Chapter 126: The Shocked Professors
Far away from the humid, rainy swamps of the Drowned Valley Sector, the main evaluation amphitheater of the Ascendant Academy was filled with a very heavy, tense silence.
This grand observation hall was the place where all the elite homeroom teachers, senior professors, and division directors gathered to watch the live progress of the freshman survival trial.
The room was dominated by hundreds of massive, floating crystalline screens that displayed real-time combat footage, statistical data charts, and the global scoreboard of the ten thousand participating Crusaders.
Instructor Argenta sat calmly in her designated leather chair near the front row of the Class One sub-division section.
Her midnight-black military uniform was perfectly crisp, and her long dark green hair rested smoothly against her shoulders. She held a small porcelain cup of hot tea in her hand, her silver, pupil-less eyes looking completely detached as she watched the floating screens.
To her left and right, several other homeroom teachers from the different sub-divisions were actively discussing their students’ initial performances, their voices filled with pride and excitement.
"The third sub-division is doing exceptionally well this morning," a tall, muscular professor with golden scales on his neck remarked with a satisfied smile. "My vanguard group has already locked down a prime plaza sector in the flooded ruins. They have cleared multiple packs of Silver-ranked swamp panthers without taking a single casualty. Their coordination is truly text-book perfect."
"Do not celebrate too early, Professor Drake," a female elven teacher from the fifth sub-division countered, waving her hand to adjust her own display screen. "My students have just successfully surrounded a Bronze-ranked elite boss. Their point gathering speed will surpass yours within the next hour."
Suddenly, a loud, sharp chime echoed across the entire observation hall. It was the high-priority system alert sound that only triggered when a major regional boss was eliminated or a high-ranking student was forcefully wiped out from the map.
Every single professor in the room automatically shifted their gazes toward the giant central master scoreboard that floated above the stage.
The name at the absolute top of the leaderboard did not belong to any of the established royal princes or noble heirs from the infinite races.
Instead, a simple, three-letter name was glowing in a bright golden font, instantly pushing down all the top geniuses of the academy.
[ Rank 1: Ayla — Sub-Division 1 — Score: 120 Points ]
"What? One hundred and twenty points already?" Professor Drake gasped, his jaw dropping slightly as he stared at the glowing letters. "The exam only started a few hours ago! How can a single student accumulate that many points so quickly without a team?"
"Look at the regional kill logs!" another senior professor shouted, pointing his finger toward the sub-display chart. "The Gold-ranked regional boss of the western basin, the Iron Shell Turtle, has been officially eliminated. The direct kill credit went entirely to that little blue slime from Class One!"
The entire evaluation hall instantly erupted into a loud chorus of shocked whispers and frantic murmurs. The homeroom teachers could not believe their eyes.
A Gold-ranked simulation beast possessed an incredibly thick physical armor shell and a massive pool of water mana.
For a single Silver-ranked freshman to solo-kill such a monstrous entity on the very first morning was supposed to be a statistical impossibility.
Instructor Argenta subtly curled her lips, letting out a very faint, amused smile as she took a small sip of her hot tea. ’I knew that little thing would create a mess,’ she thought inwardly, her marble face remaining perfectly calm under the suspicious stares of her colleagues.
But before the professors could even process the shock of the turtle’s death, the central screen tracking Ayla’s coordinates suddenly began to flicker with a terrifying, unexplainable energy signature.
The magical sensors attached to the Drowned Valley Sector began to beep rapidly in a bright red warning color, indicating a massive, unnatural distortion in the world laws.
"Wait, look at the mana density around the slime!" an elderly dwarf professor wearing thick spectacles yelled, leaning heavily over his wooden desk. "Her internal silver core is spinning at a suicidal velocity! It is completely saturated, but the system code is rejecting her breakthrough! The simulation data lacks the true conceptual weight to break her bottleneck!"
"Of course it does," Professor Drake sneered, letting out a breath of relief. "The child possesses a mutated, high-quality core. Fake simulation data can never trigger a real rank evolution for that type of high-tier framework. Her core is going to suffer from severe mana bloating, and she will be forced to eject herself back to her room. Her trial is basically over."
However, right as Drake finished his mocking sentence, something happened that caused every single high-ranking administrator in the room to freeze in absolute, pure horror.
The live visual feed of the western basin suddenly blurred, and a blinding, majestic golden light manifested directly inside Ayla’s spatial coordinates.
Floating within the screen’s rendering display was a massive, terrifying energy core that was easily the size of an elephant. It spun with a dense, purple-tinted cosmic pattern that radiated a faint, ancient fog.
The sheer visual pressure of that core alone was so immense that three of the floating observation crystals inside the hall instantly cracked and shattered into fine powder.
"That—that energy signature..." the elderly dwarf professor stammered, his spectacles slipping off his nose as his hands began to tremble violently. "That is not a simulation asset! That is a genuine, higher-plane Apocalypse-ranked monster core! That is the pure biological essence of the World Devouring Serpent, Xuan Tun!"
"How is this possible?" Professor Drake roared, slamming his fists onto his desk and jumping out of his leather chair in pure rage. "A world-class Apocalypse core? Where did a freshman get access to such a legendary treasure? The academy inventory vault does not even possess an item of that caliber! This is a blatant violation of the trial rules! She is smuggling external resources into the grid!"
