taut.
Below them was a motley "wall of meat" made up of slimes, Gray Goblins, and low-grade Orcs.
These were the kin of the commoner students who had signed Vassal Contracts with Li Xiuqi a few days earlier.
The second and third waves charged.
Demon Wolves and Carrion Eaters savaged the makeshift meat shields. Screams rang out as they fell in swathes.
Their deaths slowed the monsters.
On the high ground, the Half-Elf Archers calmly released their arrows, shooting down each enemy caught in the obstruction.
Ten minutes later, the battle ended.
The commoners' kin were virtually wiped out. Li Xiuqi's half-elves were unharmed.
He had survived wave three. His score soared into the top ten.
In a corner of the training grounds, the students who had signed his contracts were white as paper.
They had exhausted their kin for a few miserable participation points. They hadn't even passed.
Li Xiuqi, meanwhile, emerged from his pod with a smile, wiping his hands with a wet tissue and accepting his lackeys' praise.
On the platform, Lei Yan watched coldly.
"This is the true face of war." His voice wasn't loud, but it struck at everyone's nerves.
"Think it's unfair? Think your class monitor is cruel for using others as cannon fodder?"
"When Abyssal monsters chew on your bones, they won't ask whether you find it cruel."
"Without deep resources and brutal troop training, you're not even an appetizer to the Abyss."
As he finished, a system announcement sounded.
"Next, senior Class Two, Zhao Tianze."
The whispers stopped.
Every gaze fixed on him.
Zhao Tianze adjusted his collar, his expression arrogant.
Instead of entering his pod at once, he stopped and looked toward Lin Yuan at the back.
"Watch closely, Lin Yuan. Today I'll show you that some gaps are impossible for bottom-feeding trash like you to cross in a lifetime."
With a cold laugh, he strode into Pod One at the center.
The hatch closed.
The big screen switched to his Divine Domain.
As the image appeared, gasps rose across the field.
Before them stood a magnificent Bronze-grade building: the [Boulder Fortress].
Enchantments gleamed on its towering walls. Its gates were closed.
In front stood a full three thousand heavily armed [Orc Warriors]!
Every one was around 7-star Black Iron.
They wore heavy refined steel plate and carried two-meter two-handed greatswords with blood grooves.
This wasn't student-level equipment. It was a regular army ready for frontline deployment.
...
Wave three arrived. Hundreds of enormous Mutated Boars charged.
"Kill!"
The Orc leader roared onscreen.
Three thousand heavily armored Orcs surged forward like a black torrent of steel and met them head-on.
It was utterly overwhelming.
Refined steel greatswords swung. Mutated Boars were chopped in half, hide and bone together.
The steel defensive line never gave an inch. It ground the monster tide into scattered flesh.
Wave four.
The commander-class [Two-Headed Corpse Dragon], a 1-star Bronze monster, descended from the sky with more than a thousand low-grade monsters.
Under its commander-class pressure, a trace of disorder spread through the Orc formation.
Then a brilliant golden card suddenly appeared in the domain's sky.
Zhao Tianze's will had descended.
[Divine Punishment Card: Skyfire Meteor].
A large-scale, single-use consumable costing three million faith points per card.
The sky turned scarlet.
Countless meteors filled with destructive power smashed down across the entire battlefield.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Fire filled the main screen.
When the smoke cleared, the Two-Headed Corpse Dragon's wings had been broken, and half its body was charred black.
The Orcs swarmed it and hacked it into bloody pulp.
The field was cleared.
Thunderous cheers erupted across the training grounds.
"Holy shit! A Divine Punishment Card! Three million, gone with a bang!"
"That's the power of money! A pay-to-win player's beating!"
"Too strong! Who's supposed to stand up to that?"
On the platform, the two military representatives exchanged a glance and nodded slightly.
"He built it with money, but resources are part of strength. Good tactical execution," the major on the left said approvingly.
The hatch opened.
Zhao Tianze stepped out.
His score froze on the big screen.
[Survival Time: 30 minutes. Kills: 1 Bronze commander, 1,200 Black Iron monsters. Rating: A (Currently First).]
A commanding lead.
He basked in the adoring looks around him.
Chin raised, he walked straight through the crowd and stopped before Lin Yuan.
"See that, Lin Yuan?" A mocking smile curled his mouth. "That's my strength."
He reached out and patted Lin Yuan's shoulder.
"Those goblins you've cobbled together from scraps wouldn't survive a single roar from that Two-Headed Corpse Dragon."
"I'll stand right here and watch your Wasteland Divine Domain get flattened. Ready to sweep garbage off the streets?"
The surrounding students looked at Lin Yuan with pity and contempt.
The difference between an ant and an elephant could not have been clearer.
Seated in his chair, Lin Yuan looked away from the leaderboard.
He stood and walked forward.
His shoulder struck Zhao Tianze aside with enough force to make the owner of a B+-rank domain stumble and nearly fall.
"Move. You're in the way."
Without looking back, and under several astonished gazes, he pulled open a connection pod and sat down inside.