Chapter 137: 137
The bright morning sun rose over the massive stone towers of the Ascendant Academy for the second time, officially signaling the start of the first formal mission day.
Ayla opened her golden eyes, her round blue body expanding slightly on the plush training rug as her consciousness returned to full alertness.
Her internal Apocalypse Gold Metal Core was perfectly silent, spinning with a smooth, stabilized rhythm that radiated the dense planetary authority she had harvested from the Ancient Abyss Wyrm.
She did not waste a single second. She rolled smoothly toward the automated silver doorway of her private suite, releasing the locking mechanisms with a quick touch of her fluid mass. The heavy doors slid open with a soft hiss, and Ayla waddled out into the wide stone corridor.
The hallway was already packed with hundreds of freshman students from the different sub-divisions who were gathering their supplies for the upcoming missions. The moment the small blue slime rolled into the corridor, the loud, nervous chatter of the recruits instantly vanished. The scaly reptile-men, the heavily armored humanoids, and the elven mages all dropped their gear and frantically scrambled backward against the stone walls, creating a massive fifteen-foot gap for her to pass through.
Their eyes were filled with a heavy mixture of burning envy and absolute terror. They had spent the last twenty-four hours reading the internal campus forums, learning how Ayla had single-handedly broken a second-year vanguard commander’s arm with a single swipe of her claws. To these beginners, the tiny piece of jelly was no longer just a lucky freshman survivor. She was a walking monster that they could never hope to compete against.
Ayla ignored their frightened stares completely, treating the entire crowd like invisible pieces of dirt as she rolled calmly toward the grand transit pavilion.
"Nexus, let’s go straight to the Sunken Sector Grid," Ayla communicated through the mind link, her mental voice carrying her standard flat tone of pure boredom. "I want to collect the thirty matrix cores quickly so we can unlock the next tier of assignments."
"The spatial transit coordinates are already locked into your student interface, little monster!" Nexus’s voice giggled happily inside her head. "The academy administration has opened the low-tier teleportation arrays for the freshman vanguard bracket. Because you selected the solo option, you do not have to wait for a deployment transport vessel. We can drop straight into Zone 4 right now."
Within a few minutes, Ayla reached the center of the grand transit pavilion, stepping onto a massive silver teleportation pad that was glowing with a dense blue spatial mana. She pressed her fluid mass against the primary interface terminal, verifying her solo vanguard mission parameters.
A loud, automated chime echoed across the platform.
[ Mission Verification Approved ]
[ Target Destination: The Sunken Sector Grid — Zone 4 ]
[ Initializing independent spatial deployment for Vanguard Leader Ayla ]
A brilliant flash of blue light instantly enveloped Ayla’s round body, and the spatial parameters around her mass violently compressed. A fraction of a millisecond later, her physical form vanished from the academy grounds completely.
A heavy, echoing sound vibrated through the air as Ayla’s body dropped smoothly onto a hard metallic floorboard.
She opened her golden eyes and immediately looked around her new surroundings. Zone 4 of the Sunken Sector Grid was a colossal underground facility built from ancient, rusted steel walls and giant copper pipes that stretched out for miles into the darkness. The entire sector was completely flooded with three feet of murky, gray industrial water that rippled softly against the heavy metal pillars. The air was cool and damp, filled with the strong smell of old oil, rusted iron, and static electricity.
This sector was once a primary manufacturing hub for the planet’s ancient builders before the timeline loops ruined the civilization. Now, it was just a dangerous border zone managed by the academy grid to train elite rankers.
"The water here is very dirty," Ayla muttered flatly, her blue body dropping into the murky current with a soft splash. "But the layout is very simple. Where are the mechanical guard drones?"
"They are currently patrolling the lower refinery levels just five hundred meters ahead of your coordinates," Nexus responded quickly, projecting a bright green navigation map over Ayla’s right holographic lens. "Scanning the sector parameters now. I am counting at least sixty active drone signatures in the immediate vicinity. Most of them are Silver-ranked Vanguard Sentinels, but the central reactor room holds a massive, Gold-ranked Regional Overseer."
Ayla’s golden-ringed pupils expanded slightly at the mention of a Gold-ranked drone. A small ripple of genuine hunger traveled through her glossy blue mass.
"Let’s eat the small ones first to complete the mission requirement," Ayla whispered, her five pitch-black claws slowly extending from her front mass with a sharp metallic click.
She activated her Gale Acceleration trait, her Gold-ranked body becoming a devastating, high-speed blue blur that sliced through the three feet of industrial water with extreme velocity. She did not care about stealth or camouflage parameters. She wanted to finish this low-tier mission as quickly as possible so she could progress to the outer cosmic worlds where the true food was waiting.
Within less than a minute, she crossed the five hundred-meter distance, bursting into a massive, wide metallic plaza filled with giant, humming generators.
Clustered around the base of the generators were twenty large mechanical guard drones. These Vanguard Sentinels were over eight feet tall, their heavy spider-like bodies forged from thick, gleaming celestial alloys that were completely immune to standard elemental spells. They carried massive copper shields and heavy plasma spears that crackled with high-voltage electricity.
The moment Ayla’s massive golden aura pressure burst into the plaza, the twenty mechanical drones instantly snapped their glowing red optical sensors toward her coordinates.
[ Warning: Foreign organic lifeform detected in Zone 4 ]
[ Administrative authorization: Level Zero ]
[ Commencing termination protocols immediately ]
The twenty spider-like drones lunged forward simultaneously, their heavy metal legs clicking rapidly against the steel floorboards as they raised their plasma spears to impale the invader.
