The warp lights faded, depositing Zee back into the massive main arena of Sector 7.
[ WORLD CREATION TRIAL: PHASE ONE INITIATED ]
[ TIME REMAINING UNTIL FIRST ORBITAL EVALUATION: 48 HOURS ]
The quiet of deep space was shattered by the roar of thousands of candidate platforms activating simultaneously. Across the vast arena, giant holographic screens broadcasted the real time progress of top ranked Creators.
Zee stood at the edge of his platform, watching the cosmic spectacle unfold around him.
To his right, Gen was already far ahead.
Gen floated in the center of a blinding ring of white fire. His Stellar Iron core had expanded into a massive, polished sphere, encased in thick plates of metallic armor and spinning along a perfect geometric orbit. Miniature rivers of liquid plasma carved clean, symmetrical highways across its surface.
It was flawless, beautiful, and utterly terrifying in its cold efficiency.
Other Creators were deploying rare materials drawn from high tier guilds.
One candidate built a world composed entirely of blue crystal, refracting starlight into defensive barrier fields. Another forged a jagged, obsidian war world that constantly outputted high density kinetic shockwaves.
A few prodigies had already introduced baseline ecosystems.
Their worlds sprouted glowing moss, synthetic coral reefs, and automated bacterial hives designed to manufacture passive energy for their cores.
Every candidate was following the standard Architect manual to perfection: maximize mass, maximize defense, and stack high tier materials.
Zee looked back down at his own world.
His planet was a dark, bruised sphere of heavy soil and compressed gravity ore. It didn’t gleam with stellar iron. It didn’t crackle with plasma. It sat in the dark, pulsing with a slow, heavy heartbeat.
He began scanning the detailed stat panels displayed over the neighboring platforms.
The obsidian war world had maximum structural armor, but its core logic was rigid and scripted. The crystal planet had infinite defensive yield, but its environment was locked into a static, unchanging loop.
Even the worlds with glowing moss were built around pre programmed, system approved biological scripts.
The Creators were treating their worlds like machines. They built chassis, engines, and shields, framing their planets as static platforms for energy collection.
A strange, cold realization settled over Zee’s mind.
He looked across the ten thousand glowing worlds filling Sector 7, scanning their blueprints one by one.
Nobody was trying to build a world that could adapt, react and think.