One minute...
Three minutes, five minutes...
Time ticked by, and before long, the countdown passed the eight-minute mark.
By now, their positions had reversed. Tainuo sat calmly in his chair, listening as his personal guard told him the main engines had finished warming up.
Dean Bai, meanwhile, paced irritably aboard the spaceship, all but wishing she could enter the Ancient Wilderness herself to conduct a search and rescue.
Of course, that was impossible.
The Ancient Wilderness consisted of multiple layers of space and possessed "world depth."
The stronger an Awakened person was, the greater the world depth they entered in the Ancient Wilderness, and vice versa.
There was no such convenient thing as high-level Awakened being safe in the Ancient Wilderness. It was like an unfathomable ocean: the "heavier" a creature was, the deeper it sank.
Even if all thousand-plus freshmen had 1% compatibility and entered the Ancient Wilderness in the same area at the same time, their differing potentials meant that only freshmen of the same potential grade had a chance of encountering one another.
As an Awakened with 100% compatibility, Dean Bai would not have appeared in the same space as the freshmen even if she had entered the Ancient Wilderness alongside them.
The countdown did not slow for Dean Bai's emotions. The seconds ticked steadily away.
When the time reached nine minutes and forty seconds and mercilessly entered the final twenty-second countdown, Tainuo walked to the central console to make the final route confirmation.
At the sight, Dean Bai tugged at her own hair and muttered, unable to stand it any longer:
"Wasn't it 'luck'? Then give me a student back!"
46, 47, 48...
Clang!
A figure appeared in the control room without warning and fell to the floor with a dull thud.
Dean Bai's amber eyes widened. She blinked once, then blinked again as if to make sure.
"E-emergency treatment!"
There was actually no need for her to shout. Unlike humans, mechanical sensors did not suffer delayed reactions from surprise.
"Woo-wah, woo-wah~"
The emergency medical robot rushed over the instant the figure appeared. Mechanical arms extended like an octopus's tentacles, each holding emergency supplies.
Everyone's eyes converged on that spot, as though they were trying to stare straight through the figure.
Tainuo, in particular, stood rigidly in place, staring at the familiar girl on the floor, his eyes filled with disbelief.
It was her. She had actually survived!
Dean Bai hurried over in a few strides, watching from a distance that would not interfere with the robot's work.
The robot had only just reached its patient when its syringe-bearing arm finished preparing a dose of powerful adrenaline and aimed straight at her heart.
Emergency treatment for the Awakened was just that plain and simple.
There was no time to assess the exact extent of the injuries. They simply treated it as cardiac arrest and administered a shot first, lest the patient die during the examination.
The Awakened had extremely powerful vitality anyway. Even if the injection was a mistake, they could still be saved.
Click.
The next instant, a hand caught the syringe thrusting toward her heart.
"Mm..."
Wen Jing's eyes snapped open, immediately turning toward the target that had "attacked" her.
Then came bright lights, a metal ceiling, and a white-haired head... huh?
"Wen Jing?"
"...Wen Jing?"
Two voices called her name one after another. The first belonged to the white-haired woman before her, and the second was Tainuo's.
I made it back alive!
Realizing her situation, Wen Jing quickly relaxed her taut nerves. She pushed the syringe away and said, "I don't need that."
Then she noticed something. Her expression shifted, and she raised her other hand.
Her tightly clenched hand slowly opened, revealing a small white stone with a distinct energy reaction lying in her palm.
"Ha, ha, ha!"
After a moment of stunned silence, Dean Bai suddenly burst into exceedingly smug laughter beside her.
In contrast, Tainuo, who had just approached, froze in place, his eyes wide.
For the first time, he questioned whether there was something wrong with his understanding of the Ancient Wilderness and the Awakened-
An F-rank Awakened entering the Ancient Wilderness for the first time had not only returned alive from its night, but had even successfully brought back loot!
Chapter 10
Thanks to Wen Jing's appearance, Dean Bai gained the upper hand over Tainuo, and the spaceship remained in the area for another twenty minutes before departing.
Unfortunately, however, no second survivor returned successfully after her.
The student common area was exceptionally quiet now, its atmosphere somber.
It was not just those injured in the Ancient Wilderness. Even those who had returned safely felt little relief. Classmates they had chatted, laughed, and trained with just the night before were gone forever after a separation of mere minutes.
That night had demonstrated the Ancient Wilderness's cruelty to the fullest. While the Awakened enjoyed all manner of privileges far beyond those of ordinary people, they also bore the corresponding price.
