The island was home to a relentless construction site.
Wearing a makeshift hat woven from wild vines, Reed Newt stood over the worksite, carefully inspecting the progress of his ape workforce.
Ever since he had routed the two dominant monkey nests on the island, he’d gained five hundred free “laborers”, a tireless army that completely solved his acute manpower shortage.
Feeding them was shockingly simple: he merely fed them the meat of the dozens of sea monsters he had slain earlier.
After a few test trials, Reed found that the monkeys loved the sea monster meat.
Even better, consuming it injected them with surge after surge of raw strength and wild energy.
When it came to labor, one monkey could now easily do the work of two, and so far, the meat showed zero toxic side effects.
Reed simply made the beast flesh a performance-based reward for whichever workers pushed themselves the hardest.
Then there were the wild elephants.
Reed had trained them to walk a fixed path through the dense jungle, effectively carving out a smooth, heavy-duty transit route.
Transport efficiency soared.
Materials needed for the grand city poured into the clearing in a steady stream, setting the stage for an explosive increase in construction speed.
I should hold off on finishing the city walls for a moment, Reed mused after completing his rounds, taking a deep breath as his mind raced.
I need to figure out how to manufacture a batch of heavy defense weapons first.
Over the past two days, an increasing number of sea monsters had begun pulling themselves ashore, filling the air with terrifying, guttural roars.
Relying purely on massive amounts of gunpowder to blast every monster into pieces was simply too wasteful.
The raw ingredients for gunpowder, namely sulfur and saltpeter, were finite on this isolated landmass.
Until he unlocked the capability to sail out into the uncharted waters and locate new mineral veins, he had to practice strict conservation.
Squandering resources was no longer an option.
“System, open the exchange shop!” A glowing screen materialized before him.
Reed began scanning through available blueprints, searching for high-efficiency city defense machinery that fit his current material reserve.
Meanwhile, on the fifth day, at the Valley View Academy’s Observation Room, several senior instructors were delivering their daily briefings to the leadership.
“Principal, yesterday our academy recorded 179 student eliminations,” one instructor reported, crisp text from his tablet.
“Of those, 15 were registered evolutionaries, while the remaining 164 were ordinary students who hadn’t yet achieved their first breakthrough.”
“Rudyard Wilf sustained minor injuries during his last skirmish and is currently recovering,” another mentor chimed in.
“His overall ranking on the leaderboard dropped to tenth place.”
His physical body has undergone thorough tempering, pushing his combat efficiency higher by the hour.
He has officially breached the top twenty, sitting at nineteenth…”
Meinhard Janek stood near the panoramic viewing glass, his hands resting casually behind his back.
He gave a slight nod as he listened to the reports.
Five days in and out of this year’s 3,000 graduating candidates, the cumulative elimination tally had already hit 300.
It was a brutal survival rate.
But the moment one chose the path of an Island Holder, they were bound to a life-and-death struggle against the wild elements.
No candidate had the luxury of taking it easy.
Well, except for that total anomaly, Reed Newt.
The moment Reed’s name crossed Meinhard’s mind, the Principal felt a dull ache in his chest.
Suppressing a sigh, he tapped the control console to summon the live projection of Reed’s designated island.
Every single day, checking up on Reed’s progress was guaranteed to ruin Meinhard’s mood for hours on end.
“He’s still building that city?” Meinhard’s face darkened the second the holographic stream loaded.
The vast construction site was packed with swarms of industrious monkeys.
Smoke and dust churned into the sky from busy concrete mixers.
But as Meinhard scrolled the camera feed to the perimeter, his eyes widened, and his jaw subtly dropped.
Two colossal, fully formed city walls already stood erect against the coastline.
One hundred meters long.
Fifteen meters high.
A staggering three meters thick.
“How in the world…
how did he build them so fast?!” Meinhard’s pupils contracted in sheer disbelief.
Reed’s infrastructure project wasn’t just progressing; it was mutating by the hour.
Yesterday, it had been bare foundation trenches, and today, two giant fortresses stood tall!
A mentor standing beside him pointed at the live feed, sighing in complex admiration.
“Look at their tool distribution…
he equipped every single worker.”
Meinhard leaned closer.
Groups dug foundations with heavy-duty shovels and pickaxes, while others wielded steel rods to mix raw concrete.
Stone wheelbarrows zipped across the terrain alongside primitive, massive lever-cranes.
To haul dense stone blocks and heavy wet concrete to the rising heights of the ramparts, Reed had engineered a series of counterweighted cranes leveraging simple physics, with giant elephants stepping on the base levers to lift tons of weight at a time.
Driven by this genius array of tools and an endless supply of hyper-energized labor, the build speed was nothing short of miraculous.
“At this rate…
won’t he finish all four defensive walls by tomorrow?”
“I’m losing my mind watching this candidate!
Everyone else is fighting for their lives to clear sea monsters, and he’s over here sleeping soundly, eating well, and laying down industrial infrastructure!”
“A three-meter-thick solid concrete wall…
common sea monsters won’t even scratch it!”
The observation room burst into heated chatter among the instructors.
A three-meter concrete monolith was pure, unadulterated overkill for this stage of the trial.
No matter how many ordinary sea monsters swarmed the shore, they wouldn’t be able to leave a dent.
Looking at the towering gray walls, an absurd sense of absolute security washed over every spectator in the room.
No wonder Reed had spent so much initial effort grinding out basic construction; he had built an unassailable turtle shell!
“It won’t hold against Tier-1 sea monsters, though,” Meinhard declared, shaking his head as he reclaimed his composure with a serious analysis.
“The destructive force of a Tier-1 beast far outclasses ordinary sea monsters.
A single concentrated hit from a Tier-1 creature could fracture that wall structure instantly.
Three meters of reinforced concrete won’t save him when the real wave hits.”
Meinhard folded his arms.
“If Reed thinks he can sit back and relax behind a giant pile of rocks, he’s mistaken.
The only true way to survive the scaling threats of the Endless Sea is to embrace an evolutionary path and continuously refine your personal strength.
Look at Hanna Raelene, for instance…”
Right on cue, the instructor monitoring the global standings suddenly gasped, looking up in shock.
“Principal!
The leaderboard just updated; Hanna Raelene just cleared a cluster of eight sea monsters in a single engagement!
Her total score just surged to 650 points, snatching the top spot in our school district!”