Chapter 135: 135
Ayla floated quietly over the massive, cold corpse of the Ancient Abyss Wyrm, letting out a deep, satisfied ripple as the blinding golden light around her body slowly settled down.
Her translucent blue jelly form had completely returned to its glossy, smooth texture, but the permanent golden rings around her pupils were now glowing with a very bright, steady illumination.
Her Apocalypse Gold Metal Core felt incredibly dense and heavy, humming perfectly with the massive influx of planetary authority she had just harvested from the apex predator.
The entire volcanic valley of the Desolate Abyss Sector was completely quiet now. The pools of purple lava had stopped bubbling violently, cooling down into dark, solid glass floorboards beneath her mass. The thick sulfur clouds in the red sky had been entirely blown away by her breakthrough shockwave, leaving the horizon clear and empty.
"Nexus, my internal parameters are completely saturated now," Ayla communicated through the mind link, her mental voice carrying an even deeper, more resonant vibration than before. "The energy from the big snake is perfectly anchored. I do not feel any bloating pressure at all."
"That is because you digested true, unmanaged cosmic essence, little monster!" Nexus’s voice echoed back inside her head, sounding incredibly proud and excited. "You have officially reached the absolute maximum limit of a Peak Gold Crusader. Your total mana capacity has doubled, and your physical density is now high enough to withstand direct impacts from high-tier magical artillery. You are basically a walking fortress now."
Ayla bobbled her round blue body up and down in a quiet understanding. She looked down at the massive, hundred-meter-long skeleton of the Wyrm beneath her, completely losing interest in the dead world. Now that the apex predator and its fifty subjects were all sitting inside her stomach, this primitive sector had become just as empty and boring as the academy simulation maps.
"The lunch is finished," Ayla muttered flatly, her golden eyes narrowing. "Let’s go back to the residential suite. I want to rest before the main academy missions begin."
"Understood, initiating the return transit protocol now," Nexus clicked her digital tongue, a purple interface screen expanding over Ayla’s vision to activate the hidden token parameters. "The World Administrator authority packet is locking onto your private room coordinates. Hold onto your fluids, little monster. The spatial snap might feel a bit sudden because your new mass is so heavy."
A second later, a silent, pitch-black tear opened in the air parameters right in front of Ayla’s body, radiating the same freezing void pressure as before. Ayla did not hesitate for a single microsecond. She dropped her round blue form straight into the dark spatial crack, and the tear instantly snapped shut behind her mass, leaving the empty, silent wasteland of the Desolate Abyss behind forever.
Inside the reinforced private residential suite of the Ascendant Academy, a soft, localized spatial distortion rippled across the center of the plush training rug.
Pop.
With a quiet sound, Ayla’s translucent blue body materialized smoothly onto the floorboards. The heavy metallic silver doors of her room were still securely locked from the inside, and the ambient magical light fixtures were glowing at a comfortable, dim intensity. Everything was exactly the way she had left it before her secret cosmic hunt.
Ayla rolled forward a few inches, letting her heavy fluid mass expand slightly on the rug. The air inside the room was clean and filtered, a massive contrast to the thick, burning sulfur odor she had been breathing for the last hour.
"We are back," Ayla muttered to herself, her golden-ringed pupils scanning the quiet room. "The academy is very peaceful when the other students are not yelling around."
"And you returned just in time!" Nexus’s voice chimed in happily, a small digital alarm clock icon popping up across Ayla’s right holographic lens. "The main orientation assembly concluded over an hour ago, and the academy administration has officially updated the global campus network. The first official sector mission assignments for the freshman batch have just been pushed to your private student interface."
Ayla blinked her golden eyes, and a large, glowing blue notification window instantly expanded in front of her face, displaying the official academy documentation.
[ Official Mission Assignment: First-Year Vanguard Bracket ]
[ Designated Sector: The Sunken Sector Grid — Zone 4 ]
[ Objective: Clear the rogue mechanical guard drones and harvest thirty Silver-ranked energy matrix cores within forty-eight hours. ]
[ Team Allocation: First-Year Vanguard Leader Ayla (Solo Option Approved) ]
[ Mission Note: Due to your exceptional placement score of 98,400 points, you are permitted to operate independently without a standard five-man student vanguard team. All harvested resources will be allocated directly to your personal storage space. ]
Ayla read through the mission description with her usual deadpan expression. The prospect of fighting rogue mechanical drones did not excite her very much, but the fact that she was allowed to hunt completely alone was highly satisfactory. She did not have to waste her time protecting weak humanoids or sharing her cores with arrogant elven mages.
