Chapter 145
The brilliant crimson light of the Tier 3 advanced teleportation array flashed violently across a landscape of pure, unadulterated devastation. Within a fraction of a millisecond, the intense spatial mana settled down, and the six deployed participants materialized onto a cracked platform formed from solid black obsidian.
Ayla opened her golden eyes and immediately looked around her new surroundings. The Ashen Crucible Sector was a colossal underground volcanic cavern that stretched out for thousands of miles under a low, jagged ceiling of glowing brimstone. The ground beneath her fluid mass was constantly vibrating, ripped apart by massive fractures that were bleeding with slow, thick streams of white-hot planetary magma. The air parameters in this advanced zone were incredibly hostile, thick with choking black ash, heavy sulfur fumes, and a suffocating thermal pressure that exceeded several thousand degrees.
Floating in the air above the massive magma lakes were dozens of jagged, fist-sized crystals that radiated an incredibly dense, violent orange energy. These were the Crown-grade Spark Crystals required for the mandatory assignment.
The moment her internal fluids registered the raw ambient energy of the sector, a sudden, sharp wave of genuine hunger traveled through Ayla’s glossy blue mass. Her Apocalypse Gold Metal Core pulsed with a heavy, thunderous rhythm deep within her center, greedily drawing in the stray thermal mana to fuel her maximized overload foundation.
However, before she could roll forward to harvest the floating crystals, a cold, heavy aura pressure slammed down across the obsidian platform.
The five white-coated senior students from the Student Senate instantly moved into a tight, highly synchronized tactical vanguard formation, completely surrounding Ayla’s small coordinates. Their elegant white coats were reinforced by glowing silver runes that projected a localized freezing barrier, perfectly insulating their physical bodies from the extreme volcanic heat.
Kaelen, the half-step Crown Rank vanguard captain, stepped forward, his heavy white boots crunching loudly against the brittle obsidian stone. He rested his gloved hand on the hilt of a beautiful silver rapier that was crackling with dense, high-frequency spatial mana. His sharp elven ears twitched slightly as his glowing silver hair drifted in the burning volcanic wind.
"Listen to me carefully, freshman," Kaelen commanded coldly, his deep voice carrying the supreme, aristocratic arrogance of the highest student authority. "The Ashen Crucible is not a pathetic simulation playground for beginners. The elemental laws in this tier are completely unrefined. The local volcanic entities carry heavy anti-magic traits that can snap a standard Gold Crusader’s soul container in a single strike."
Ayla did not reply. She dropped her round body into a low, comfortable position on the smooth obsidian, her golden-ringed pupils locking intently onto Kaelen’s chest cavity. Beneath his elegant Senate uniform, she could clearly feel the dense, pulsing heat of his half-step Crown core framework. It smelled incredibly rich, savory, and sweet, carrying a much deeper layer of refined cosmic essence than the dragon core she had eaten the day before.
Her complete, deadpan silence made Kaelen’s pale eyebrows narrow with a sharp wave of immediate irritation.
"I told you during the assembly that your solo privileges are temporarily suspended," Kaelen hissed through his teeth, his silver eyes flashing with a cold warning light. "My squad will take the vanguard position to clear the path and harvest the first fifty Spark Crystals to secure the Senate’s allocation. You will stay exactly twenty meters behind our rear lines, you will act as a passive anchor, and you will not activate your traits without my explicit administrative clearance. If you attempt to steal a single crystal from our perimeter, I will personally format your core parameters right here."
"Captain Kaelen is being far too generous with you, little fluid lifeform," the female mage next to him sneered, raising her heavy celestial crystal staff. A bright, spinning circle of silver magic arrays manifested around her forearm, radiating a heavy spatial suppression field that was meant to lock down Ayla’s physical movement. "A primitive slime should know its proper place when operating beneath the shadow of the Crown Council. Do not make us waste our time disciplining a first-year beginner."
Ayla ignored their arrogant threats completely, her expression remaining perfectly flat and expressionless. To her, their half-step Crown aura suppressions and their complex spatial magic arrays felt like nothing more than a faint, gentle summer breeze.
