Year 830, Day 29
I finally reached my bottleneck.
No matter how much I cultivate, I am no longer advancing. Worse still, the more I try to progress, the more unstable and fragile my cultivation base becomes.
After all these years, I have barely reached the advanced stage of the divine sea realm, far from being able to break through to the final stage.
Even so, I only have two choices available to me. Either I persist in cultivating and continue progressing to the peak of the divine sea with nearly a 99% chance of exploding, or I find a way to improve my spirit roots.
There's no denying, I prefer the second option.
Even so, if I ever reach 8,000 years old, I will have no choice but to fall back on the first option.
...
Max looked at the sky apprehensively.
It had been more than six hours since the explosions had ceased.
"I can hardly imagine the chaos that was over there. At least we were relatively far from the battlefield."
Since they had been deployed from one of the southern camp while those in the north were carrying out a frontal attack, you could say they had gone completely unnoticed.
However, even over two hundred kilometers away, they could still feel the ground resonate under the explosions, especially during the last two.
This hadn't stopped the team from advancing, though.
Nevertheless, the team was now at a halt since a few mages had started coughing up blood.
Others were not spared either, and several felt nauseous. The cultivators also sensed that there was a problem, but they couldn't put their finger on it.
Only the foundation establishment cultivators didn't feel much.
They had tried everything, but they couldn't discover where the problem was coming from.
However, the healing spells were working, and a few minutes later, the team was back on their feet.
It goes without saying, but the explosions had made them much more cautious and, consequently, much slower.
The journey that was supposed to take less than two hours stretched out to almost six hours.
Currently, they were already about 190 km from the camp.
"Now that we're here, there's no point in staying together," Max thought.
Shortly after, he summoned the ten lieutenants and the other captain.
"Now that we're here, there's no point in staying together," he said. "Since the range of each person's spiritual sense here extends about 500m, we'll split into a single line, one squad every 400m. Captain Killian and I will position ourselves respectively behind the third and eighth squad and can provide reinforcements if ever there is a problem."
The eleven men nodded, and after some tactical discussions, the brief meeting ended.
"Remember, we don't know if the frequencies are secure, so no radio. If the need arises, we'll use communication talismans. Now get to work!"
Again, they nodded and left to join their troops.
To say that Alandal's army's discipline and efficiency was good would be an understatement, and in less than two minutes, the setup was already in place.
Again, they resumed the mission and continued to advance.
The terrain of this world was not at all conducive to discretion, and the mages had to cast several diffraction spells to bend the light around the squads.
This simple rank 2 spell was rather handy, and they only had to expend a little mana to form a thin layer of water around them, which would act as a mirror and reflect the light coming from behind them.
Of course, this spell also had a fatal flaw: it only worked from one side, and the top was not protected either.
So several mages had to cast the spell at the same time to cover the four directions, and either the cultivators used a concealment talisman, or they used other spells to hide from an aerial observer.
Nevertheless, this was part of the basic exercises of the great army, and any squad had already practiced it hundreds of times.
Slowly, the team delved into the area; less than a quarter of an hour later, they had already moved more than five kilometers.
That's when they saw traces of extraterrestrial civilization for the first time.
As the teams continued to advance, the communication talisman fixed on their right arm guard lit up, and shortly after, they regrouped in front of the seventh squad, observing the strange building before them.
It resembled nothing they knew.
Whether in Alandal or in the archives of ancient planar wars, all buildings were in a medieval and traditional style.
Even if the style could vary, they would quickly get used to it after some time.
However, what stood before their eyes was a simple silver metal cube, without any asperities or doors, about 4 meters on each side.
It was hidden in a crack in the volcanic rock, nestled in a hollow in the rocky wall of a volcano.
The more than a hundred people surrounded the strange structure and looked at each other blankly, unable to figure out what to do with it.
Nevertheless, Nate, the second-in-command, quickly realized and took off the satchel he had been carrying over his shoulder for a long time.
