NOVEL NEXT WORLD Chapter 165 - Training Exercise 13
“Classmate Xi has a quick mind. She thought of using the spatial device and stones to kill the beasts right after landing on Liva Star. It’s like having weapons at hand,” Instructor Li remarked.
“With her mental strength, even a small piece of wood could become a deadly weapon, let alone stones. Among the twenty-odd teams, only she could crush a level-seven beast with a large rock,” Instructor Shan said with a hint of pride.
Shan’s words were not just self-praise for his student; it is widely acknowledged that those with mental abilities above level six possess formidable mental strength.
Moreover, their command department excels at using the environment to develop strategies rather than focusing solely on individual combat power. The members of the Starlight Team also thought of using stones to kill beasts on the very first day they landed on Liva Star.
If only they had been as fortunate as the Phantom Team, they wouldn’t still be struggling to find a water source and relying on drinking beast blood to stay hydrated.
Because of the lack of sufficient drinking water, the members of the Starlight Team were reluctant to eat much roasted beast meat, managing to stay half-full each day. Coupled with the pressure of needing to hurry, their spirits were noticeably low.
In contrast, the members of the Phantom Team had enough drinking water, deliciously roasted beast meat, and beast blood soup cooked to replenish their salt intake.
The Phantom Team was able to eat their fill each day, their spirits high, which made them appear significantly more energetic than the members of the Starlight Team.
It’s important to note that, due to their journey, both teams were exerting considerable physical effort daily. Without access to energy supplements and insufficient rest to recover, the energy derived from beast meat became crucial.
If this situation continued, the Starlight Team would experience much less improvement in their cultivation compared to the Phantom Team during this training.
“Incredible! Classmate Xi’s sound attack technique can actually affect level-seven beasts, leaving level-five and six beasts in a daze. How long has she been at Imperial Capital University?” Instructor Li, unaware of Instructor Shan’s concerns for the Starlight Team, continued to express his amazement.
“She has an exceptional talent for learning, with outstanding comprehension skills. She picks up everything quickly, and combined with the advantages of being a mental power user, even with her dual disciplines, her learning speed is still faster than others,” Instructor Shan said with a sense of pride, noting that such talent couldn’t be compared to ordinary students.
Seeing Instructor Shan’s smug expression, Instructor Li, secretly regretting that the Combat Department missed out on such a genius, decided he didn’t want to talk to him anymore.
However, less than a minute after making that decision, Instructor Li couldn’t hold back: “The impact force when hitting the level-seven beast was much greater than the weight of the rock itself. Classmate Xi’s mental strength must exceed that of a level-six user.”
“Don’t forget that she also has mid-level warrior cultivation; combining her martial prowess with her mental strength to apply such pressure is normal,” Instructor Shan said.
“After this battle, the Phantom Team’s points will temporarily lead over the other teams,” Instructor Li remarked, watching as the Phantom Team members began to clean up the battlefield.
They had initially thought that the Phantom Team would lose several members due to this wave of smaller beasts. They were surprised that the team leader could simultaneously suppress higher-level beasts, giving the Phantom Team time to eliminate over a hundred beasts in less than an hour.
In this battle, not only was no one from the Phantom Team eliminated, but they also killed the most beasts among all the teams.
“The most abundant resources on Liva Star are these rocks, big and small. Yet, less than half of the teams thought to use rocks to crush the beasts. What are they thinking?” Instructor Li commented.
“You know that students from the Arts, Healing, and Agriculture departments focus on non-combat training, so it’s not surprising they didn’t come up with that idea. You can’t expect students from these departments to have the same combat awareness as those from the Combat Department,” Instructor Shan fairly replied, speaking from experience.
It’s inherently unfair to have students who aren’t starting from the same line compete together—one group starting behind and running slowly, while another starts ahead and is already running fast.
However, this is a training exercise organized by the school, meant to help them grow, and their performance won’t be recorded in their files, so the fairness of the competition doesn’t really matter.
Instructor Li knows this, but as a combat instructor, he often measures students’ excellence based on their combat power.
The Sunfire Team and the Starlight Team from the Combat Department were the second and third groups to think of using rocks as weapons.
With weapons in hand, and with both teams having sixth-level cultivators, they were able to decisively deal with the incoming wave of beasts. As a result, these two teams ranked third and fourth in points.
Ranking second was the first team from the Superpower Department.
Although this team lacked sixth-level cultivators, all of its members were at least fifth-level, and among the eight members, five had different elemental abilities.
In this survival exercise in a resource-scarce environment, the elementalists had a significant advantage.
Water elementalists could condense water from the air, making it easier for them to find water sources. Both teams from the Superpower Department had no trouble locating water.
Additionally, both the first and second Superpower teams had a metal elemental user, and within just two days, everyone in the first team had acquired a weapon.
Like the Phantom Team, their ability to eliminate so many beasts without losing any members was largely due to their team leader being an elemental user.
Teams that don’t know how to utilize the resources at hand are at a disadvantage; facing one or two beasts barehanded might be manageable, but confronting a whole group is very dangerous.
So far, more than a dozen teams have lost members to varying degrees, with the second team from the Agriculture Department left with only their captain. It’s uncertain how long that captain can hold on.
While the Phantom Team was quickly leaving the battlefield, despite their exhaustion, they managed to keep moving. Fortunately, they departed in time. The two instructors observed through the surveillance video that another group of over forty beasts was charging toward them, likely to arrive in just a few minutes.
“Student Xi is quite thoughtful to leave behind some beast corpses,” Instructor Li remarked.
Without those corpses to divert the attention of the mutated beasts, the Phantom Team would surely be pursued by that pack.
“I think the beasts are acting strangely. When we came to survey this planet last month, we didn’t see such large groups, and now there’s even a seventh-level beast,” Instructor Shan noted with concern.
Though his cultivation level isn’t as high as Instructor Li’s, Instructor Shan is more sensitive to various types of information and excels at detailed analysis.
Hearing this, Instructor Li took it seriously and replied, “Then analyze all the information you have. If there really is a problem, report it to the vice-principal as soon as possible.”