Wen Jing lay awake on the bed in her room, reviewing her experiences in the Ancient Wilderness.
On her attribute panel, the insect-body panel had now turned gray, and the human-body panel had switched back. Its values had also increased.
Health: 11 Strength: 11 Speed: 11 Spirit: 15 Species level (human): 10/10
Her species level was still ten, but her attribute points had increased for the first time in years.
Was the increase in compatibility what strengthened my body?
Wen Jing recalled what she had read in textbooks-
An insurmountable energy-level gap existed between the material universe and the Ancient Wilderness. The Awakened could grow stronger because their consciousness acted as a channel linking the two, gradually synchronizing the Wilderness Body's higher-dimensional energy with the human body. This state of synchronization was commonly known as "compatibility."
The Awakened only had to enter the Ancient Wilderness to slowly increase their compatibility. The longer they could remain there, the greater the increase.
Additionally, obtaining some opportunity within it, such as absorbing heavenly materials and earthly treasures, would grant further increases, but such things could only be encountered, not sought.
Having entered the Ancient Wilderness once, Wen Jing's compatibility would naturally increase upon her return. Judging by the situation, she should have been the student who stayed there the longest this time, so her compatibility had increased the most, even raising her attributes.
However, the greater increase in "spirit" probably was not due solely to compatibility. Was it because of the Gravity Silk she had evolved in the Ancient Wilderness?
At that thought, she immediately tried to sense the gravity around her as she had in the Ancient Wilderness.
"..."
Before long, she opened her eyes with an unpleasant expression, a sheen of cold sweat appearing on her forehead.
The moment she had tried to activate her gravitational sense, she had felt an intense sense of overexertion, as though an ice pick had abruptly plunged into her brain.
Rubbing her throbbing head, she immediately abandoned the attempt.
In the final moments before returning from inside the Shadow Wolf's esophagus, she had focused entirely on calculating anchor points and had not noticed how much Gravity Silk remained. Now it seemed she had consumed a great deal.
Still, that sense of overexertion also told her that the Gravity Silk's properties remained and could recover over time.
"The Ancient Wilderness really is terrifying at night," Wen Jing sighed.
Even now, she did not know what the monster that had swallowed her looked like. Moreover, if she had evolved some other ability rather than the Gravity Silk Gland, she would very likely have been dead by now.
The difference in size was too great. She did not think three hundred evolution points spent elsewhere could have instantly killed that monster. As long as she could not kill it instantly, the monster would inevitably interrupt her return, and the longer she remained in the Ancient Wilderness at night, the greater the danger.
Thinking of that monster, Wen Jing took a piece of transparent "amber" from her pocket and toyed with it between her fingertips.
Encased at the center of the "amber" was the small stone she had brought out of the Ancient Wilderness.
This substance was called "aether medium," and Dean Bai had given it to her.
Dean Bai had told her that it was widely used among the Awakened, a technological product specifically designed to preserve and encapsulate loot from the Ancient Wilderness. It could prevent the loss of energy and special components for a certain period.
Once she reached Ochre Soil Star, she could find somewhere to have it appraised and then sell it.
Of course, Wen Jing knew that a random stone picked up in the Ancient Wilderness would not be worth much. It might even be worth less than the aether medium Dean Bai had given her. Still, even a mosquito was meat, however small, and she remembered the favor.
Unexpectedly, after idly turning it around under the light, her gaze suddenly sharpened.
She had not examined it closely before. Now, upon careful inspection, she discovered a small black mark along the edge of one corner of the stone.
"Was this corroded by that monster's saliva?"
Wen Jing narrowed her eyes slightly, carefully examining the mark-
Through the clear aether medium, she saw that the mark seemed to contain more than a chip in the little stone. A trace of some unknown black substance remained there too.
Traveling at full speed, the spaceship reached Ochre Soil Star in just a day and a half.
Although Ochre Soil Star lay within its star system's habitable zone, it looked like a reddish-brown planet from afar, just as its name suggested.
More than 90% of the planet was desertified. However, because Federation technology had already freed productive capacity from its constraints, this terrible climate did not affect human survival on the planet, instead becoming a distinctive environmental feature.
The spaceship landed directly on Ochre Soil Academy's largest landing platform.
The academy stood on Ochre Soil Star's equator. Although called an academy, it actually covered an area comparable to a megacity in Wen Jing's previous life.
Watching through the porthole as the spaceship descended through the atmosphere, she felt as though she were seeing a vast, circular island rising from a sea of sand.
As soon as the spaceship landed, the medical personnel waiting there in advance came forward and took the injured students away for treatment.