"Nexus, the white-coated seniors talk too much," Ayla communicated through the mind link, her multi-layered mental voice carrying a heavy tone of pure, unadulterated boredom. "Their political words are entirely useless to me. Can I eat their cores now? I am getting far too hungry to wait behind their lines."
"Oh, go right ahead, little monster!" Nexus’s voice giggled loudly inside her head, popping five bright red targeting matrices across Ayla’s right holographic lens. "They think they can use their senior Senate authority to tame a prehistoric predator that just solo-conquered a Class 3 primitive planet this morning! Show them what a real, maximized Peak Gold overload looks like!"
Before Kaelen could issue his first tactical deployment command to his squad, Ayla launched her body forward like an unstoppable blue bullet. She didn’t use any complex flight spells or high-tier magical arrays. She simply relied on the immense, overflowing kinetic output of her Gale Acceleration trait, backed by the massive, maximized mana pools of her core.
The air parameters across the obsidian platform violently cracked in her wake, creating a thunderous sonic boom that instantly shattered the female mage’s silver spatial suppression arrays into fine purple dust.
"What—" the female mage stammered, her eyes widening into dinner plates as her celestial crystal staff was violently ripped out of her grip by the sheer wind pressure of Ayla’s passing mass.
Ayla materialized directly in front of the second vanguard member, a heavy shield-warrior who was easily nine feet tall. The senior warrior reacted with battle-hardened instincts, frantically raising his massive tower shield made from high-grade celestial iron to block her path. The shield’s defensive runes flared with a blinding silver light, projecting a solid, three-layer barrier that was capable of withstanding direct impacts from high-tier magical artillery.
Ayla did not pause her movement. Deep within her translucent blue body, her golden core throbbed with an extreme level of manic hunger.
"Rend of the World-Order," Ayla commanded flatly inside her mind.
Five majestic, pitch-black claws instantly extended from the front of her fluid mass with a sharp, synchronized metallic click. The intricate golden runes covering her claws flared with a brilliant light, greedily drinking the wild elemental mana of the volcanic cavern to reinforce her strike.
She swung her fluid arm in a simple, lazy downward sweep right against the center of the celestial iron tower shield. The absolute defense that the Student Senate relied on did not offer a single ounce of resistance. Her pitch-black claws completely ignored eighty percent of his defensive parameters, slicing cleanly through the thick metal shield, through his white uniform coats, and straight through his torso muscle structures like a sharp iron blade cutting through wet mud.
Clang. Tearing sound. Crash.
A massive explosion of dark red blood erupted from the warrior’s chest, splashing violently across the black obsidian floorboards. The permanent bleeding effect of her law attribute trait instantly latched onto his soul container, disrupting his connection to his internal mana pathways and creating a state of constant, burning torment.
The heavy shield-warrior let out a high-pitched, agonizing scream of pure pain, his massive nine-foot body violently collapsing backward onto the stone. Before his body could even trigger the automated academy ejection light, Ayla twisted her fluid mass, extending a sharp tendril straight through his severed chest armor to rip his silver core framework completely out of his body. She pulled the glowing entity into her center, swallowing it whole in one fluid motion.
[ System Notice: Elite Senate Vanguard member eliminated ]
[ One half-step Crown core successfully digested ]
[ Your internal gold core saturation has increased by three percent ]
The entire volcanic cavern fell into an absolute, deathly silence, save for the crackling sound of the boiling magma lakes.
The remaining four Senate seniors froze completely in mid-stance, their arrogant expressions instantly twisting into a state of pure, unadulterated horror. Their minds completely short-circuited as they stared at the bloody corpse of their top defensive warrior. An elite third-year ranker who had trained for years in the outer sectors had been thoroughly liquidated, stripped of his core, and eaten within less than three seconds by a first-year primitive slime.
"This—this is impossible!" Kaelen stammered, his hand trembling violently against the hilt of his silver rapier as a massive wave of sudden, primitive survival fear rushed into his heart. "Her claws... they didn’t even trigger the shield’s defensive parameters! She ignored the world laws of the academy grid!"
