The hour of rest vanished in a blur of tension and dread.
"Everyone, fall in!"
Chief examiner Iron Wrist's rough, penetrating voice rolled across the grounds like thunder through the holographic loudspeakers.
Below him, the thousand recruits who had survived the ten-thousand-person melee and the brutal arena defenses dragged their weary or exhilarated bodies into formation at the center of the square.
Not one of them had survived on luck alone.
They all reeked of blood and carried a murderous aura that would not fade. Nearly every one of them could exert more than seven hundred kilograms of force under normal conditions. They were elite soldier candidates selected from a bloodbath of twenty thousand.
"Congratulations. You've earned your entry tickets."
Iron Wrist looked down at the transformed recruits. His dark red Mechanical Prosthetic struck the alloy railing with a jarring clang.
"Next comes the ranking tournament. It will decide whether you feast or scrape by on this Floating Land!"
"The rules are simple: ten rounds of life-or-death combat!"
"The thousand of you will fight ten rounds of one-on-one arena matches. Winners earn one point; losers lose none. After all ten rounds, Sirius AI will determine your final rankings, from first to thousandth, based on your total points and your combat performance data!"
Iron Wrist swept a hand out. The enormous holographic screen overhead became a cascade of crimson data.
"But listen carefully to this!"
His voice turned cold and severe. "The matchups will not be based on strength or performance. They will be completely random!"
"Here, luck is part of your strength! You might draw someone half-dead from injuries, or you might run straight into a Skin Tempering Realm fighter in the first round!"
"Don't complain about fairness. The Exotic Beasts out among the stars won't go around you because