The Exam

In the Cloud Sea Forest.

"Xuewei, you are truly amazing!" Zhang Yuanyuan happily linked her arm with Chen Xuewei, her voice filled with admiration.

Zhang Chao's eyes also shimmered with excitement. "Is this an Earth-Tier Skill? The power is truly extraordinary!"

"Class monitor is mighty!" Fanzi also hurried forward, grinning as he gave a thumbs-up.

Chen Xuewei smiled, her clear, beautiful eyes turning toward Xiao Fan as she spoke softly, "This time, it's all thanks to Xiao Fan. If he hadn't warned us in time, I wouldn't have been able to react at all."

"Not bad, Fanzi! Your reflexes are so fast!" Fanzi laughed heartily, patting Xiao Fan hard on the back.

Xiao Fan's heart was not as calm as he appeared, though he smiled on the surface. "I just happened to notice those three Fierce Beasts by chance."

Before the five-member squad lay the corpses of three rats, each the size of a cat.

Iron-Eating Rat, a Level 1 Fierce Beast.

Just moments ago, the squad had barely entered the forest when they were targeted by these three Iron-Eating Rats.

All five of them were entering the game for the first time, and lacking experience, no one had realized that three Fierce Beasts were tailing them.

In the final moment, just as the three beasts launched their ambush, Xiao Fan sensed something was wrong and quickly warned his teammates.

Chen Xuewei reacted with lightning speed, immediately unleashing her Earth-Tier Skill.

The skill carried splash damage, and in the blink of an eye, the three Iron-Eating Rats were slaughtered.

Xiao Fan appeared calm, but in reality, he had broken out in a cold sweat.

It's a good thing I dumped all five of my attribute points into ten when I entered the game, otherwise, I might not have been able to detect these three Fierce Beasts.

Aside from the five Free Attribute Points granted upon leveling up, the only way to increase attributes was to spend Core Power to purchase them.

5 Core Power = 1 attribute point.

Xiao Fan's Heaven-Tier Skill was completely useless in the early stages, so for the sake of his own safety, he had decided to push his five-dimensional attributes to ten first.

Since party members could see each other's game levels, Xiao Fan had chosen not to spend his Core Power on experience to level up, but rather on attribute points, all to keep his secret hidden.

Now, his character information had completely changed.

ID: Jiu Chen

Level: 1 (0/10)

HP: 110/110

MP: 115/115

Strength: 10

Intelligence: 10

Spirit: 10

Agility: 10

Constitution: 10

Trait: Saint

Skill: Halo of the Saint

Equipment: None

Core Power: 435

After all five attributes reached ten, he could clearly feel the changes in his body, and his alertness had sharpened significantly.

This was what allowed him to discover the Iron-Eating Rats the moment they ambushed.

"What's the use of just noticing them? If we couldn't beat them, we'd still be dead," Zhang Yuanyuan rolled her eyes.

Chen Xuewei's expression immediately turned cold, and she pulled her arm away from Zhang Yuanyuan's embrace. "If Xiao Fan hadn't warned us just now, we might have been killed by the beasts. You don't thank him, and instead, you ostracize him? That's going too far."

Seeing that Chen Xuewei was genuinely angry, Zhang Yuanyuan hurriedly apologized. "Xuewei, I was wrong. I won't talk about Xiao Fan like that again, okay?"

Xiao Fan rolled his eyes; he couldn't be bothered to deal with this woman. If his skill weren't useless in the early game, he would have gone solo long ago.

"Alright, we've seen how dangerous the game is. We need to be careful on the road ahead and not get careless," Chen Xuewei instructed seriously.

Everyone nodded in a hurry.

In Cloud Sea, killing Fierce Beasts did not grant experience; the three Iron-Eating Rats had only dropped three points of Core Power.

In other words, one Level 1 Fierce Beast provided only one point of Core Power.

1 Core Power was equal to 1 experience point. It took ten experience points to reach level two, meaning they had to kill ten Fierce Beasts to level up.

Judging by Chen Xuewei's monster-slaying speed, leveling up should be quite fast.

And that was indeed the case; in less than half an hour, the squad had already killed ten Level 1 Fierce Beasts and accumulated ten points of Core Power.

"I have an idea," Zhang Chao suddenly stopped in his tracks.

"What idea?" Zhang Yuanyuan turned back to ask.

"This exam is primarily based on the number of Fierce Beasts our squad kills. Chen Xuewei is our team's main damage dealer, so I suggest we give her the ten Core Power points first to upgrade her. This will greatly increase our squad's speed in killing Fierce Beasts."

Hearing this, Chen Xuewei shook her head: "We are a team, and everyone contributed to killing the Fierce Beasts. These Core Power points should be split equally."

Xiao Fan actually thought what Zhang Chao said made sense: "I agree with Zhang Chao's suggestion."

"I agree too." Little Fatty quickly raised his hand as well.

"I agree as well. Chen Xuewei, you upgrading also boosts our squad's strength, so this is a win-win for all of us. If anything, you can just take fewer points from the Core Power we collect later."

Seeing that all her teammates agreed, Chen Xuewei didn't act coy; she directly used the ten Core Power points to buy ten experience points and leveled up to level two.

After leveling up, Chen Xuewei was indeed stronger, putting her all into killing everything in their path.

Watching Chen Xuewei's figure as she killed a monster with every step, to be honest, Xiao Fan felt a bit envious.

He wanted to use that opportunity to create a skill right away and forge a Damage Class skill to slaughter everything in his path.

But remembering that single Halo of the Saint trait, he held back.

Endurance in the early stages is just for invincibility in the later stages! Xiao Fan comforted himself.

Three hours later.

"Xiao Fan, it's your turn to level up this time."

Chen Xuewei retracted her long sword and wiped the sweat from her forehead.

"Mm." Xiao Fan nodded. He didn't stand on ceremony and directly used the ten Core Power points Chen Xuewei had transferred to him to buy experience.

In the squad, Chen Xuewei, Little Fatty, Zhang Yuanyuan, and Zhang Chao had all reached level two, leaving only him behind.

Ding, congratulations on your character reaching level two.

Xiao Fan checked his character information. Aside from the five additional Free Attribute Points, his HP and MP had also increased, but nothing else had changed.

ID: Jiu Chen

Level: 2 (0/100)

HP: 210/210

MP: 225/225

Strength: 10

Intelligence: 10

Spirit: 10

Agility: 10

Constitution: 10

Trait: Saint

Skill: Halo of the Saint

Equipment: None

Core Power: 435

Xiao Fan noticed that leveling from two to three actually required 100 experience points; one had to remember that leveling from one to two only required ten.

It had increased tenfold!

"It seems that leveling up in this game gets harder the further you go."

Additionally, there was one more thing that made Xiao Fan very depressed.

His skill Halo of the Saint still hadn't increased his MP by a single point.

The strength of this squad was too high; they steamrolled level one Fierce Beasts, and even level two Fierce Beasts fell quickly under their coordinated efforts.

Up until now, not a single person had been injured.

This should have been a good thing, but Xiao Fan couldn't bring himself to be happy, because this meant his Halo of the Saint was completely useless.

"It seems having teammates who are too strong isn't entirely a good thing."

Xiao Fan sighed and was just about to continue moving forward.

Suddenly, he felt a dangerous aura in the Forest locking onto them.

"Everyone be careful, something is coming!"

Hearing this, Chen Xuewei and the other three immediately raised their weapons and looked around with vigilance.

They had already deeply experienced just how strong Xiao Fan's danger perception was.