Chapter 127: End of the exam
Ayla rolled her round blue body across the top of a rusted metal tower that rose out of the deep water.
The heavy rain continued to pour down from the gray sky, drumming a rhythmic sound against her dense fluid surface.
The planet-sized Drowned Valley Sector stretched out endlessly in every direction, but to Ayla, this whole survival trial had officially become incredibly boring.
Ever since she had swallowed the massive Apocalypse core from the World Devouring Serpent and stabilized her new Gold Crusader rank by eating the swamp panthers, hunting ordinary simulation monsters was no longer fun to her at all.
The Silver-ranked beasts did not give enough energy to make a difference anymore, and their basic artificial behaviors were far too predictable.
They were simply too weak to catch her interest.
"Nexus, this realm is completely useless now," Ayla muttered through the mind link, her mental voice carrying a heavy, deadpan tone of pure boredom. "The monsters do not even run away properly. They just stand there and die. It is not satisfying to eat them anymore."
"Well, you cannot expect a beginner simulation map to entertain a Gold-ranked anomaly," Nexus’s voice echoed back, filled with a highly amused chuckle. "You have completely broken the power scaling of this entire freshmen batch. If you are bored with the wild wildlife, why don’t you focus your attention on the remaining nine thousand students? They are much more expressive when they are cornered."
Ayla’s golden-ringed pupils expanded slightly at the suggestion. A small, pleasant ripple traveled through her blue mass as a new plan formed inside her primitive monster brain.
"You are right," Ayla whispered, her eyes flashing with a sudden, predatory light. "The students have much better expressions when they are terrified. Let’s hunt them instead."
"That is the spirit," Nexus giggled, instantly updating the holographic contact lens over Ayla’s right eye. "I am pushing the live location coordinates of every single student alliance on the map directly to your layout. There is a huge group of two hundred recruits gathering at the central floating refinery sector right now. Go have fun."
Ayla did not wait a single second. She dropped her round body off the high metal tower and hit the five-foot-deep water with a loud splash.
She activated her Gale Acceleration trait, but this time, she did not even bother using her camouflage parameters to hide her approach.
She wanted them to know she was coming.
As she sliced through the flooded forest toward the central coordinates, Ayla purposely released the full, unsuppressed pressure of her newly stabilized Gold Crusader rank.
A massive, terrifying golden aura erupted from her blue fluid mass, creating a heavy, visible pressure wave that tore through the swamp.
The water in her wake was completely pushed aside, forming a deep trench, and the thick metallic trees literally snapped and cracked under the sheer weight of her presence.
She was aura farming the entire map, using her immense Gold-ranked pressure to actively terrify her prey from kilometers away before she even reached their physical coordinates.
Down at the central floating refinery sector, a massive alliance of two hundred students from the second, fourth, and sixth sub-divisions had gathered on a wide steel platform.
They had built a large, fortified base using heavy iron shields, defensive magic arrays, and glowing protective barriers to secure their points.
"We need to hold this central refinery until the end of the week!" a tall warrior with thick red scales shouting to the crowd, waving his broadsword. "If we aggregate our defense numbers, no regional boss can ever break through our vanguard!"
"Hey, did you look at the scoreboard recently?" a female elven mage interrupted, her voice shaking violently as she pointed at her interface screen. "That monster Ayla from Class One has already reached three hundred points! She single-handedly wiped out the entire third sub-division vanguard two hours ago!"
"Do not panic!" the red-scaled leader sneered back, trying to maintain moral. "She is just a single slime! Even if she somehow reached the Gold rank, she cannot possibly fight two hundred elite rankers simultaneously! Our combined magic arrays can incinerate a mountain!"
Suddenly, the proud leader’s voice choked up completely.
The air across the entire refinery sector instantly became incredibly heavy, thick, and suffocating. The falling raindrops literally froze mid-air, trembling violently before vaporizing into white steam.
A massive, terrifying golden pressure descended upon the steel platform like a heavy mountain, forcing dozens of students to instantly drop to their knees, their weapons clattering onto the floorboards as they gasped desperately for oxygen.
"What—what is this pressure?" the elven mage whimpered, tears of pure terror leaking from her eyes as her defensive barrier shattered into fine dust without anyone even touching it. "This is not the aura of a student! It is a monster!"
From the edge of the flooded ruins, a small, round puddle of translucent blue liquid rolled smoothly onto the steel platform.