He took out a dozen spirit stones and some spiritual materials and analyzed the environment.
A few minutes later, he had made his choice. He controlled the nearly fifteen objects with his spiritual sense and began making strange seals with his hands.
In fact, the seals weren't really necessary but helped guide their consciousness and thoughts more easily while eliminating distracting ideas.
It was far from new, and even mages resorted to such methods.
About ten minutes later, Nate was trembling with all his might as the materials flew in all directions.
Establishing formations wasn't just about placing spiritual items here and there and crossing your fingers that it would work.
Just like when mages wove spell patterns in their minds before casting one, formation masters also used patterns.
They modified an environment using their spiritual energy and made the formation resonate with heaven and earth.
To create a formation, you first had to create a model, a drawing, or something that reproduced nature, deformed it, or controlled it.
In the same way that rules condense under the power of rule runes, heaven and earth also reacted to certain patterns.
But a pattern is, after all, just a pattern. Even a rule rune, without spiritual power, is just a piece of ink on paper.
This is where the most complicated part comes in: you must first find anchors in the model: key points that, like the pillars of a bridge, will be able to support the entire structure of the formation.
The goal of formation masters is to reduce these pillars as much as possible without limiting the formation's power.
After all, the fewer nodes there are, the easier the formation is to establish and control and the harder it is to break because each node becomes more solid.
Then comes the final step: the formation's implementation.
This is undoubtedly the most complicated step because, to truly establish the formation, you must first master the theory and underlying principles perfectly and also have the necessary internal energy to establish the formation.
As previously mentioned, establishing a formation isn't really about placing spiritual items. Even if they're in the right place, nothing will happen most of the time.
To create the formation, you must connect them: create a spiritual bridge that, like a network, will weld the formation's nodes together.
This is also where the knowledge of the formation comes into play. The more a cultivator knows about his formation, the better he understands how it will react with the world and how the nodes will interact.
He will therefore be able to establish the formation more easily and deploy even greater force.
And what Nate was doing at this moment was establishing a rank 4 formation as a pinnacle foundation establishment cultivator.
Needless to say, it was very complicated, but the man had his circumstances.
He was already nearly three hundred years old and didn't have long to live. The only reason he could still go to the battlefield was because of his race, a race designed to fight from birth until death. After all, the red-moon Nagas could fight almost until the day of their natural death.
If he had been a Valyr or novarian, he would probably be in a wheelchair and losing strength day by day.
At the time, without elders to advise him and as one of the first cultivators, he had botched his foundation in the euphoria of his youth, eager to gain immediate rewards without considering the future.
The foundation establishment was therefore his final limit in this life. Failing that, he could only focus on formations, leaving behind neither wife nor children.
Nevertheless, if he said he was the second-best rank 3 formation master, no one, not even the golden core cultivators, would claim to be first.
He had even fully understood the concepts of rank 4 formations, but unfortunately, he lacked the internal energy to design them.
It was only thanks to the war and his special status that he received so many rare resources, allowing him to establish a rank 4 concealment formation, but it wasn't without cost.
Bang
Nearly half an hour later, the naga collapsed on the ground, unconscious.
At the same time, all the formation's nodes began to shine and then slowly disappeared from their vision, while from the outside, the entire team vanished.
...
"Sir, I have a complaint to make!" A student rushed with his real body towards the shuttle, his face twisted with hatred.
"Speak, Mr. Soter, where is the problem?" Mr. Idder calmly said.
"Sir, while I was in command of the allied armies in Plan 82, student Adams from Ordinary Class 3 cowardly used his incarnation to launch a sneak attack on my troops, killing my entire invasion army." The more he spoke, the angrier he became.
Mr. Idder remained impassive and looked at him with a calm gaze.
"I demand that the school stand up for me; I have suffered heavy losses!"
Nevertheless, Mr. Idder still didn't react. Instead, he used his will to make a small pearl appear between the two of them.
"Mr. Soter, here is a recording pearl of your planar invasion." As he began to speak, Michael Soter suddenly felt a shiver run down his spine.
