Chapter 124: The Drowned Valley- 1
Ayla rolled her round blue body off the muddy mound where the five crocodile monsters had just died. The three feet of water rippled out softly from her movements, sending small waves crashing against the nearby rusted iron pipes.
Her internal metal core was humming with a very warm, comfortable feeling as it slowly digested the pure energy from the silver system cores. It was not quite enough to push her to the next rank immediately, but she could definitely feel the foundation of her silver core expanding.
"If I keep eating these things at this rate, reaching Gold will not even take a week," Ayla muttered happily to her own mind.
"Do not get too ahead of yourself, little slime," Nexus’s voice sounded out inside her head, carrying a light touch of amusement. "The simulation monsters are scattered across a whole planet. The density will change the deeper you go into the Drowned Valley. But since I can see the real-time map layout, I can easily show you where the largest clusters are hiding."
"Then show me the way," Ayla replied, her golden pupils expanding with hunger. "I want to find the strongest ones first."
A green navigation arrow immediately flashed inside her right holographic lens, pointing straight toward a thick grove of massive metallic trees.
The trees were growing directly out of the deep water, their metal roots coiling around old, ruined concrete structures that looked like ancient skyscrapers from the fallen AI civilization.
Ayla didn’t waste a single second. She dropped her round body into the murky water and activated her Gale Acceleration trait.
Her fluid blue form became a fast blur, slicing through the water with extreme speed and leaving a long white wake behind her.
She didn’t care about making noise because she actively wanted the monsters to hear her coming.
As she traveled deeper into the sector for about ten minutes, the surrounding environment became much more dark and gloomy.
The heavy gray clouds above started to pour down a thick, rhythmic rain that drummed loudly against the rusted metal structures.
The water level rose from three feet to nearly five feet deep, making it hard for any standard humanoid student to navigate without using flying or swimming skills.
Suddenly, the green navigation arrow over her eye began to blink rapidly in a bright red color.
"Stop right there," Nexus warned her softly. "You have entered the territory of a Gold-ranked simulation beast. It is a regional boss for this drop zone."
Ayla slowed her speed and floated calmly on the surface of the water, her golden eyes scanning the dark area between four massive metal pillars.
The water in this specific section was completely still, not moving at all despite the heavy rain falling from the sky.
The silence was very heavy and thick.
Then, the water directly underneath her began to bubble violently.
A huge shadow rose from the depths of the basin. The water burst upward in a massive spray as a colossal creature revealed its physical form.
It was a giant mechanical turtle, easily the size of a large house. Its shell was formed from thick plates of rusted dark iron that were fused together with glowing blue energy circuits.
Its head was completely organic, looking like a ancient, wrinkled snapping turtle with row after row of razor sharp steel teeth.
The mechanical turtle let out a deafening roar that vibrated through the metal pillars, creating massive tidal waves that pushed Ayla’s small body back a few meters.
Its deep red pupils locked onto the blue slime, and its internal energy circuits flared with a blinding blue light.
"A Gold-ranked Iron Shell Turtle," Ayla analyzed, her mind remaining perfectly calm. "Its physical defenses must be incredibly high. Standard physical attacks or simple fire element magic would probably not even leave a scratch on that iron shell."
"Its armor parameters are indeed high school level simple," Nexus added through the link. "But its mental defenses are completely wide open. It is a simulation beast, so its brain operates on basic artificial instincts like territorial anger and survival fear."
"Perfect," Ayla whispered.
The mechanical turtle didn’t wait around. It opened its massive jaws and gathered a huge amount of water mana into its throat. Within a fraction of a second, it fired a high-pressure beam of water straight toward Ayla’s coordinates.
The water beam was so powerful that it tore a clean trench through the swamp, screaming with a loud, whistling noise.
Ayla didn’t use her camouflage or her blinking skills to escape the incoming line of fire. She stayed exactly where she was, waiting until the destructive water beam was just a few feet away from her face.
She activated her Twin Lens of the Weaver and targeted the giant turtle’s massive soul container.
"Removal," Ayla commanded in her mind.
She didn’t just delete its anger. She chose to completely erase the turtle’s core instinct of self-preservation and territorial dominance.
Instantly, the massive water beam fizzled out into a harmless spray of gray mist, losing all of its concentrated mana. The giant mechanical turtle froze mid-attack, its massive iron legs locking up in the muddy basin.
The bright red light in its pupils faded into a dull, blank gray color. The creature’s face lost all of its ferocity, turning completely expressionless.
Because its entire survival instinct had been wiped away by Ayla’s technique, the turtle could no longer find a single reason to fight, move, or even breathe. It didn’t care that there was an enemy in front of it.
It didn’t care about protecting its own life. It simply floated in the deep water like a dead piece of wood, its massive jaw hanging wide open as its heavy tail drifted limply in the current.
"Let’s see what happens if I mix things up," Ayla thought, a cruel curiosity rising inside her brain.
She didn’t want to just end it with a simple seizure this time. She wanted to test the absolute limits of her Interchange function on a single target by swapping its past memory states.
But before she could execute the next step, a loud, panicked shout echoed from the dense metallic trees to her left.
"Look over there! There is a Gold-ranked boss in this basin!" a familiar voice yelled out through the rain.
Ayla tilted her mass toward the noise and saw a group of seven students rushing through the flooded forest.
To her amusement, it was the exact same group led by the predatory green reptile-man who had tried to recruit her in the classroom.