Ayla did not pause her movement. She rushed straight into the center of the mechanical horde, her pitch-black claws flaring with a brilliant golden light as she unleashed her ultimate law attribute trait.
"Rend of the World-Order," Ayla commanded flatly.
She swung her black claws in a wide, sweeping arc across the front row of the drones. The celestial alloy armor that was supposed to be completely indestructible below the Crown Rank did not offer a single ounce of resistance. Ayla’s claws completely ignored eighty percent of their physical protections, slicing cleanly through the thick metal shields, through the copper body frames, and straight through their primary logic engines like a sharp blade cutting through wet mud.
A series of loud, metallic explosions echoed across the flooded plaza. The first ten spider drones were instantly sliced into perfect halves, their mechanical parts splashing uselessly into the dirty water as bright blue sparks detonated from their broken wires.
Inside their metallic chests, ten glowing silver matrix cores were exposed to the air. Ayla extended dozens of sharp fluid tendrils from her blue mass, greedily grabbing the ten silver stones and pulling them straight into her golden center to satisfy her baseline mission counter.
The remaining ten drones did not possess biological fear parameters, so they did not hesitate. They moved their plasma spears downward, unleashing a massive web of high-voltage electrical nets to trap her liquid mass.
Ayla did not bother dodging the lightning nets. Her maximized Peak Gold Crusader density was far too high to be bothered by low-tier electrical current. She let the plasma nets slam into her blue surface, the electricity crackling harmlessly against her dense fluid parameters before dissolving into fine white steam.
"You are all far too weak," Ayla’s multi-layered mental voice boomed inside the drones’ frequency bands.
She focused her Twin Lens of the Weaver onto the remaining ten Sentinels, deploying her standard conceptual function to save herself the physical trouble of cutting them down one by one.
"Removal," she ordered smoothly.
She forcefully erased the core concept of electrical conductivity from their internal wiring systems.
Instantly, the glowing red optical sensors of the ten spider drones flickered and went completely dark. The high-voltage energy running through their plasma spears vanished into nothingness, and their massive celestial alloy bodies locked up mid-stance, crashing heavily onto the steel floorboards like useless piles of junk metal. Without the basic law of conductivity, their electronic logic pathways simply collapsed into permanent structural failure.
Ayla rolled forward smoothly, harvesting the remaining ten silver matrix cores from their chests, bringing her total mission count to twenty stones within the first ten minutes of the operation.
"Only ten more cores needed to finish the minimum requirement," Ayla muttered, her golden eyes locking onto a massive, reinforced blast door at the far end of the plaza that led directly to the central reactor room. "The Gold-ranked overseer is behind that door. Let’s go take its core as the final piece."
"The system sensors are indicating that the Regional Overseer is a heavy artillery unit, Ayla!" Nexus warned with an amused tone. "It carries an advanced celestial core that holds enough raw energy to power the entire sector. Ripping that out will instantly trigger the final mission completion protocol."
"Good. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can leave this boring school assignment," Ayla said flatly.
She rolled toward the heavy iron blast door, raising her five pitch-black claws. With a single, fluid downward sweep, she sliced right through the four-foot-thick steel doors, tearing the locking mechanisms into shredded metal ribbons. The heavy gates collapsed inward with a deafening crash, exposing the massive, glowing central reactor room ahead.
Standing in the center of the reactor room was a truly colossal mechanical entity, easily forty feet tall. Its massive humanoid torso was covered in flawless, polished golden armor plates, and its right arm was replaced by a giant, three-barreled plasma cannon that was humming with a terrifying amount of Gold-ranked energy.
This was the Regional Overseer, the absolute master of the Sunken Sector Grid. Its six glowing blue optical lenses locked directly onto the tiny blue slime waddling through the ruined doorway, and its plasma cannon immediately began to spin at a suicidal velocity, gathering a massive sphere of white-hot destructive force.
Ayla looked up at the giant golden machine, her golden-ringed pupils expanding with a dark, manic hunger. She did not feel any desire to play games with this artificial boss. Her newly maximized peak Gold core throbbed with endless authority, eager to crush this final sector obstacle so she could officially step onto the true cosmic path that would carry her toward the pinnacle of the universe.
"Nexus," Ayla whispered into the cold, damp air, her blue mass sinking slightly as she prepared to launch her final strike. "The mission is officially over."
Before the giant mechanical Overseer could discharge its spinning plasma cannon, Ayla launched her body forward like an unstoppable bullet. She activated her Rend of the World-Order trait once more, her five pitch-black claws extending outward as she soared through the air.
The giant robot tried to adjust its heavy targeting arrays, but its processors were simply too slow to register her maximum speed. Ayla slammed directly into its golden chest plate, her black claws slicing deep through the heavy celestial alloy plating. The armor parted instantly, making a loud tearing sound as she reached her fluid hand straight into the reactor core chamber.
She grabbed the massive, pulsing golden master core of the Overseer and pulled back with all her physical strength. With a loud snap of breaking metal cables, the master core was ripped completely free.
The glowing blue lenses of the forty-foot robot instantly went dark, and its massive golden frame collapsed backward into the shallow water, creating a gigantic splash.
[ System Notice: Regional Overseer eliminated ]
[ Thirty matrix cores gathered. Primary mission criteria completed ahead of schedule ]
[ Calculating vanguard leaderboard points... Absolute First Place confirmed ]
Ayla wrapped her blue fluids around the massive golden core, swallowing it down into her center to digest the dense energy. She felt her internal mana pools expand once more, perfectly anchoring her rank at the peak of the first-year tier. She turned her body toward the exit portal that was beginning to manifest in the corner of the room, ready to return and claim her promotion to the next sector block.
Comments