Chapter 141: 141
The brilliant purple light of the advanced teleportation array flashed violently across the grand stone plaza of the Ascendant Academy. Within a few seconds, the heavy spatial mana settled down, and the small, round ball of translucent blue liquid materialized smoothly back onto the solid floorboards.
Ayla had officially returned from the Floating Sky Fortress Sector. Her maximized Peak Gold Crusader core was humming perfectly deep within her center, radiating a very dense, heavy golden warmth that made her blue jelly look incredibly glossy under the plaza’s magical light fixtures. She opened her golden eyes, her pupils carrying their prominent, permanent golden rings that signaled her absolute dominance over the second-year bracket.
However, the grand plaza was not empty.
Unlike the previous days, which were filled only with the anxious chatter of traumatized first-year beginners, the plaza was now packed with thousands of older students, division directors, and senior professors. The news of Draco’s absolute defeat and the complete annihilation of the Roaring Dragon Faction vanguard had traveled through the academy’s internal network at a terrifying, unexplainable speed. The campus forum boards had literally melted down under the pressure of millions of frantic messages, and now, the entire student body was standing in the plaza to witness the return of the freshman anomaly.
A very heavy, suffocating silence immediately blanketed the entire plaza the moment Ayla’s small body touched the floorboards.
None of the second-year or third-year seniors were shouting, and none of them were stepping forward to assert their dominance. Instead, every single veteran ranker was standing perfectly still, their bodies shaking slightly as the cold reality of what had just happened began to sink into their minds. They stared at the giant, hundred-meter-tall master scoreboard that floated above the central podium, their eyes wide with a deep, unadulterated horror.
[ Current Master Overview ]
[ Absolute Rank 1: Ayla — Score: 142,500 Points — Evaluation Rank: Peak Gold Crusader ]
"One hundred and forty-two thousand points..." a senior warrior with a massive double-sided battleaxe whispered, his voice cracking with emotion as he clutched his weapon hilt with trembling hands. "She didn’t just clear the sector. She literally hunted down and liquidated every single member of the second-year vanguard alliance in less than ten minutes. She ate Draco’s core like a common snack."
"It is physically impossible," a third-year female mage wearing elegant silver robes countered, her face completely pale as she backed away from the stage. "Draco possessed a mutated ancient dragon bloodline framework. His scales were supposed to be completely immune to standard Gold-ranked physical attacks. How could a simple piece of fluid slice through his chest so easily?"
As the realization of her absolute power settled into the crowd, a wave of intense, toxic murmurs began to rapidly spread through the senior sectors. The elite vanguard captains and faction leaders from the higher academic years looked at Ayla with a heavy mixture of burning envy, deep humiliation, and silent hostility. They had spent years bleeding in the dangerous outer sectors of the cosmic grid to earn their senior status, yet they had just been thoroughly overshadowed and embarrassed by a single first-year primitive slime.
"She must be cheating," a tall, spiked warrior from the Iron Shield Faction hissed out softly to his companions, his yellow eyes flashing with a deep, burning resentment. "Did you see the way the sky parameters distorted right before she attacked? I bet the World Administrator’s system grid is actively playing favorites. It is totally unfair. The academy should disqualify her immediately."
"Shut your mouth if you want to keep your soul container intact," a senior captain next to him warned sharply, his voice dropping into a quiet, panicked whisper. "Tyrok is still lying in the medical bay with a split soul, and Draco’s core was literally pulled out of his chest. If she hears you accusing her of cheating, she might just make your brain short-circuit right here in the plaza."
The spiked warrior instantly choked up, his face turning bright red with suppressed rage and helplessness as he quickly looked away from Ayla’s coordinates. They all harbored an immense, festering animosity against her, but their basic survival instincts completely overrode their pride. None of them dared to say their accusations out loud.
Ayla ignored their frantic whispers and their hostile glares completely, treating the entire ocean of ten thousand students like invisible pieces of trash. She did not look proud about her historic victory, and she did not look excited about breaking another academy record. To her, the entire Floating Sky Fortress mission had been an incredibly boring waste of her personal time.
"Nexus, the seniors here are very talkative," Ayla muttered through the mind link, her mental voice carrying her standard flat tone of pure boredom. "They spend all their time whispering in groups instead of hunting. It is very annoying."
"Well, that is because they are completely terrified of you, little monster!" Nexus’s voice giggled loudly inside her head, sounding deeply entertained by the massive harvest of shocked expressions. "You have completely shattered the political balance of the second-year bracket. The other big factions are currently scrambling to lock their private resource vaults because they are afraid you will roll in and eat their reserves next!"
"Their reserves are probably just as tasteless as their student cores," Ayla replied flatly, her golden-ringed pupils narrowing as she dropped her round body off the high teleportation pad.
With a slow, lazy rolling motion, she began to waddle right through the center of the crowded plaza, heading directly toward the main exit corridor that led back to her private residential suite.