"Silence, Drake!" a deep, booming voice echoed from the highest balcony of the hall, instantly crushing the rising panic.
The person who had spoken was the Grand Dean of the Examination Department, an ancient Crown-ranked powerhouse whose face was completely hidden behind a glowing silver mask.
He stood up from his throne, his sharp eyes locked onto the central screen with an unprecedented level of intensity and confusion.
"The spatial parameters of the academy grid are absolute," the Grand Dean stated, his voice vibrating with a heavy, unshakeable authority. "It is physically impossible for any student, no matter how wealthy their royal family is, to smuggle a physical object into an isolated simulation realm. The system grid would have instantly detected the foreign mass and incinerated the user’s soul container."
"Then how do you explain that elephant-sized core, Grand Dean?" Professor Drake demanded, his face turning red with anger. "The system is literally watching her swallow it whole right now!"
The Grand Dean did not answer immediately. He closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking straight into the primary administrative mainframe of the Ascendant Academy to check the background data logs.
He wanted to trace the exact source code of that golden light.
A few seconds later, the Grand Dean opened his eyes, and for the first time in hundreds of years, a visible trace of deep shock flitted across his ancient face.
"The log files... are completely blank," the Grand Dean muttered, his voice dropping into a quiet, stunned whisper that carried clearly across the quiet hall. "The system grid did not register any external smuggling. The item was manifested directly from the highest administrative layer of the world system itself. It was a direct, manual intervention from the World Administrator."
The entire evaluation amphitheater fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
Every single professor felt like a bucket of icy water had just been poured down their spines. If the Grand Dean’s words were true, it meant that the neutral, fair, and absolute World Administrator—the formless cosmic entity that managed the destiny of the infinite universes—was actively playing favorites.
The system was literally opening its private inventory to hand-feed a legendary world-class cheat directly to a tiny blue slime.
"This is madness..." the elven teacher whispered, her face going completely pale. "The World Administrator has never interacted with a mortal student since the foundation of the academy. Why is the system helping her? What in the world is the real identity of this little blue slime?"
"Could she be the direct biological descendant of an ancient primordial god?" a senior director questioned, his eyes wide with a deep caution. "Or perhaps she is the reincarnation of a cosmic entity that previously managed the system grid before the timeline loops?"
"Whatever she is, she is certainly not a normal primitive monster," another professor added, his voice shaking. "If the system itself is actively backing her growth, then nobody in this freshman batch can ever compete with her. The entire survival trial is just a personal playground for her."
Instructor Argenta kept her silver eyes glued to the screen, watching Ayla smoothly swallow the massive Apocalypse core and violently force her silver core to evolve into a solid, flawless sphere of dense gold.
The raw, heavy shockwave of the breakthrough blasted across the visual feed, vaporizing the rain into thick white steam.
’A direct recruit of the system... backed by the administrator’s personal authority,’ Argenta thought to herself, her heart beating with a rare touch of excitement.
She had known that Ayla’s background was mysterious, but she had never imagined that the little blue jelly had a direct line to the absolute master of the world grid.
This student was no longer just a genius, she was a walking cosmic anomaly.
On the screen, the situation escalated even further. Because the energy from Xuan Tun’s core was too wild, Ayla’s status bars began to flash in a dangerous red color, indicating that her new gold rank was completely unstable.
"Ah, look! Her core is collapsing!" Professor Drake shouted, a desperate spark of hope rising in his voice. "The energy is too vast for her fluid framework! If she cannot stabilize it within the next few minutes, her new rank will shatter and her core will explode!"
But before Drake could even finish his celebration, Ayla’s blue form became a devastating, high-speed projectile on the screen.
She crossed a two-kilometer distance in less than a minute, crashing straight into the exact flooded plaza where Professor Drake’s elite third sub-division alliance was currently hunting swamp panthers.
The professors watched in absolute, horrified silence as the small slime unleashed her ultimate Combination function simultaneously across forty elite students and twenty wild beasts.
Sixty targets fell into immediate, violent muscular seizures within a single millisecond, their cognitive nervous systems completely short-circuiting before they could even let out a gasp of confusion.
Forty bright blue pillars of light shot down on the screen, completely wiping Drake’s entire proud alliance from the map and resetting all their hard-earned scores back to zero.
Ayla then casually extended dozens of sharp fluid tendrils, greedily swallowing all forty-two silver cores on the field to perfectly stabilize and anchor her new flawless Gold Rank.
[ Rank 1: Ayla — Sub-Division 1 — Score: 182 Points — Rank: Gold Crusader ]
The central scoreboard updated with a loud, ringing chime, cementing her absolute dominance over the entire academy within the first few hours of the practical exam.
Professor Drake fell backward into his leather chair, his face completely gray and lifeless as he stared at the total annihilation of his entire sub-division’s vanguard.
His tea cup slipped from his fingers, crashing against the floorboards and spilling the hot liquid everywhere.
The surrounding professors did not even bother to mock him.
They were all too busy staring at the floating visual of the little blue slime waddling comfortably through the rain, their minds completely consumed by a single, terrifying question.
Who, or what, was Ayla?
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