Chapter 131: Picking Difficulty

Chapter 131: Picking Difficulty

The academy’s difficulty selection remained suspended before Noah long after the briefing ended.

Five choices occupied the center of the interface, each accompanied by warnings, scoring values, and the same reminder that once the assessment began, the selected difficulty could not be lowered.

Noah did not choose immediately, instead shifting his attention away from the interface and looking down upon his planet while he considered what exactly he wanted from the assessment.

The four empires were no longer young civilizations struggling to survive their first generations.

Paved roads crossed settled regions, fortified cities controlled important approaches, ports connected distant coastlines, and military centers supported armies that had inherited thousands of years of institutional development.

Viridian had also returned from Edras with something the other empires had only partly shared before the campaign: recent experience fighting a long war against an organized enemy.

Varkesh, Skargrim, and Luminous had contributed enormous formations once Noah expanded the campaign, and their officers had operated under the same command structure without collapsing into rivalry.

The experience had not made every weakness of the army disappear, but it had given Noah enough evidence to understand that the lower assessment levels would probably tell him very little. He brought the academy interface back into focus and began reviewing the five choices again.

Difficulty One was meant for civilizations still forming reliable military structures, while Difficulty Two represented the expected level for an ordinary first-year planetary god.

Difficulty Three assumed a stronger degree of organization and military development, but Noah moved past all three quickly because none seemed capable of properly testing the civilization spread beneath him.

Difficulty Four held his attention longer. The academy described it as a challenge intended for civilizations that had developed far beyond the average, and the scoring advantage would already be substantial if he survived multiple rounds.

The final choice, however, carried a warning noticeably stronger than anything attached to the previous levels.

Difficulty Five offered no promise that later rounds would remain survivable. Its description emphasized unfamiliar technology, escalating invasion strength, changing tactics, and the possibility of multiple entry points as the assessment progressed.

Noah remembered Garran’s warning after the fall of Caldris and considered what the goblins had actually proven during that campaign.

They had defeated a large mortal kingdom, but Edras had existed under restrictions that kept its native gods from directly changing the war.

This assessment would not give Noah an enemy god either, yet it could still expose the goblins to much higher opponent.

The academy could choose enemies from very different civilizations, and Noah wanted to know whether the military institutions developed by his world could adapt when the nature of battle itself changed.

If he chose a difficulty that merely reproduced an enemy the goblins already better than, the assessment would become little more than confirmation of strength he had already seen.

Noah wanted the coming invasion to reveal problems rather than hide them behind easy victories, so after another moment of consideration he selected Difficulty Five.

A final confirmation window appeared immediately. It warned that enemy technology might substantially exceed the developmental level of the defending civilization, that casualties and destruction would remain real, and that later rounds could escalate in both scale and complexity.

Another line reminded him that surrender would remain available at any point, but once the assessment began, the selected difficulty could no longer be reduced.

Noah read the entire warning from beginning to end before confirming the selection. The five choices vanished and were replaced by a notice informing him that Difficulty Five had been locked, after which the academy began processing the civilization that would invade his world.

While the system worked, Noah returned his attention to the planet below. He issued a broad divine warning through the religious structures connecting the four empires, informing them that a foreign force would soon enter their world and that every empire was to prepare for invasion.

Noah did not tell them where the enemy would appear because he did not know. He also resisted the temptation to order individual armies into position or command particular fortresses to reinforce their walls, leaving the mortal institutions below to decide how they should respond to the warning.

The reaction spread rapidly across the continents. From above, Noah watched activity ripple outward from temples, government centers, and military headquarters as couriers departed major cities, signal stations became active, reserve formations began assembling, and local commanders ordered inspections of defensive positions and supply depots.

Ports prepared ships while inland garrisons checked walls, roads, and communication routes. On several major highways, troop columns began moving toward regional assembly areas rather than concentrating around any single point, a sensible response when nobody yet knew where the invasion would begin.

