"Countless 'stains' accumulate and converge, eventually forming a 'vortex' powerful enough to puncture the boundary between reality and the void. That is how 'rifts' come into being."
"One of our duties as Echoers is to clear away these 'stains' and prevent void beasts from pouring out in large numbers and threatening the city-state's safety."
He paused and looked around at everyone. "Today, you'll be clearing a small, D-rated rift. Inside, you'll encounter a large number of first-order void beasts and a small number of second-order void beasts."
"Your task is to work together and sweep the area within the allotted time. Make sure you're all wearing your recording devices. Teacher Yuejian, the other evaluating teachers and I will use the live footage transmitted back to give each of you an overall score based on your judgment in the field, combat skills, teamwork and other factors."
After repeatedly going over several safety rules and emergency procedures, he finally announced:
"Assessment-begin!"
The students of Class One and Class Eight entered the rift one after another.
The light abruptly dimmed.
Inside the rift lay the ruins of an eroded old district.
Twisted building wreckage lay piled in heaps beneath a dark purple sky. Tiny flecks of ash floated in the air, and a barely perceptible low-frequency hum came from beneath their feet.
The students from both classes appeared on camera together for the first time, and the viewers soon found something to comment on.
There was a masked person among Class One's students too.
"Holy crap, their character concepts overlap?"
"Two masked characters?"
"Streamer, streamer, your twin from another world has appeared!"
"But just as I thought, the streamer's mask looks better."
The masked guy in Class One was Suyo of the Thousand Faces family, the character originally intended for the five-star card "Thousand Faces."
So, in a sense, Qiji was occupying her niche in the anime.
Now that he'd met the original, he couldn't help feeling a little awkward.
Awkward or not, though, Qiji wasn't going to hold back.
He was determined to get the "Thousand Faces" card!
To highlight his "unfathomable" personality on camera and better match the characteristics of the "Thousand Faces" card-
Qiji even took the initiative to approach her and say hello. "Hey, this assessment is pretty troublesome. Want to team up?"
When Suyo saw Qiji, the look in her eyes instantly turned cold beneath her mask, and a nameless anger flared up inside her.
The Thousand Faces family had passed down the [Thousand Faces] Echo for generations, and its members often wore masks to symbolize the "ever-changing thousand faces."
Strong-willed from childhood, she had always been synonymous with "mask" and "genius" in the eyes of those around her, the focus of everyone's attention.
But all that changed when Qiji, a guy who had appeared out of nowhere, burst onto the scene.
He wore a mask and bore the name of "genius" too, yet he was more brazen, more mysterious and attracted more attention than she did!
Before she knew it, whenever people mentioned a "masked genius," Qiji was the first person they thought of, not her, a member of the Thousand Faces family.
It was as if she lived in his shadow.
She didn't know when it had started, but defeating him had become her obsession.
Team up? Was he kidding?!
Suyo glanced at Qiji and said, feigning composure, "You find even a D-rank rift like this troublesome, and you have the nerve to ask me to team up?"
Pretty tsundere, huh.
Qiji smiled and returned to his class.
"Suyo-!"
At the same time, a crisp voice rang out.
Bai Lili trotted out of Class Eight's group and raised a little hand high, waving enthusiastically at Suyo.
"Do you want to come to my house after class today? Father and Mother miss you very much."
Seeing Bai Lili being so enthusiastic toward a boy from another class, quite a few of the boys in Class Eight immediately looked displeased.
With their maxed-out character models, Bai Lili and Liuli had become extremely popular in the class on their first day at school.
Many of the boys had an unspoken understanding: Keep the good stuff in the family.
Seeing the mood turn awkward, a girl in the class who seemed to know the inside story lowered her voice and explained with amusement:
"Don't you know? The Bai family and the Thousand Faces family formally arranged a marriage between them years ago. The ones engaged are Bai Lili and Young Master Suyo."
"What?!"
"Seriously?!"
At this devastating news, a chorus of heartbroken wails immediately rose from the boys in Class Eight.
The livestream chat wailed along with them:
"An arranged marriage?? Draw your weapon, mask guy! I challenge you to a duel!"
"Bros, I've had my heart broken!"
"Look on the bright side. What if Suyo is actually a beautiful girl under that mask?"
"Why don't you say Qiji's a beautiful girl under his mask too?"
Faced with Bai Lili's enthusiasm, Suyo looked a little uncomfortable and turned her head slightly away.
Just then, a burly boy stepped forward.
It was Panyan, the class monitor of Class One.
He first nodded to Qiji and the others from Class Eight, then made a proposal:
"The teachers told us to decide for ourselves. In my view, to maximize efficiency, our two classes should divide up the area and go our separate ways. Class One will clear the east district, Class Eight will take the west district, and we'll meet at the center in the end. How does that sound?"
