"School... I kind of missed it." On the day of the monthly exam, Luo Yu arrived at the gates of Mirror Moon High School in his battle attire: an orca-patterned short-sleeved shirt and shorts under a research coat.
As Luo Yu understood it, Mirror Moon High School had 512 freshmen this year, but only twenty would be chosen as freshman representatives to take the stage at the Mirror Moon Celebration and show their abilities before the major fleets and guardian deities.
That made it quite difficult for orphans like Bing Liang and his friends to rank in the top twenty among the freshmen. Even if Teacher Wang gave them extra coaching, what good student didn't have someone giving them extra coaching?
"Scholar Luo Yu, over here!" Teacher Wang had been waiting for Luo Yu at the school gates since early morning, a bag of breakfast in hand.
"Crab roe soup dumplings and soy milk. Have them while they're hot."
"Thanks." Luo Yu really hadn't eaten breakfast. This damn high school exam started absurdly early, kicking off at six in the morning. Even the Honey Water Bees at home had it better than the students here.
Teacher Wang chuckled. "I'll take you in now."
The two took a staff passage and arrived early at the stands overlooking the sports field. Calling it a sports field was a stretch; it looked more like a swimming complex, with the standard soccer pitch replaced by pools that were better suited to aquatic mutant beasts.
"What form does the monthly exam take? Do the students fight each other?" Luo Yu asked, popping soup dumplings into his mouth one after another.
"No." Wang Ze shook his head. "They fight 'zombie sea beasts,' and the teachers score them."
"Fight zombie sea beasts?" Luo Yu was slightly taken aback. "That's going all out. Is this a rehearsal for the Mirror Moon Celebration?"
At the Mirror Moon Celebration, the new generation of beast tamers demonstrated their abilities by fighting captured zombie sea beasts to the death, showing that they were ready to stand on their own.
"Zombie sea beasts have been very active lately, and the island has captured a lot of them. We might as well use them to give these students some exposure," Wang Ze said with a smile.
Before long, more and more people arrived. The students filed in one by one and sat in their assigned places as if attending a sports meet.
"Why hasn't it started? It's time." Luo Yu's eyesight had been enhanced, and he had already spotted Bing Liang and the others in the crowd.
"The leaders haven't arrived yet." Wang Ze sounded helpless.
At last, after another few minutes, the school leaders walked up to the podium with Director Yu Lei at their center. Education, medicine, agriculture, trade... Director Yu Lei had a hand in everything, so it was no wonder he always looked half-asleep whenever Luo Yu saw him.
To Luo Yu's relief, none of the leaders made a long-winded speech at this freshman monthly exam. The school leaders merely buttered up Director Yu Lei, and the exam soon began.
"About half the students opted out of the combat assessment... They're planning to settle for the basic score," Wang Ze said. "Xiaoyu was going to opt out too. After all, her contracted beast is a Wind-Entwining Worm, which has practically no combat ability in the early stages. But now that it's learned an ice-type ability, it might put on a dazzling performance."
Luo Yu understood. Not everyone wanted to be a combatant, after all. Some students wanted to live a peaceful life on the island, and they might have contracted work-type pet beasts instead.
It was asking a bit much to make work-type pet beasts face zombie sea beasts.
Of course, although the island respected individual choices, combat ability remained the most important criterion for selecting talent and carried the greatest weight.
Soon, the exam began. Luo Yu could already see a teacher wheeling an iron cage onto the main field.
The zombie beast inside the cage had dark, rotting skin, swollen and twisted limbs, and no visible pupils. Its tongue was covered in spikes, and the drool flowing from its mouth corroded the ground. It was so disgusting that many students felt like throwing up at the mere sight of it.
The lower a zombie sea beast's level, the uglier it was.
"A zombie frog..." The sight brought back some unpleasant memories for Luo Yu.
Then...
