Rulers Trial

"Glitch," 

This felt way better than his last life, Hopeful_Boy. After a few seconds of silence, the dark ball started spinning.

[Character creation is complete.] 

The dark ball then passed through his body. He felt a weird sensation, and then a notification popped up.

Ding!

[The construction of the mark of the ruler is complete.]

With that, the entire white room started shining. It became so bright that he lost his vision and blacked out.

The next moment, he opened his eyes only to find himself floating in an empty, dark space full of dull light from the distant stars.

Even though he still had no control over his body, the sight before him was mesmerizing. Millions of lights shine all around him.

In front of that sight, he felt smaller than a speck of dust.

Ding! 

The sound of a notification pulled him out.

[Player Glitch, as the ruler, you need to choose your planet.]

A green window popped in front of him, full of planets.

There were hundreds of planets he could choose from. Not wasting any time, he said plant Nex coordinates, "89. 21. 42. 02."

An image of a planet surrounded by a purple hue appeared on the screen.

As he stared at the planet, a smaller window popped up.

[Name of the planet: Nex

Source: Magic.

Location: Outer edge of the Marcum galaxy.

Slots: 432/1000.]

As he saw the location, it hit him that there was a chance that this planet was in a new area. The universe in Universal Online was expanding, but it was not a uniform expansion.

In his last life, there were cases where new star systems suddenly emerged on the edge of old galaxies.

One time, even an entire new galaxy appeared in between the two old galaxies. This was the reason the edges of the galaxies were so chaotic that no big organization ruled there. 

It was common for every new organization to start in these regions to hide their traces. 

He stopped thinking about the universe. There was no point as he failed to leave his starting planet in his past life, so those were far-away concepts for him.

As he focused on the slots, he blurted out, "Oh, more than half of the slots have already filled up." 

He changed his opinion about this planet. It was clear something was interesting going on on this planet, or this was a recently appeared new planet.

It was rare for these unknown outer planets to have all the slots filled up by players. Usually, Ai would create NPC rulers at the end of trail days to fill up all the leftover slots on planets. But it looked like this time all 1000 rulers would be players.

His eyes widened, as just in front of him, available slots dropped from 432 to 203. 'fck' He wasted no time and said, "Select planet Nex as my starting planet."

Ding!

[Ruler Glitch, you have selected planet Nex, transmitting to the planet in progress. 10. 9. 8... 2.1.0!]

Zap! 

A bright light engulfed Glitch, and the next moment, he felt the hard ground under his feet. He regained control over his body. 

He opened his eyes and found himself standing at the spawn point. A light breeze brushed past him, making him smile.

His eyes continued to dance around the beautiful blue sky and the damp smell of soil, with the light breeze hitting his face. All of this felt real.

This was the hyperrealistic world of Universal Online. The excited voices of the other players around him pulled him out. 

He focused on the multiple players standing around him. Everyone was in basic white shirts and gray pants, along with a white mask on their face, so that no one could distinguish between them. 

All of them were standing in a circle on the empty ground within the plaza of the village. He wasted no time and rushed out of the teleportation circle. At that moment, a notification popped in front of him.

[ 

Rulers quest: 

Star Village welcomes the new set of rules. As a ruler, you have to show your determination to the villagers. 

Explores the area and learns about the three paths, available species, and the source of powers.

Time: 23:58.]

It was a basic quest to gather all the information about the rulers. He did not care much about this quest and said in a low tone, "Status."

A blue status panel popped in front of him.

_______________________________________________________

Name: Glitch

Ruler tier: Group ruler.

Species: –

Path: –

Power: –

Level: 0

Role: None.

Health: 100/100

Available Creatures: xx/100.

Daily summons: xx/1.

State: Healthy. 

Skills: –

______________________________

This was his status. The Universal Online had all the hidden stats, making it a little different from other games. This made the game more realistic.

Even the leveling concept was unique to other games. Most of the things were still empty, but he knew that by the end of the trial, they would be full.

He closed his status and continued to move around the village. He was still not sure how to increase the passing grade of everyone in the gang. 

If things went normally, he was sure that most of those guys would get the lowest F passing grade. A few lucky ones might get an E-passing grade, but nothing beyond that.

At the end of the trial, all the rulers would get five species options, and they had to select one to cultivate. The passing grade of the trial would not only affect the species a ruler would get as their options but also the talent of their species.

From his past life failures, he knew the importance of talent in advancing to the next stage.

He did not want to settle for these low ranks, and he knew that if he gained anything higher than D, then his species would stand out too much.

He was clear that those gangsters were not some buffoons that he could trick easily. The only plausible way that came to his mind was to trigger some rare mass quest that would lead to everyone getting a higher rating. 

If a few of the gang members were to reach a D or C grade, then he could hide even the B and above talents, as distinguishing between higher talents was difficult.