Noah felt a quiet satisfaction as he watched the preparations unfold. Garran’s assessment had emphasized how little divine intervention the goblins required during the Caldris campaign, and the same pattern was appearing again because a single warning had been enough to set enormous institutions into motion.

The academy interface finally changed as a dark planetary image appeared above the assessment window.

A short designation identified the chosen enemy as the planet Draeven, and Noah focused on the information that began unfolding beneath the name.

Draeven was classified as a post-apocalyptic industrial world. Its civilization had once possessed widespread modern infrastructure, but a global catastrophe had shattered national governments, destroyed major cities, disrupted industry, and killed a large portion of the population.

The survivors had not returned to primitive life, instead rebuilding around whatever systems, machines, and knowledge had endured the collapse.

Fortified settlements controlled water and farmland, while industrial enclaves fought to preserve machinery and ammunition production.

Military factions guarded fuel depots, highways, old factories, and surviving transport networks, and generations of conflict had turned organized violence into an ordinary part of Draeven society.

Noah moved to the technological classification and immediately noticed how different it was from Caldris.

The academy described Draeven as possessing modern conventional weaponry, with assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, grenades, mortars, rocket launchers, conventional artillery, armored vehicles, military trucks, radio communications, aircraft, and transport airships all appearing among the recognized categories.

There were no energy weapons, powered suits, or futuristic devices among the listed equipment.

Noah found that almost more interesting because Draeven did not need impossible technology to completely change the battlefield.

Its weapons simply belonged to a military age the goblins had never encountered.

Noah thought back to the formations Rakhar had used throughout the Caldris campaign. Against bows and crossbows, disciplined infantry could advance behind shields, maintain ranks, close distance, and survive enough incoming fire to reach an enemy line.

Firearms would change those assumptions before the goblins understood what had happened.

A machine gun could punish dense formations with a rate of fire that no bow unit could imitate.

Rifles could threaten soldiers from distances where goblin infantry would normally consider themselves outside serious danger, while mortars and artillery could strike formations protected by terrain or fortifications.

Noah’s interest deepened because the academy had found exactly the sort of enemy he wanted.

Another section of the interface opened and displayed the invasion progression attached to Difficulty Five.

The first round would contain ten invaders, followed by one hundred in the second, five hundred in the third, one thousand in the fourth, ten thousand in the fifth, one hundred thousand in the sixth, five hundred thousand in the seventh, and one million if Noah reached the eighth round.

Noah studied the sequence twice. The early rounds were tiny compared with the armies he had recently watched march through Edras, but the escalation became severe once the assessment reached its later stages.

If the goblins survived long enough, the academy would eventually stop testing isolated tactical responses and begin testing whether the civilization could endure a genuine planetary war.

Round One still looked almost absurd from Noah’s perspective. Ten soldiers were being sent against a planet containing established empires and populations far beyond what the academy normally expected from a first-year student, yet the number made considerably more sense when he considered who the assessment had originally been designed around.

Most students had only experienced thirty years of ordinary planetary development since awakening.

A civilization that began as scattered tribes might still possess only a few organized settlements, and even a rapidly developing society could have a military numbering only in the hundreds or low thousands.

Against such a civilization, ten experienced soldiers armed with modern rifles could already be horrifying. They could kill warriors from beyond familiar engagement ranges, move before local rulers fully understood what was happening, and create panic simply because nobody had any concept of the weapons being used against them.

The academy was not beginning with ten soldiers because Difficulty Five was weak. It was beginning with ten because that number was sufficient to test the type of civilization the academy expected a student to possess, while Noah’s planet was the abnormal part of the equation.

A final notice appeared and informed him that Round One would deploy ten Draeven soldiers into the Viridian Empire through aerial transport.

A marker then appeared over a rural district far from the largest cities, surrounded by farmland, woodland, scattered villages, and a secondary road that eventually reached a fortified regional town.

Noah shifted his planetary sight toward the marked region. The world below continued moving as if nothing had changed, with farmers working fields, wagons traveling along the road, livestock moving between fenced pastures, and small patrols passing from one settlement to another.