[Species]: Licker [Attribute]: Virus [Species rank]: Low-Rank Ordinary Species [Life level]: Level 5 [Species ability]: Tongue Thorn [Individual talent]: Aberrant Body (high-level talent. Sends its movements into a frenzy and allows it to ignore pain. It can only be completely killed by destroying its nerve center.)
The Eye of Data classified the zombie sea frog as virus-type. It also had a species rank and life level. Most importantly, a high-level talent seemed to be standard for zombie beasts.
What was more, there was no possibility of the talent being overlooked; it was a blatantly obvious, manifested talent ability.
"I heard more than a thousand zombie frogs tried to land on the island some time ago. Some of them were captured," Wang Ze said.
"This thing looks pretty strong." Luo Yu broke into a cold sweat for the students.
The student with exam number one took the field.
His pet beast was a level-five Thunderbolt Shrimp, a mid-rank ordinary species.
It was Luo Yu's favorite of the mid-rank species sold on the island, with an electrical discharge ability.
As the assessment began, the zombie frog's cage was opened, and it charged out like a madman.
This was probably the student's first time facing a zombie sea beast. He was visibly flustered and kept ordering the Thunderbolt Shrimp to discharge electricity from a distance, but...
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!!!
With its Aberrant Body talent in full effect, the Licker was frankly outrageous. It moved with terrifying speed, easily dodging every attack. It leaped more than ten meters into the air in a single bound, radiating an oppressive presence. High above, it opened its mouth and shot out a tongue over ten meters long like a spear!
Bang!!!
The Thunderbolt Shrimp was knocked straight over and sent tumbling several times.
However, the electricity covering the Thunderbolt Shrimp also traveled up the tongue and shocked the zombie frog senseless, sending it plummeting from the air.
The attack had no obvious effect, though. It quickly got back up and this time attacked the student himself. While the Thunderbolt Shrimp was still righting itself, the beast tamer was already in danger!!!
Just as the zombie frog's tongue was about to strike the student, the Water Arrow Sparrow belonging to the teacher responsible for releasing the zombie frog instantly spat out a water arrow and blew its head apart.
"Number two." A new cage was wheeled onto the field, and the second examinee was told to get ready.
The very first round had made most of the students nervous. The Thunderbolt Shrimp was considered a fairly strong pet beast, yet it had fared so badly against a zombie?
"Looks like dealing with zombie beasts is still too difficult for these freshmen..." a vice principal said from the podium. "After all, the ferocity of aberrant corpse beasts... is something even many of nature's top predators lack."
"Most importantly, they ignore pain, which makes ordinary attacks useless. These students lack experience, so hitting a vital spot isn't easy."
"But it's also because this student's Thunderbolt Shrimp hasn't been trained particularly well. Its discharges are far too slow. It's my first time seeing such slow discharges... They're like a squirt gun... Its development isn't up to scratch."
The school leaders chimed in one after another, watching Director Yu Lei's expression.
"In the future, we can find more zombie beasts for these students to practice on," Yu Lei said.
After that, the zombie sea frogs, unfazed by pain, demonstrated an overwhelming ability to suppress their opponents.
After some time, only one top student who had contracted an upper-rank species had managed to kill a zombie frog.
"These students..." Luo Yu scratched his cheek. Out of ten people, it would be good if even one could discover a pet beast's individual talent.
"There's nothing to be done. At the same level, zombie beasts are simply stronger in combat. Without experience, even someone with a slightly higher level than a zombie beast can end up in danger," Wang Ze said helplessly beside him. He wasn't worried about his own three students, though. He had already seen how formidable Luo Yu had trained them to be.
"Number thirty-six."
Before long, it was finally the trio's turn to take the field. The first was Mi Xiaoyu.
"Xiaoyu...?" The teachers and students who knew Mi Xiaoyu were all startled. They hadn't expected her to sign up for the exam too. Hadn't the girl contracted a Wind-Entwining Worm?!
Given the Wind-Entwining Worm's strength, wouldn't the Licker poke its body full of holes in an instant?
