A massive holographic bronze gong on the Control Console rang out, signaling the start of the arena defense battle. Its deep sound waves swept across the entire Main Plaza.
"Fight!"
There was no warm-up. No one got even a second to breathe or think.
As the gong rang, the nine thousand recruits who had failed to make the initial rankings surged toward the hundred Alloy Fighting Platforms suspended overhead, like starving wolves driven into a corner!
Every eye burned with greed and undisguised frenzy.
In this meat grinder of interstellar martial combat, the rules were brutally simple: everyone had only three chances to challenge.
No one could challenge the same platform twice. That, at least, protected its defender.
Win, and they could kick the defender off the platform, take their place, and claim a key to the Advanced Martial Arts Hall. From there, they could rise into the Military's elite regular ranks.
Lose, or exhaust all three chances, and they would become cannon fodder at the bottom of this Floating Land, expendable bodies to fill the lines on future battlefields against Exotic Beasts.
The moment the gong sounded, the fighting erupted into a bloody, full-blown frenzy.
Defending a platform was never a simple one-on-one duel. It was a merciless Asura Game of stamina and Blood Energy that pushed the human body to its limits.
The defenders faced not only desperate assaults from Quasi-Martial Artists of their own level, but something deadlier: an endless succession of challengers.
At the Quasi-Martial Artist stage, their Baseline Strength had passed the 500-kilogram threshold and their bodies were far tougher than ordinary people's. But their control over Blood Energy remained crude.
Every full-force punch, every tense block, every last-second dodge of a fatal blow drained the oxygen stored in their muscle fibers and the Blood