Mila
When Mila opened her eyes, she was in an empty void wearing the same type of nondescript gray clothing she’d worn at the beginning of the tutorial. Then System messages started to appear.
Starting the Trial Tower.
Welcome, Shadow.
In the Trial Tower you will participate in a series of challenges. The better you do, the better your rewards at the end.
During the trial, your body will be protected by the System and nothing short of a B rank attack will get through.
Detecting a contract skill and a familiar.
As one of your skill slots has been used for a contract skill, you may bring along a familiar so long as its race has not evolved to E rank or higher and its total level is less than half your own.
Please choose which familiar you would like to bring into the Trial Tower with you:
1. Heavenly Spark Soul King (level 16)
You have selected the Heavenly Spark Soul King.
Pulling the Heavenly Spark Soul King into the Trial Tower to participate with you.
Aalam then appeared next to her in the void, wearing the same type of nondescript gray clothing, and the System messages continued.
Both you and your familiar may choose one artifact for the Trial Tower to copy for your use in the trials. Please select from the following items on your person.
The list held all their artifacts, and, as planned, they immediately chose the Left Hand of the Runescribe and a special artifact Aalam had crafted with Nana Xara’s input, the Twin Dragons of Yin and Yang sadly not brought in.
Isaiah then shared his senses with them, showing how well their bodies were protected, and Mila changed her mind about him needing to be close, allowing him to go hunt to level and gain skill mastery instead.
Are you ready to start the trials?
Yes/No
Mila then selected yes and the void around them started to fade as a new System message appeared.
Trial I is starting.
Scenario: You have been trapped in a force barrier with a Targonian Terror by cultivators of an enemy sect, but you have successfully sent a message to your sect describing the situation and have been told reinforcements are on the way.
Goal: Survive one hour.
When the void fully faded, Mila found herself in a tropical forest and, looking up, there was a transparent red barrier covering the sky. Looking at the curvature, and assuming the barrier was a dome, she and Aalam were trapped in a circular area with a roughly 5.4 kilometer radius, and there was some kind of monster trapped in there with them.
Using her Life Death Detection skill and her over 4,000 effective Perception, Mila could sense every lifeform in the entire dome and, other than her and Aalam, there was only one other reading, a strong one about two kilometers away from them.
Then it disappeared.
Aalam had an effective Perception higher than her own and more than a few Legendary grade detection skills. He also had an effective Aura stat of 7,200 while the level of suppression in the trial’s environment was low, so, combined with his Psychic Domain skill, he could initiate Telekinesis from anywhere within a range of 7.2 kilometers.
Mila didn’t even get to see the beast before Aalam killed it.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Telekinetic force then pushed on multiple points of the red barrier, breaking it, and Mila detected 7 F rank cultivators with powerful life auras, six of which immediately faded.
The six bodies, the materials used to create the barrier, and the one living cultivator then all flew toward them, all but the last going directly into the Left Hand of the Runescribe, and Mila used Evil Eyes - Lust on the living cultivator, a male humanoid with blue skin and antennas. Then she enslaved him to Aalam and, after a quick question and answer session, they learned where the enemy sect was located.
Continuing their preprepared plan, Aalam then picked up both her and the cultivator with Telekinesis and they started flying east. About three minutes later they made it to a valley covered by a powerful E rank formation and Aalam broke it as well.
Then, as Mila searched for life signs, Aalam started killing everyone, including the cultivator they captured, and, in under a minute, all several thousand cultivators who’d been in the sect’s headquarters were dead, including 7 E rank elders.
Mila and Aalam then began to loot the place and Mila found some good Rare grade clothing for them both, including a black mask for Aalam to wear to hide his face and several decent weapons. Meanwhile, as they’d expected and hoped for during one of the early trials, Aalam found a whole bunch of alchemy materials, including one of the types of specialized bacteria required for creating several of Nana Xara’s most potent low rank plague designs, as well as the tools required for the modifications.
He then spent the rest of the hour making several new variants of plague while Mila traveled back to their own sect and reported on their victory, becoming the chief elder in the process as their sect had a method of long distance viewing and were deathly afraid of her familiar who could wipe out an entire sect in a matter of seconds.