"The Sunken Sector Grid," Ayla murmured, her fluid body letting out a soft ripple. "Are the mechanical drones inside that zone strong, Nexus?"
"They are artificial guard units left behind by the ancient builders of this planet," Nexus explained, quickly pulling up the technical blueprints of the assigned sector. "Most of them are standard Silver-ranked units, but because they are made from high-grade celestial alloys, their physical defense parameters are very high. Normal freshmen would need heavy war hammers or advanced explosive spells to crack their outer shells. But for you, they are just crunchy metal snacks."
Ayla thought about her newly mutated Rend of the World-Order trait. Her five pitch-black claws were capable of completely ignoring eighty percent of all physical protections below the Crown Rank. A high-grade celestial alloy shell would feel no different than wet paper under her golden law attributes.
"I can crack them easily," Ayla stated flatly, her golden eyes flashing with a quiet confidence. "We will go there tomorrow morning and collect the thirty matrix cores before breakfast."
"That is the plan!" Nexus giggled. "But before you sleep, you might want to look at the local student forum boards. Your little encounter with Tyrok in the central pavilion this morning has created a massive political disaster for the second-year factions."
Nexus waved her digital hand, replacing the official mission window with a chaotic, rapidly updating holographic message board that belonged to the academy’s internal student network. Dozens of highly prioritized threads were flashing in bright red warning fonts, their titles filled with pure panic and intense speculation.
[ Thread: Vanguard Commander Tyrok thoroughly liquidated by a first-year slime! Soul-bleeding effect detected! ]
[ Thread: Is the Iron Shield Faction preparing an official retaliation against Class One? ]
[ Thread: Warning to all second-year rankers: Do not approach the Sub-Division One leader! Her physical trait ignores standard gold barriers! ]
[ Thread: Rumor: The elite senior captains are returning from the outer cosmic sectors ahead of schedule to deal with the freshman anomaly! ]
Ayla lazily panned her gaze across the frantic forum messages, her expression remaining completely flat and unbothered. The seniors were arguing and over-analyzing her abilities, trying to find a logical explanation for how a small piece of jelly had broken Tyrok’s heavy armor plates so easily. They were treating her like a terrifying final boss that had suddenly spawned in their beginner territory.
"They are writing too many words," Ayla muttered through the mind link, her multi-layered voice carrying a heavy tone of supreme boredom. "They spend all their time talking on these screens instead of hunting. It is very pathetic."
"Well, that is what happens when pampered noble heirs get their pride completely shattered by a primitive lifeform!" Nexus laughed hysterically, waving the forum screens away into fine digital dust. "They cannot accept that you are simply better than them. The Iron Shield Faction is currently holding an emergency meeting to discuss how to defend their territory from you during the upcoming joint sector missions."
"If they stay in my path, I will just cut them," Ayla said simply, her round body contracting into a tight, perfect ball of blue jelly as she prepared to settle down for the night.
She did not care about their emergency meetings, their political factions, or their future retaliation plans. In her mind, whether it was a giant volcanic monster from an unmanaged primitive world or an arrogant second-year senior from a prestigious infinite race, they were all exactly the same. They were all just lower-tier stepping stones meant to fuel her continuous evolution toward the absolute pinnacle of the cosmic world laws.
She closed her golden-ringed pupils, letting her mind sink into a peaceful, quiet sleep as her maximized Peak Gold core continued to hum softly in the center of her suite, perfectly ready to unleash her terrifying, unyielding hunger across the Sunken Sector Grid the very next morning.
She closed her golden-ringed pupils, letting her mind sink into a peaceful, quiet sleep as her maximized Peak Gold core continued to hum softly in the center of her suite, perfectly ready to unleash her terrifying, unyielding hunger across the Sunken Sector Grid the very next morning.
Comments