Ayla floated calmly in front of the two hundred paralyzed geniuses, her golden-ringed pupils looking down at them with an absolute, deadpan indifference.
"You talk too much," Ayla’s multi-layered voice boomed like a heavy thunderclap inside every single brain across the platform.
The red-scaled leader tried to force his muscles to move, his face turning bright purple as he strained to raise his sword. "Kill her! Use all your high-tier spells right now!"
Ayla did not give them a single microsecond to coordinate an attack. She focused her Twin Lens of the Weaver and targeted the entire crowd of two hundred students simultaneously, deploying her ultimate function across the wide area.
"Combination," she commanded flatly.
She forcefully injected the absolute pinnacle of her new invention, jamming the concepts of hysterical, screaming joy and deep, suicidal despair directly into two hundred soul containers at the exact same millisecond.
The results were immediate and completely devastating. The entire two hundred-man alliance didn’t even have time to let out a collective scream.
Their bodies fell into violent, uncontrollable muscular seizures mid-stance.
They crashed heavily onto the steel floorboards one after another like falling dominoes, their eyes rolling into the backs of their skulls as their hearts completely stopped beating from pure neurological overload.
Bright blue pillars of system light shot down from the gray sky in massive rows, enveloping the two hundred seizing recruits and instantly ejecting them back to their residential rooms, resetting all their hard-earned scores back to zero.
"Two hundred freshman participants eliminated. Two thousand survival points collected," the automated system voice announced loudly over her interface, updating her total score to a ridiculous number that shattered all historical academy records.
Ayla did not even blink at the high score. She rolled off the empty platform, dropping back into the deep water to continue her grand sweep.
Over the next four hours, the planet-sized Drowned Valley Sector became a literal, free-for-all hunting ground where every single student was transformed into helpless prey.
Ayla moved across the continent like a natural disaster, guided by Nexus’s real-time coordinate updates.
She did not show a single drop of mercy or hesitation. Whenever she detected a gathering of students, she simply traveled there at maximum speed, crushed their mental defenses with her heavy Gold-ranked aura farming, and used her Combination function to put them into instant fatal seizures before the system light carried them away.
A group of five hundred Crusaders trying to build a flying sky fortress? Wiped out in thirty seconds.
A massive alliance of one thousand physical warriors attempting to hide inside a deep, rusted underground bunker? Deleted within a single minute.
Every single time a student vanguard tried to fight back or use their high-tier racial traits, their cognitive nervous systems would instantly collapse under the brutal weight of her mind control.
The fragile illusion of initial cooperation was completely replaced by absolute, widespread panic as the remaining recruits realized that a literal prehistoric predator was systematically clearing the entire map.
"Run! Just run toward the border zones!" a student screamed into his communication device before his line went completely dead. "She is killing everyone! The system is not stopping her!"
By the time the afternoon sun was completely hidden behind the dark stormy clouds, the loud explosions of magic spells and the frantic shouts of students had entirely vanished from the Drowned Valley Sector.
The vast, planet-sized simulation world had fallen into an absolute, eerie silence.
Ayla rolled smoothly onto the highest balcony of the central refinery tower, looking down at the empty, flooded world.
The five-foot-deep murky water rippled softly against the rusted metallic roots, but there was absolutely no one left to navigate the current.
Every single one of the ten thousand elite Crusaders who had entered the practical examination trial this morning had been forcefully hunted down, mentally short-circuited, and completely eliminated by a single, small blue slime.
She had literally emptied a planet-sized map by herself in a matter of hours.
[ Final Leaderboard Updated ]
[ Rank 1: Ayla — Sub-Division 1 — Score: 98,400 Points — Status: Sole Survivor ]
A loud, world-spanning system chime suddenly echoed across the entire sky parameters of the Drowned Valley Sector.
The heavy gray clouds above began to break apart, replaced by a massive, glowing golden portal that manifested directly over the central refinery tower.
"All freshman participants have been successfully eliminated from the parameters," the automated global system announcement boomed across the empty realm, its mechanical tone carrying a slight glitch as it processed the ridiculous statistical anomaly.
"The practical orientation survival trial has officially concluded ahead of schedule. Calculating final evaluation rewards now. Initiating emergency spatial recall."
Ayla bobbled her round blue body in complete satisfaction, her golden-ringed pupils shining brightly as the spatial mana wrapped around her mass to carry her back to the academy grounds.
She had completely broken the exam, and she was more than ready to claim her unique Bone Fragment prize.
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