Congratulations!
Trial I over. Calculating rewards.
Base Trial Points: 12
Killed the Targonian Terror within 2 seconds.
Base Trial Points +13,824
Killed all seven members of the Dusk Sect Hunter Squad
Base Trial Points +1008
Killed 7,346 members of the Dusk Sect
Base Trial Points +1,057,824
Killed all 7 elders of the Dusk Sect
Base Trial Points +1,741,824
Became the Chief Elder of the Rising Sun Sect
Base Trial Points +2,985,984
Fully Destroyed the Dusk Sect
Trial Points + 300%
No deaths of Rising Sun Sect forces
Trial points + 100%
Comparing against other trial takers in your sector.
They had to wait for about twenty minutes, likely for all the other trials in their sector—an area made up of three or more galaxy clusters—to finish, but the results were positive and it gave them time to change into their new clothing for the next trial.
Highest completion in Galaxy Cluster
Trial Points X 2
Highest completion in Sector
Trial Points X 4
Total Trial Points = 162,346,080
There was a bit more they could have done, like hunting down other Dusk Sect cultivators not in their main base, but they couldn’t have raised their total trial points by anything more than 8% at most, while they got to keep everything they’d stolen or created, including the materials and tools necessary to create three plagues quite a bit more deadly than the ones Aalam had made in the tutorial, all of which required more than a single hour to finish.
Still, even though they’d maximized their time, it was only the first trial and there were likely tens of thousands in the universe who had performed just as well or even better.
The Palazin Galaxy Cluster wasn’t in the frontier of the universe like Earth, but it wasn’t in the areas where mana was most concentrated either, so there was not a single A rank cultivator in the entire cluster, or even the sector.
The Trial Tower was occurring all across the universe and there were many other loopholes for this type of competition which they, without stronger cultivators to rely on, couldn’t make use of. And this wasn’t even accounting for the fact they only had about a year of training while most of their competitors had dozens, or the fact there were many other talents in the universe. They weren’t likely to directly compete with any of them for a while, however. And, until then, with Aalam having D rank strength, they would just rack up as many points as possible.
* * *
Krysta
Krysta La’Vordi looked at the total number of trial points she’d earned for the first trial and smiled.
Total Trial Points = 162,570,720
According to her mother, that was the highest amount of points possible for the first trial for the last 1,237 competitions, so it meant she was meeting expectations.
Half human and half Heavenly Scarab, Krysta looked mostly human, with silver semi-translucent hair, dark brown skin, and eyes which were pure black orbs. She was also heavily favored by those in the know to come first in this instance of the F rank Trial Tower, so she was under a lot of pressure.
She waited a few minutes and Trial II started, but it was sadly a duel against a relatively powerful System generated F rank cultivator in an enclosed and inescapable sub-dimension, the type of trial with the lowest possible max number of trial points, so Krysta just channeled mana through her Heroic grade staff and, without writing any runes or even using a skill, she twisted space and the System generated cultivator was cut into five separate pieces.
* * *
Brom
Total Trial Points = 162,559,200
Brom Karendesh looked at his total trial points and felt a bit sad. He’d seemingly missed two of the enemy cultivators, letting down the teachings of his father.
Tall, well over two meters, Brom was a humanoid lizard beast called a coran. He had three fingers on his hands, hooves instead of feet, and an extended jaw like a wolf, as well as a long prehensile tail and bronze scales all over his body. On his back was a Heroic grade greatsword, which his body structure made easy to draw, and, when Trial II started, he flash stepped forward and slashed through the System generated cultivator in under half a second, even though they started over two kilometers apart, well below the System’s two second threshold for points.
* * *
Reginald
Total Trial Points = 162,432,480
Reginald Vin had been a second slow in finding the Targonian Terror and it had cost him, his points below the max he could have gotten.
An elf with shoulder length blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and pale skin, he was of normal height for a human or elf male and very thin. But on his back was a large Heroic grade greataxe. When Trial II started, though, he didn’t draw his weapon. Instead he just pointed at the System generated cultivator and a bolt of lightning shot out from his finger to smite the man.