"I told you she was a monster!" the female mage shrieked in pure panic, tears of horror leaking from her eyes as she frantically backed away toward the edge of the platform. "Activate the emergency recall! Break the mission parameters! We need to get out of this sector right now!"
Ayla did not give them a single moment to breathe or access their interface panels. She turned her golden-ringed pupils toward the remaining four seniors, her multi-layered mental voice booming like a heavy thunderclap directly inside their frantic brain pathways.
"You wanted to format my core," Ayla whispered flatly, her golden eyes expanding with a dark, predatory light. "But you are all far too weak to be my master. You are just smaller snacks."
She focused her Twin Lens of the Weaver onto the remaining three vanguard members simultaneously, completely covering their spatial coordinates within a single millisecond.
"Combination," Ayla ordered smoothly.
She forcefully grabbed the absolute pinnacle of her conceptual data packages, jamming the clashing, violent waves of hysterical, screaming joy and deep, suicidal despair directly into their three unprotected soul containers at the exact same fraction of a second.
The results across the advanced platform were immediate, silent, and completely brutal.
The female mage and the two senior spear-warriors didn’t even have time to raise their weapons or release their elemental barriers. The extreme, conflicting emotional data packages violently short-circuited their cognitive nervous systems within a fraction of a single microsecond. Their eyes instantly rolled into the backs of their scaled and elven skulls, their bodies falling into violent, uncontrollable muscular seizures mid-stance.
They crashed heavily onto the hard obsidian stone, their limbs twitching frantically as bright blue pillars of emergency system light shot down from the low cavern ceiling, enveloping their seizing forms and instantly ejecting their broken minds back to the medical bay while resetting their personal score counters back to absolute zero.
"Three advanced participants eliminated," the automated system voice announced over Ayla’s personal interface, its mechanical frequency carrying a heavy, vibrating glitch as it struggled to process her ridiculous power scaling.
Within less than two minutes, the entire elite vanguard squad of the Student Senate had been completely wiped out. The only person left standing on the obsidian platform was Kaelen, the half-step Crown Rank captain. His face was completely pale, entirely stripped of his previous aristocratic pride as he stared at the small blue ball of jelly waddling slowly toward his boots.
"You—you cannot kill me," Kaelen whispered, his voice shivering violently as he raised his silver rapier in a desperate, final defensive stance. "I am the direct right hand of President Sylas! The Crown Council will hunt you across the entire infinite universe if you format my soul container!"
Ayla did not stop rolling, completely treating his political threats like invisible pieces of trash beneath her notice. She materialized right in front of his boots, her five pitch-black claws extending back out with a sharp metallic click.
"Sylas is next," Ayla muttered flatly into the burning volcanic wind.
With a simple, lazy sweeping motion, she drove her black claws straight through his silver rapier, snapping the high-grade spatial weapon into a dozen useless metal fragments. Her claws continued forward, slicing cleanly through his white military coat and deep into his chest cavity. She twisted her fluid mass, forcefully ripping his glowing half-step Crown master core straight out of his body and pulling the rich, savory entity directly into her golden center to satisfy her baseline hunger.
Kaelen’s eyes instantly went dull and expressionless, his massive physical framework collapsing forward onto the stone floorboards with a heavy, lifeless thud before the system light carried his empty shell away.
Ayla stood alone in the center of the empty volcanic plaza, her translucent blue body expanding and contracting with a deep, heavy rhythm as she smoothly digested the two high-quality senior cores. Her gold core spun with an incredible velocity, perfectly absorbing their refined mana to push her biological framework to the absolute maximum peak of the first-year progression line.
She turned her golden-ringed pupils upward toward the sky parameters of the cavern, looking at the one hundred glowing Crown-grade Spark Crystals that were floating peacefully above the magma lakes.
"Now," Ayla whispered to Nexus, her fluid body becoming a devastating high-speed blue blur as she shot up into the air. "Let’s collect the rest of the crystals so we can go find the silver-haired president tomorrow morning."
"Let’s clear the entire table, little monster!" Nexus laughed hysterically inside her head, waving the completed mission charts away into fine digital dust as Ayla began to ruthlessly harvest the entire advanced sector ahead of schedule.