Then the assessment countdown began. Noah watched the sky while the final seconds disappeared, and at first nothing appeared above the selected region.

Only when the countdown reached its end did a small dark shape emerge far above the clouds.

Noah narrowed his attention around it as the object descended. Ordinary goblins below would have struggled to identify the distant silhouette, but from Noah’s perspective its outline became clearer with every moment until there was no question that he was looking at an airship.

It resembled nothing constructed by the four goblin empires. The craft looked industrial rather than elegant, with sections of its hull covered by mismatched armor plates and several areas showing old repairs where newer metal had been fixed over previous damage.

External engines were mounted along the frame, while cables, structural braces, and practical access panels remained exposed rather than hidden beneath decorative surfaces.

The entire airship looked as though beauty had never been considered during its construction and continued operation after years of punishment had been its only requirement.

Noah moved his sight closer and noticed a mounted weapon beside one of the openings.

The academy’s technological description allowed him to recognize its general form as a machine gun, though the goblins watching from below would have no idea what such a weapon could do.

The transport compartment held exactly ten humans. They wore muted uniforms suited for combat rather than ceremony, with helmets covering their heads, simple body armor protecting their torsos, and pouches filled with ammunition and equipment fixed across their clothing.

Most carried rifles, although the weapons were not identical. One soldier carried a heavier firearm with a larger ammunition load, another possessed a longer rifle fitted with an optic, and the individual positioned near the front carried additional communications equipment.

Noah examined the weapons carefully and found no mana crystals embedded anywhere in them. No magical inscriptions ran across the barrels, no spell formations powered their mechanisms, and nothing suggested they relied on divine or magical energy.

They were technological weapons built from metal, chemical propellant, and engineering. Noah found himself smiling slightly because, for the goblins, what was descending from the sky represented an entirely unfamiliar form of warfare.

Movement below soon caught his attention. Several goblins working near the road had noticed the descending craft and were pointing toward the sky, while a patrol farther away stopped and turned toward the unfamiliar object.

Within minutes, riders were already moving away from the area toward the nearest military post. Noah remained above it all and watched the response without entering anyone else’s perspective, content to see what his civilization would do with the limited information available.

He briefly considered sending a detailed revelation explaining firearms, machine guns, engagement ranges, and the dangers of tightly packed formations.

If he gave the goblins every answer before they encountered the enemy, however, the assessment would test Noah’s knowledge instead of their ability to adapt.

That was not what he wanted to learn. Noah therefore allowed only one additional warning to pass through the religious channels already carrying his earlier command, telling his followers that the invaders’ weapons were more dangerous at range than their appearance suggested.

He gave them nothing else and returned his attention to the descending airship. The goblins would have to discover the meaning of his warning for themselves, just as they had been forced to understand unfamiliar enemies throughout their own history.

The Draeven airship approached an open field beside the secondary road. Its engines pushed dust, loose grass, and fragments of dried vegetation outward as it lowered itself, while Noah could already see more movement appearing across the surrounding region.

Small Viridian military units were turning toward the area, although none had reached the field yet. The delay gave the ten invaders enough time to establish themselves before the first goblin soldiers arrived, and Noah wondered what they would choose to do with that opportunity.

The airship’s landing supports extended as the engines changed pitch and the craft finally touched Viridian soil.

Its side ramp began lowering while Noah focused on the soldiers waiting inside, watching them check equipment, adjust their rifles, and move toward the opening with the practiced coordination of people familiar with this kind of deployment.

The first Draeven soldier stepped onto the ramp and descended into the field, with the remaining nine following closely behind.

They spread outward beneath the airship while the mounted gun remained directed toward the surrounding countryside, their small formation looking almost insignificant against the immense civilization covering the continent.

Noah did not dismiss them despite their number. The academy had selected Draeven for Difficulty Five, and these ten soldiers represented only the smallest expression of what that world could send if his civilization continued surviving.

As the last soldier left the transport, the assessment interface changed before Noah. Round One had officially begun.