Chapter 114: Ascendant academy
The mortal plane of the Crusade was divided in a strict way so that higher tiered races would have zero chances of meeting lower tiered ones.
This structural division was a necessary safety measure implemented by the Nexus system to protect weaker races from going into total extinction.
In the lower world, a common human or a weak beast would never have to worry about a dragon or a cosmic entity stepping on their home city because the boundaries between the tiers were locked tight by system laws.
However, in the vast Ascendant plane, this logical distinction never existed. There were no separate tiers or protective walls to keep the small fish away from the apex predators.
When a single person from any race across the universe upgraded their power into the Crown rank, the system rules would forcefully pull them out of the mortal plane and drop them directly into this higher world.
Because of this harsh lack of boundaries, the survival rate of ascendants from lower tiered races was almost zero.
They would materialize in the Ascendant plane as weak beginners, only to be instantly hunted down and slaughtered by the ancient powerhouses of the higher races who had been ruling the plane for millions of years.
This tragic pattern became so evident over time as no new races ever managed to emerge or establish a territory in the Ascendant planes, even after thousands of millennia had passed by.
All of their lucky ascendants never survived past their first week in the higher world. That was the exact reason why the Nexus system had originally started the Ascendant Academy.
The administrator wanted to choose talented young beings from all the Infinite Races and groom them enough through specialized training so they would actually have a fighting chance to survive when they eventually stepped into the raw Ascendant plane.
In the beginning, the powerful higher races were not daring enough to openly oppose the rules of the Nexus, but they never truly believed that the weaker races could ever challenge their authority.
They thought the academy was just a useless waste of system resources. But the historical results eventually proved them completely wrong.
As the centuries rolled on, countless legendary Conquerors emerged from the lower races after graduating from the academy, almost completely throwing off the dominant positions of the higher races.
Some of these lower rankers even won direct challenges against the ancient families, snatching away their resource nodes and territory rights.
The higher races finally understood the immense value and power of the Ascendant Academy after suffering those massive losses.
They stopped mocking the institution and changed their strategy entirely, starting to send their own royal children here the exact moment they reached the required age and baseline strength.
There were exactly four distinct ways for a being to enter the registration gates of the Ascendant Academy.
The first method was the direct method for those who already lived inside the Ascendant planes, which required the candidates to participate in incredibly brutal physical trials to prove their worth.
The second method was through direct referrals granted by graduated students who had managed to successfully climb into the Top Million positions of the global Ascendant rankings.
The third method was by being chosen by a specific race to represent their entire species through fixed institutional slots.
This was the primary method through which individuals from the Mortal plane entered the academy grounds, and this specific category always had the largest numbers of recruits because every single registered race would have more than ten thousand slots to distribute among their noble houses.
And the fourth method was the most rarest path to ever exist.
It had only appeared three times ever in the entire multi-million year history of the Academy, and that method was direct recruitment by the Nexus system itself.
Such a rarest thing happened to manifest right now.
A massive group consisting of hundreds of thousands of young beings in all kinds of different humanoid forms was currently gathered around the grand welcoming plaza of the Ascendant Academy.
The plaza was an immense open field constructed from pure white marble that floated right in the middle of a sea of clouds.
All of their intense gazes and scanning skills were focused entirely on the single, tiny being that had just been directly recruited by the Nexus system itself.
"Isn’t that just a common slime?" a tall humanoid with only one massive vertical eye sitting on the center of his head muttered in absolute disbelief.
He rubbed his single eye with his green hand, his expression turning thoroughly perplexed under the bright sunlight.
"I must be seeing things wrong, right? After all, I only have one eye to see the world, so my depth perception might be glitching out today." He shook his head violently, trying to clear his vision.
"It is indeed a common slime," another humanoid whose entire face was filled with dozens of blinking eyes answered absentmindedly.
His multiple pupils were expanding and contracting in a manic rhythm as he ran his racial perception skills over the target.
"I can see it clear and sure. Every single one of my forty eyes is tracking the exact same low-grade fluid. There is no spatial illusion or transformation trait active on that body."
A few meters away, a young warrior from a high-tier beast race, who possessed thick golden fur and a pair of massive horns curving from his forehead, let out a loud, mocking snort that sent a wave of hot air over the marble tiles.
"Is the system administrator playing a joke on us this year? The fourth recruitment token is a legend among the ancient families. My royal father told me it was reserved for world-ending anomalies, but the system wasted it on a weak blue jelly that belongs in a beginner’s forest simulation on lower planes."
"Maybe it is a special sub-species?" a female humanoid with shimmering silver scales covering her neck whispered to her companion, her fingers tightly clenching the hilt of her spear as she stayed on guard.
"Look at the color density. It looks a bit darker than a standard woodland slime."
"A slime is still a slime, no matter what color it paints itself," her companion replied with a cold sneer, his insect-like wings fluttering with an arrogant buzz.
"It doesn’t even possess a proper brain structure or a soul container. A single low-tier fire spell from an Iron ranker would evaporate its entire physical mass within a second."
While a massive storm of chaos and noisy arguments was rapidly brewing across the entire welcoming plaza, the actual reason for all of this universal uproar was lazily blinking around on the white marble floorboards.
Ayla had settled into her foundational form, looking like nothing more than a small, perfectly round ball of translucent blue fluid sitting right in the center of the giant teleportation array.
She rolled her jelly body slightly to the left, her internal focus entirely relaxed as she looked at the massive crowds of aliens surrounding her coordinates.
"Little girl, you really know how to make a massive impression wherever you go," the highly melodic, teasing voice of Nexus suddenly echoed directly in her ears, laughing softly at the sheer absurdity of the scene.
Ayla didn’t speak anything back through her mind link. She simply shifted her weight, making her small blue body wobble slightly on the stone.
She was definitely not here in this academy to be casually trained by these high-ranking instructors just to make herself survivable in the raw Ascendant plane.
In fact, after devouring a large portion of the Void King and advancing her baseline parameters to the Silver Rank, she was already fully confident of her own monstrous ability to survive anywhere on her own terms.
The main, singular reason why she had agreed to come to this higher world was to rapidly improve her raw strength.
And to her primitive monster logic, what better way was there to improve her traits than devouring more high-tier brains for it?
Ayla already knew from the very beginning that she would automatically become a primary target for every single ambitious student the exact moment everyone found out she was a direct recruit from the Nexus system.
The ancient families and the proud heirs of the higher races would naturally want to challenge her to prove their own superiority over the system’s choice.
But she calculated that those arrogant aliens would still be a bit on guard against her if she had chosen to arrive in her silver-haired human slate form, or even any other advanced beast form she had harvested in the past.
They would have analyzed her movements and stayed cautious around her skills.
But in the simple, harmless form of a tiny blue slime, none of these proud geniuses would ever take her threat level seriously.
They would look down on her, drop their defensive fields, and willingly walk right into her personal space without a single shred of suspicion.
"What a viscious plan! Where did you learn this?" Nexuas asked.
"It’s called ’pig eat tiger’. Kenji taught me.." Ayla muttered inwardly remembering the story of a low key cultivator.
Ayla smirked inwardly, her jelly form letting out a very soft, happy ripple as she began to select which alien brain she was going to harvest first for breakfast.