The Wind Entwining skill was much weaker than the Thunderbolt Shrimp's electrical discharge. The discharge could travel along the tongue and shock the zombie frog, but the few scratches Wind Entwining caused would probably be ignored outright.
At least the invigilating teacher was watching, so she wouldn't be in any real danger...
The next moment, the zombie frog was released, and the battle began. The new zombie frog was just as frenzied and nimble as the last. It immediately targeted the larger opponent, Mi Xiaoyu herself.
A girl. She smelled good. Tasty.
Whoosh!!!
It bounced rapidly around the field, appearing in a different spot every moment and making itself extremely difficult to pin down. But the next scene stunned every teacher and student present.
Mi Xiaoyu's Wind-Entwining Worm seemed to have foreseen the zombie frog's trajectory. Its senses were exceptionally keen, and its strength was astonishing!
It slapped its tail down and sprang up, kicking up dust as it leaped several meters into the air to intercept the zombie frog!!!
"Huh?"
Many people who had contracted Wind-Entwining Worms were stunned. It was their first time seeing one jump so high, or seeing one kick up dust from the ground with a slap. What the hell kind of strength was that...?
What came next was even more absurd. The Wind-Entwining Worm activated its Wind Entwining ability at the same time, but the wind it gathered seemed a little different. Instead of being invisible and colorless, the whirlwind was a deep blue, filled with drifting ice crystals!!!
Whoosh!!!
Icy wind swirled outward from the Wind-Entwining Worm. The whirlwind, which should only have tickled the zombie frog and left a few scratches, froze its entire body. In a single exchange, the zombie frog became a block of ice and fell toward the ground!!
An ice-type ability? This Wind-Entwining Worm had actually upgraded its species skill into an ice-type one?!!
Realizing this, many teachers and students froze. Mi Xiaoyu had been a nobody before, utterly unremarkable, but her performance now...
"Who is that girl?" Director Yu Lei's eyes lit up on the podium, and he asked the question instinctively.
A genius! Precise control over the situation, monstrous jumping strength, and it had even learned an ice-type ability outside its species attribute. This Wind-Entwining Worm had been raised to perfection!!
"Well..." The school leaders searched their memories of outstanding students and confirmed that Mi Xiaoyu was just an ordinary student. How had an ordinary student suddenly become so formidable?
"Heh, not a bad showing."
Standing in the stands, Luo Yu was fairly pleased with the little worm's performance. He had put the most care into it. Its body was so small that he was genuinely afraid a single injection might kill it on the spot. Each time, he first had to use an ordinary syringe to extract the Honey Water Bee's venom, then inject it with a finer tool. Of course, this also meant that its enhancement was the weakest of the trio's pet beasts; it wasn't as effective as being strengthened by the original needle or stinger.
After Mi Xiaoyu left the field, her homeroom teacher came over. "Xiaoyu, how did you suddenly become so capable? Did Teacher Wang help train you? Come with me. The director wants a word with you. An opportunity like this doesn't come around often... Wait, why is your face so swollen?!"
"Ah... It's nothing... I've got some internal heat. The swelling will go down in a couple of days." Mi Xiaoyu was startled, then quickly nodded and followed her homeroom teacher to Director Yu Lei.
Director Yu Lei had now learned about Mi Xiaoyu's background and knew that a Teacher Wang coached her outside school. He couldn't help smiling. "Xiaoyu, you've raised your pet beast very well. Did a schoolteacher help you develop that ice-type ability?"
The other school leaders were also proud. Look, the school's teaching had produced results too!
Mi Xiaoyu hurriedly said, "No, Teacher Luo Yu from my extracurricular tutoring class taught me..."
Yu Lei: ?
The school leaders' expressions changed. This was bad; someone was coming for the school's education funding!
A recommendation for a friend's book. It's a distinctive nation-as-one story, with an authorial style unlike any other on Qidian. If you're interested, check out "Reporting to the Motherland, I've Transmigrated!"