Qiji looked at the others in his class and, seeing that they had no objections, nodded in agreement.
He had read the plot summary and knew that, due to some unforeseen factors, this D-rank assessment would be a little more difficult than usual.
But Class One was a special class, and every student in it was a carefully selected genius. Their overall strength was formidable, so dealing with an accident like this naturally wouldn't be a problem.
Qiji should have been one of them too, but unfortunately, Class One's tuition was a bit more expensive than the other classes'...
So he decisively chose Class Eight, which offered better value for money.
Not only could he save money, but it would also be easier to get on camera with the main cast.
After watching Class One leave, quite a few students in Class Eight could no longer hold back either.
"Class One's already gone. Let's get moving too!"
"The sooner we finish clearing it, the sooner we can go back!"
"Let's aim for a high score!"
Everyone voiced their agreement.
After all, their assessment scores were directly tied to how resources would be allocated to them in the future. The faster and cleaner they completed the sweep, the higher their evaluations would naturally be.
Class Eight headed deeper into the west district.
They hadn't gone far when Liuli, who had sent butterflies out to scout, suddenly spoke with a grave expression:
"A group of void beasts ahead! There are quite a few!"
Everyone immediately went on guard and advanced slowly.
After passing through a patch of low, strange shrubs that gave off a fluorescent glow, they came upon a relatively open, corroded clearing-
Nearly twenty fearsome-looking void beasts were crouched in the middle of it.
Their bodies were covered in dull, rocklike carapaces. Their heads were shaped like inverted triangles, their mouthparts were sharp, and their six pairs of jointed limbs bristled with barbs. A stinger with a venom sac trailed from each of their tails.
They were the most troublesome pack-dwelling void beasts found in D-rank rifts-
Rock-Armored Venomous Scorpions!
Chapter 12: All right, time to go
Individually, Rock-Armored Venomous Scorpions were above average in strength among first-order void beasts. Their carapaces provided excellent defense, and their stinger attacks were treacherous and difficult to deal with.
More troublesome still were their highly social, pack-dwelling habits.
Once a group reached a certain size, it meant that at least one second-order or higher "leader" had to have emerged among them to bring so many unruly individuals together.
As if to confirm everyone's suspicions, the Rock-Armored Venomous Scorpion at the very center of the clearing, which had been lying on the ground and was a size larger than the others, slowly rose to its feet.
"Crack, crack..."
Its carapace scraped together with a grating sound.
When it stood to its full height, the oppressive presence of its enormous body made many of the students gasp.
It was more than four times the size of an ordinary Rock-Armored Venomous Scorpion, like a moving hill clad in rock armor!
Its carapace was darker, with a faint metallic sheen. The venomous stinger on its tail was as thick as a short spear, and its tip glimmered an ominous, spectral purple.
It wasn't an ordinary second-order beast...
It was a second-order leader that had already reached the upper grade!
Besides it, there were two slightly larger lower-grade second-order venomous scorpions with somewhat darker carapaces, as well as sixteen ordinary first-order ones...
Everyone's expression changed.
They hadn't expected to run into a force like this in their very first battle.
A beast pack with a leader would be especially united. If even one was attacked, the rest would swarm in.
Tactics like pulling the monsters and picking them off one by one simply wouldn't work.
Once they decided to fight, they would have to take on the entire pack at once.
There were twenty people in Class Eight.
Anyone capable of entering Echo Academy had the strength to defeat a first-order void beast alone.
But facing a second-order void beast head-on required the combined strength of several people-
And the second-order beasts in question were specifically lower-grade ones.
If it was a middle-grade or even an upper-grade one...
Everyone's gaze turned to Qiji at once.
Feeling their eyes on him, Qiji shrugged indifferently and stepped out of the crowd.
"I'll take the biggest one. You can handle the rest however you see fit."
The recorders everyone wore transmitted the images and sound back to the academy in real time.
Several teachers in charge of grading couldn't help frowning as they watched the footage from multiple angles.
"Didn't the detection report say it was only a small D-rank rift? But the density and strength of the void beasts in the west district... they're already close to those at the edge of a C-rank rift!"
"And there's even an upper-grade second-order void beast leader..."
"Perhaps the abnormal emotional fluctuations in the surrounding area recently have caused the 'stains' to converge more quickly."
"These are all promising students. If there are serious casualties during the assessment..."
"Should we order them to stop?"
"Let's watch for now. If that boy Qiji really is as strong as the rumors say... perhaps he's worth trusting."
Hearing Qiji volunteer to take on the most difficult leader, the members of Class Eight relaxed, the pressure on them greatly reduced.
Soon, under the direction of several stronger students, the remaining void beasts were quickly "claimed."
Everyone drew their guns and prepared for battle.
Before awakening an offensive Echo, students generally had to rely on firearms as their only effective means of harming void beasts.