Chapter 26: The Survival Puzzle

Chapter 26: Chapter 26: The Survival Puzzle

Jeremy habitually listed a series of feasible reasons in his head. However, his purpose in pretending to be a considerate teammate right now was not to investigate that matter, much less did he care what Lucius’s reason for paying special attention to him was.

The other’s long eyelashes lightly fluttered, carrying a faint hint of refusal that made Jeremy’s palm itch slightly.

Jeremy withdrew his chaotic thoughts, nonchalantly taking in every microscopic change in the other’s expression.

Perhaps because he knew resisting Jeremy’s firm grip was useless, Lucius did not continue to struggle or dodge anymore. It was just that his tightly furrowed silver-gray eyebrows signaled that his mood at this moment was extremely terrible.

After his slender fingers carefully spread the cool ointment evenly over the flushed skin around the outer corners of his phoenix eyes, Jeremy decisively let go: "I’m not just telling you specifically, I am reminding all the members of our team."

Experiencing three days locked in solitary confinement to reflect, Jeremy had seen through everything.

Allowing these two teammates with main combat strength to get bogged down in personal friction brought him absolutely no benefit. It could even ignite more fatal internal rifts on the battlefield later on.

It was better to extinguish the seeds of discord right now.

To Jeremy, bonds or affection in this world were inherently extremely fragile and forced. Even his family affection had long faded since his childhood years, when his sickly parents blamed him for the disappearance of his talented older brother. Even if they intended to make amends later, the relationship between them remained as cold as frost. A person accustomed to walking alone and being as pragmatic as him naturally had no hobby of playing emotional mediator for others.

His sole goal was the six years of cultivation at the academy. After graduation, everyone would go their separate ways; by then, whether they wanted to slaughter each other, live or die, would have absolutely nothing to do with him.

Lucius pursed his lips, saying nothing. Jeremy then turned to glance at Leon leaning against the wall on the opposite side.

"Leon, what do you think? Planning to continue worsening the relationship and ultimately getting expelled from the academy, or is everyone willing to take a step back, peacefully coexisting for the next six years to graduate smoothly?"

"..." Leon frowned, choosing silence.

Since neither of them provided a final answer, Jeremy naturally understood perfectly well that casually saying a couple of words would not make these arrogant beasts obediently shake hands.

This matter could not be rushed momentarily.

Relaxing the fingers that had just held Lucius’s chin, he casually tossed the ointment vial into the other’s lap, instructing in a deep, cold voice: "Later, go to the bathroom yourself and finish applying it to the wounds elsewhere, especially the abdominal area."

Not caring whether Lucius answered or not, Jeremy neatly packed away his things and took long strides to sit down on the empty spot from earlier, continuing to flip open his research manual on magic arrays.

Evelyn and Phoenix, standing in the corner of the room, were considered collateral victims in the previous brawl; they maintained absolute silence, and Jeremy had nothing more to remind them of.

Brushing aside all surrounding distractions, Jeremy withdrew his train of thought and began concentrating on reading, planning to flip through this entire theoretical section before proceeding to enter a cultivation state.

The Apprentice Mage stage was equivalent to tier one; at this realm threshold, the essence was almost identical to a newly initiated apprentice, so condensing magic power to raise one’s star level was not considered overly difficult. Having gone through several days of continuous accumulation under high pressure, he had a premonition that the magic power barrier in his sea of consciousness was stirring, and he would very soon be able to break through to three stars.

But based on the ancient texts he had researched so far, after surpassing tier two, meaning stepping into the Intermediate Mage threshold (tier three), the speed of elevating a mage’s realm would gradually be directly influenced by their Spirit Covenant talent.

Insufficient talent must be compensated with tenfold effort. To smoothly pass the graduation assessment in the sixth-year final exam, one absolutely must utilize every minute and second right now, pulling their own realm up to an above-average level.

Jeremy’s entire mind right now was firmly locked onto the word "realm," causing him to automatically brush aside the feeling of suppression and confinement inside the endless solitary confinement room.

Four days later, the elemental barrier shattered, and Jeremy successfully stepped into the Novice (tier one) three-star realm.

And the seven-day sentence of solitary confinement penalty was finally completely over.

Stepping out of the heavy stone doors, Leon and Lucius, under Griffin’s ruthless threat and suppression, were forced to grit their teeth and apologize to the other. Aside from that procedural apology, the two completely treated each other as invisible, absolutely not exchanging another word.

In return, the level of perversion in Griffin’s practical combat courses compared to before only increased, never decreased.

Under that demonic level of training, besides their magical abilities and practical combat reflexes being continuously honed, the five students of class 659 also had to cram a massive amount of theoretical knowledge: from the history of the Sylvanor continent, bloodline relations between races, to the power division map of current core factions...

The grueling time just flew by like a shuttle. In the blink of an eye, the distance from the day Jeremy set foot in St. Aetherwing to today had reached exactly thirty days.