As the small blue slime approached, a massive wave of visible panic rippled through the front rows of the senior alliance. Even though they were filled with deep animosity and rage, the heavily armored warriors, the powerful elemental mages, and the scaly reptile-men frantically scrambled backward, pushing and shoving against one another to clear a wide, twenty-foot path for her to pass through. None of them wanted to be within her immediate striking distance.
Ayla rolled calmly through the open path, her translucent blue body bouncing softly with every lazy step. She passed right by the elite vanguard leaders of the Eternal Sword Faction and the Roaring Dragon Faction, completely treating them like invisible pieces of dirt beneath her notice.
Watching her leave with such a bored, dismissive attitude made the seniors’ blood boil with a savage, helpless fury. They had spent their entire lives being treated like the ultimate geniuses of their respective infinite races, yet the perpetrator of their faction’s total destruction was acting as if the entire experience was a massive chore. The insult was far worse than the actual defeat, leaving their young, arrogant hearts completely mangled with humiliation.
"Just look at her..." the spiked warrior whispered through his teeth, his face turning bright red as he watched the blue ball slide away. "She doesn’t even care about the SSS-rank evaluation rewards. She thinks we are all beneath her attention."
"Let her be arrogant for now," a cold, deep voice suddenly echoed from the shadows of the third-year sector.
The person who had spoken was a tall, slender elf with long, pale silver hair and sharp, glowing emerald eyes. He wore an elegant, high-grade white uniform that belonged to the Crown Council, the absolute highest student authority in the academy. His physical aura was completely hidden, but the ambient mana around his body was constantly twisting and warping, signaling that he had already stepped into the boundary of a true Crown-ranked powerhouse. His name was Sylas, the absolute president of the Student Senate.
Sylas stared at Ayla’s retreating blue form, his emerald eyes carrying a deep, calculating coldness. "The orientation and the low-tier sector missions are just basic playgrounds designed to test physical frameworks. Once the real outer cosmic expeditions begin next week, she will realize that a single slime cannot stand against the true, coordinated power of the Crown-ranked senior factions. She will either submit to the Senate, or her core will be formatted in the outer void."
Ayla completely ignored the dark warnings echoing behind her back. She didn’t care about their Student Senate, their Crown-ranked factions, or their collective political hatred. In her mind, as long as she had Nexus providing her with real-world coordinate tokens and high-grade cores, these geniuses would never be anything more than regular meals meant to fuel her continuous evolution toward the absolute world laws.
She smoothly exited the grand plaza, her golden-ringed pupils already looking forward to locking herself inside her private training suite. The first phase of the academy assignments was officially over, and she had successfully proven to the entire student body that she was a literal walking natural disaster.
The heavy silver doors of her private suite slid shut behind her mass with a soft, pressurized click, completely cutting off the distant, angry murmurs of the plaza.
Ayla floated toward the center of the plush training rug, letting her round blue body expand completely as she relaxed her internal muscles. Her Apocalypse Gold Metal Core began to throb with a deep, majestic rhythm, smoothly digesting the remaining traces of Draco’s mutated Dragon Core.
"Finally, some peace," Ayla muttered to herself, her mental voice carrying a distinct note of satisfaction. "The air out there smelled entirely too much like envious losers."
"And now, you have all the time in the world to open your real reward!" Nexus’s voice chimed inside her head, accompanied by a festive shower of tiny purple digital stars popping across her right holographic lens. "Your gold core is completely saturated, your SSS-rank evaluation is locked in, and the primary mainframe has officially refreshed your private transport parameters. The coordinate token is completely active, Ayla!"
Ayla’s golden-ringed pupils expanded to their absolute maximum width as a wild, uncontrollable wave of primal hunger and manic joy instantly bubbled up from her center, causing her blue jelly surface to ripple violently with a terrifying velocity.
"Nexus, open the portal," Ayla commanded flatly, her multi-layered mental voice shivering with a terrifying, bloodthirsty anticipation. "I am done with these fake academy toys. I want to hunt a real cosmic entity."
"Initiating private cosmic transit now!" Nexus’s voice turned perfectly serious, her digital parameters flaring with a brilliant purple light inside Ayla’s mind. "Locking coordinate node: The Frozen Sea World of Niflheim. Warning: This is a real, unmanaged primitive world with zero safety parameters. Ejection code is disabled. If your core breaks there, you will die permanently."
"I know," Ayla replied, her golden eyes burning with a savage, prehistoric bloodlust.
A sudden, silent tear opened directly in the spatial fabric right in front of her blue mass. Unlike the bright golden portals of the academy grid, this spatial crack was completely pitch-black, radiating a freezing, ancient void pressure that smelled heavily of ancient frozen oceans and wild, untamed aquatic leviathans.
Ayla did not hesitate for a single microsecond. She dropped her round blue body straight into the dark spatial crack. The pitch-black tear instantly snapped shut behind her mass, leaving absolutely no trace of her presence in the suite, ready to unleash her monstrous hunger across the true outer universe.
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