At the same time, the teacher activated the pearl, and several scenes unfolded successively.
With each passing scene, the young man's face grew paler and paler.
Two minutes later, the video stopped, and his complexion was completely livid, while his eyes were haggard.
"I don't know how you were raised, Mr. Soter, and don't start telling me your life story because, frankly, I don't give a damn. Nevertheless, there are rules to follow here. Initially, I would have waited until the end of the event to discuss your penalty, but since you came, we might as well do it now." The professor's unshaven face became as sharp as razors as he fixed the young man with a murderous look.
"Firstly, you used your believers to put pressure on those of other students. Secondly, you used them as cannon fodder and killed several without any apparent reason. Thirdly, you lied to your homeroom teacher, omitting your actions, and worse still, slandering your classmate who was in a state of perfect self-defense."
Each argument left the young man's mind more distressed than the previous one. If he had known, he would never have come here to aggravate his case.
Unfortunately for him, there is no remedy for regret.
"For the first two points, there is a protocol that we will follow right now, namely that you will have to reimburse double the losses of each student. The school will provide them with the corresponding divine pearls upon our return to Earth, and we will send you the bill. You will have one Earth month to pay, or we will abolish your cultivation and requisition your divine domain."
Michael nearly fainted. This was essentially destroying his life. Requisitioning his divine domain was just a nice way of saying they were going to steal it and sever his link with it, cutting off his path to divinity.
As for abolishing his cultivation, as an astral mage, that amounted to destroying his spiritual sea. In the worst-case scenario, he would die directly, and at best, he would become a vegetable.
However, before he could say anything, the professor spoke again.
"As for the third and final point, you will have to compensate student Adams tenfold, and all your contribution points will be given to him as compensation. Furthermore, you are no longer allowed to participate in this war, and you will be relegated from Elite Class 1 to Ordinary Class 1."
Mr. Idder's words were like thunderclaps in his ears.
"But I —"
"NO BUTS!" roared Mr. Idder. As he spoke, a terrifying pressure descended upon the young man.
It wasn't that of a demigod; it was something far more terrifying, that of an immortal existence that even true gods wouldn't dare to mess with.
"If your father has any issues with this, he can come to see me directly."
Even a true god would be paralyzed right now, not to mention a simple rank 8 existence, trembling like a leaf.
At least the professor had gone easy on him; otherwise, he could have erased his consciousness with his mere aura.
...
"Haaa, what a fiasco!" said Mr. Idder a few minutes later as he watched the young man still trembling leave.
"Honestly, Frank, it's absurd to conduct this kind of test now. The second and third years still make sense, but the first years are far from being ready for a real conflict." The professor couldn't help but sigh.
Fundamentally, each second year had at least one rank 4 believer, while many had ranks 5 and 6.
The best third years even had superior existences in their ranks, allowing them to take a firm position in the inner worlds between natives and invaders.
However, this was far from being the case in the outer worlds.
"Look at this," he said, sweeping the Polaris realm with his spiritual sense. "Soter isn't even an isolated case; there are several in the elite class who think they can do anything. I sense it's going to be a bloodbath upon our return."
Despite his deep cultivation, he couldn't help but sigh.
"You know very well I can't do anything about it, Eric." The vice principal suddenly appeared by his side. "The orders come from above, and the federation hasn't skimped on the rewards either. As long as they don't suffer too heavy losses and don't mess around too much, all the students will improve by leaps and bounds."
Mr. Idder couldn't help but furrow his brows.
"I know, but I still think it's too early for most of them. Apart from Adler, Williams, and Levandovski's teams, most first years have more internal conflicts than external ones."
The vice principal nodded gravely but could only sigh.
"You know, Eric, no matter how much the higher-ups try to hide it, it's clear something happened on the front lines. And it must be seriously grave for them to be willing to offer such good rewards to first years. Our job in all this is to prepare these kids as best as we can so they are ready to face the storm that's coming. That's all we can do!"