Under his relentless day and night efforts and high training intensity, his realm had advanced two more steps, firmly reaching the Novice five-star level.

Meanwhile, his four teammates’ cultivation progress also saw growth. But perhaps because the higher the boundary, the slower the speed of condensing magic stars, throughout the past month they only managed to increase by one star.

Evelyn currently reached Novice seven stars; the remaining three, Lucius, Leon, and Phoenix, all stopped at the six-star mark.

For someone bearing a rock-bottom Spirit Covenant like himself, the speed of catching up to this progress made Jeremy feel extremely satisfied.

Having finished showering and washing his hair, Jeremy comfortably leaned back and lay on his soft bed; the magic ID card placed beside his pillow suddenly lit up.

Jeremy reached out, lightly swiping the virtual screen, opening the chat group to check.

It was a message sent by Griffin.

The content was... Points to note during the Freshman Tournament.

Having been spun around in physical and magical training courses for the past month, Jeremy had almost completely erased this major tournament from his memory. He tapped, quickly swiping through the attached competition rule board.

This freshman tournament was not divided by faculty institutes, but used the class unit as the combat formation.

Aside from the team competition category, the academy also organized an individual tournament.

All applied a ruthless knockout format: losing one match meant immediate expulsion from the tournament, until the one standing at the ultimate peak was found.

This year, the freshmen of the five great faculties were evenly divided into 16 classes per faculty. The five major institutes combined had a total of 80 practical combat teams, with five members per team, gathering 400 students.

The individual competition category would take place before the team tournament.

To optimize time, after drawing lots to randomly select opponents, the 400 students would enter nine elimination rounds. The number of winners after each round would be slashed in half (in case of an odd number, one person would receive a bye), until only two powerhouses remained to duel in the final match.

The elimination trajectory ran through the milestones: 400 down to 200, 100, then 50.

Next were 25, 13, 7, 4, 2, and finally 1.

Because the number of contestants in the initial stage was too large, the first five rounds would be decentrally organized at various arena areas within the academy campus. Only from the final four rounds would the survivors be gathered to compete at a single location.

The team tournament also operated under a knockout mechanism, with rules almost similar.

The disciplinary notes stated very clearly: All crippling attacks endangering the opponent’s life are strictly prohibited; throughout the engagement period, students are only allowed to use their natal Holy Artifacts and personal magical attacks. Using any external support sources such as magical artifacts, magic scrolls, including all types of recovery pharmaceuticals, is strictly prohibited.

In other words, once stepping onto the arena ring, even if bleeding from injuries or depleted of magic power, even medicine was not allowed to be used; one could only grit their teeth and endure until the match ended.

Jeremy casually skimmed over this clause. He didn’t care much, his vision continuing to slide downward.

Mission rewards: First place team, each member receives 1000 accumulated points; second place 500 points, third place 300 points.

The rewards for the individual category were also equivalent in value to the team tournament.

"Accumulated points..."

Jeremy lightly tapped his fingertips on the bed surface, a flash of speechlessness darting through his eyes.

Within the boundaries of St. Aetherwing Magic Academy, all circulating currencies from the outside world were completely invalidated.

According to information he had gathered over the past few days, not just the Sky City—the central capital of the five great faculties—but also the twelve floating islands surrounding it, all operated on an accumulated point system replacing external currency.

In this holy land, one accumulated point possessed purchasing power equivalent to one pure gold coin on the outside continent.

Even though during the first month of enrollment, the academy awarded 100 accumulated points to each student as a back-to-school gift package, the price level of goods here was ridiculously expensive.

Therefore, even if living extremely frugally, not spending wastefully on magical equipment, and only calculating the cost of three basic meals a day, holding out for a month was already quite a struggle.

Furthermore, after the Freshman Tournament ended, the monthly subsidy points from the academy would also be cut off cleanly. In an environment where gold coins could not circulate, no matter how filthy rich the Valmont family behind him was, it was completely useless.

To have food to eat, to have cultivation resources, students only had one path: going everywhere to work part-time at service areas or accepting the risk to take missions from the academy to earn point remunerations.

It was unknown whether the academy’s leadership established this harsh rule to train practical survival skills for students, or as a sophisticated method to erase class polarization between high nobility and commoners...

Jeremy reached out, touching the virtual screen to access his personal account.

The number displayed on the current accumulated point balance: 80 points...

The corner of Jeremy’s lips curled into a cold, sarcastic smile. Should he say he had to thank that jellyfish-headed instructor Griffin?

First, throwing the whole team into the secret realm forest and then dropping them on a deserted island to torture them. After dragging themselves out, they continued to be locked in solitary confinement for seven whole days—during which their daily ration was only cheap plain congee. Right after finishing their prison term, they were dragged back into the secret realm for high-intensity training.

Thanks to that string of days of "imprisonment" and torture without the opportunity to spend, his balance of 80 accumulated points was luckily preserved until today.