The rocky-skinned warrior with the iron club and the purple-feathered girl were also with him, along with four other humanoid recruits.
They looked completely exhausted, their uniform jackets torn and covered in muddy green swamp water.
They had clearly spent the last two hours running away from other monsters, and their faces were filled with a high level of stress.
"Wait, do not go any closer!" the reptile-man shouted, his green tail splashing nervously as he stopped behind a metal root. "The turtle is a Gold-ranked monster! We cannot fight that thing with our current numbers! We will get wiped out instantly!"
"But look at it," the purple-feathered girl pointed out, her sharp eyes widening in surprise as she stared at the giant beast.
"The turtle is not moving at all. It is just standing there like it is paralyzed. And look at the table desk underneath its head. That is the arrogant blue slime from our class!"
The group of seven students quickly shifted their gazes down, finally noticing the small ball of translucent blue liquid floating calmly in front of the giant mechanical monster.
"Is that stupid piece of jelly trying to commit suicide?" the rocky-skinned warrior sneered, his confidence returning a bit as he gripped his club. "It probably ran into the boss by mistake and got paralyzed by its Gold-ranked aura. Serves her right for being so arrogant during the orientation week."
"No, that is not right," the reptile-man muttered, his yellow pupils contracting as he analyzed the scene with his beast instincts. "The turtle is the one that is paralyzed, not the slime. Look at its eyes. There is no life in them. What did that monster do to it?"
Ayla ignored their loud chatter, but she decided to use them as a live stage for her final experiment. Since they had arrived at the perfect time, she could test her skills on both the beast and the students simultaneously.
She locked her Twin Lens onto the reptile-man and the purple-feathered girl, and then she extended the connection to include the giant mechanical turtle.
"Interchange," Ayla commanded smoothly.
She took the intense, whimpering terror that was currently filling the hearts of the students and forcefully shoved it directly into the giant turtle’s empty mind.
At the exact same time, she took the absolute, hollow indifference of the turtle and dropped it into the students’ consciousness.
The conversion was immediate and devastating.
The giant mechanical turtle, which had been standing completely still, suddenly let out a high-pitched, pathetic shriek that sounded like a dying bird. Its massive iron body began to shake violently with a wave of unexplainable, paralyzing terror.
It frantically retracted its giant head and legs back into its iron shell, splashing water everywhere as it tried to bury itself deep into the mud to hide from the tiny blue slime.
The proud Gold-ranked boss was literally weeping from fake fear.
On the other side of the basin, the reptile-man and the feathered girl instantly dropped their weapons into the water.
Their faces became completely blank and empty, their eyes turning wide and unseeing. The survival fear and caution that had been driving their movements vanished into thin air.
They didn’t care about the trial anymore, they didn’t care about the Gold monster, and they didn’t even care about defending their own bodies.
They just stood frozen in the five-foot-deep water, letting the heavy rain wash over their numb faces like brainless dolls.
"What is wrong with you two?" the rocky warrior yelled in panic, grabbing the reptile-man’s shoulder and shaking him hard. "Get your weapons up! The turtle is hiding! This is our chance to steal the kill and get the first Gold points!"
The remaining five students, blinded by greed and the thought of getting ahead in the rankings, completely ignored the weird behavior of their leaders.
They let out wild battle cries and rushed forward through the deep water, raising their iron clubs and magic staves to strike the hiding turtle.
Ayla watched them close the distance, her golden eyes flashing with a cold, direct bloodlust.
"You are all annoying obstacles," she thought flatly.
She locked her gaze onto the five rushing students and deployed her absolute ultimate function: Combination.
She forcefully injected the concept of hysterical, screaming joy and deep, suicidal despair directly into their brains at the exact same millisecond.
The five geniuses didn’t even have time to register what was happening to their minds. The extreme, clashing emotional data packets violently short-circuited their cognitive nervous systems within a fraction of a second.
Their battle cries turned into choked gasps as their eyes instantly rolled into the backs of their skulls.
Their physical bodies fell into violent, uncontrollable muscular seizures mid-stride.
They crashed heavily into the five-foot-deep water one by one, splashing mud and foam into the air as their hearts completely stopped beating from pure neurological overload.
A series of bright blue lights flashed over their bodies as the system parameters checked their vital signs.
Within a moment, all five students vanished from the swamp, their souls being instantly ejected back to their residential rooms as their score counters reset to zero.
"Five freshman participants eliminated. Zero points awarded to them," the automated system voice chimed softly inside Ayla’s interface.
The reptile-man and the feathered girl, who were still trapped in the hollow state of indifference, didn’t even blink as their teammates vanished from existence right in front of them.
They remained perfectly still, completely unbothered by the absolute destruction of their vanguard.
Ayla didn’t waste any more time on the toys. She rolled over to the giant mechanical turtle, which was still shivering inside its iron shell.
She extended a thick blue fluid tendril, condensed her mana into a sharp edge using Steel Claw Transformation, and drove it straight through the turtle’s soft neck joints, shattering its main core instantly.
A huge, glowing golden core the size of a large chest rose from the mechanical beast’s body.
Ayla opened her mouth wide and smoothly swallowed the golden energy, feeling a massive, explosive wave of pure silver mana saturate her core.
"One Gold-ranked boss eliminated. One hundred survival points collected," the system voice announced loudly.
Ayla bobbled her body in absolute delight as she felt her silver core throb, turning brighter than it had ever been before.
She then turned her golden eyes back toward the two frozen students remaining in the water, ready to finish her morning harvest.
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