Contest

Lewis placed divine species on one side of the world to compete with each other and prevent them from disrupting others too much. 

Far from water, in the forests, another group of divine species has already advanced and evolved into shapes suitable for the environment. 

Sooner or later, they come into contact with the water people. However, the encounter will likely be peaceful.

...

In a rank 12 world owned by the Great Dream civilization, Far from the world Lewis created, Dyer was looking at a list of tasks.

At first, he was only a contractor, completing tasks and getting paid. However, he eventually joined them after a few million years of work. 

After staying with them for over a billion years, he is now considered a lower-ranking researcher.

Great Dream civilization cannot be underestimated. 

It has only one universal law but is one of the first civilizations ever; it has been around since very close to the beginning. 

How long has it been since the beginning of the universe? It has been so long that mortals cannot even imagine. 

All this time, Great Dream has been here; how many rank 10s and 11s did it collect? The number is higher than even some rank 13 civilizations.

Therefore, Dyer could only be a lower researcher even with rank 11 and 1000 complete laws. 

Still, as a researcher who is not officially approved, he cannot work for Great Dream. He can only use a loophole and take long-term research tasks. 

The reason is the same as before: the bureaucracy of the Great Dream is just way too much. 

The mortal board members and officials won't let any new immortal get officially confirmed. 

As a result, Dyer is now mostly idle, as the research task is not full-time; if he wants other tasks to earn money, he can take tasks from the task center like everyone else. 

Great Dream cannot order him to do anything; even though he joined it, he is not yet confirmed.

He is somewhere in the gray zone.

After looking at the screen for a while, he sighed and closed it. 

All were very low-paying; no wonder nobody bothered taking them. Still, some good tasks occasionally appear, which is why Dyer still bothers to look at the task center. 

He stood up, and a few male maids came and helped him get dressed. 

These male maids were only maids; he had no relations with them. Still, he found male maids pleasing to the eyes, so he hired them long ago. They are mostly rank 1 knights, with some rank 2s and 3s. He won't hire rank 9s as maids; that's wasteful and expensive; rank 1s can do the job.

After getting ready, he left his luxurious mansion in official clothes. He looked around. The sky was blue, with one sun and one moon. 

"I like it today!" he smiled while stretching. 

The sky color and the number of moons and suns change daily; all are cosmetic, with nothing deep behind them. 

In some worlds, the moon and sun have significant meaning behind them, but not here. Here, they are all just for looks.

He started strolling to the transportation location. 

Here is Dream City, the capital of the Great Dream civilization, where trillions of people live. 

This district is called the Immortal District, inhabited only by immortals; it's home to more than ten billion immortals, which means rank 10 and above. One must note that this is just one city, comprising a tiny percentage of the population. One can only imagine how many immortals Great Dream has. 

But the number of rank 10s and 11s are only paper among rank 12s, so they don't really add that much to Great Dream's combat power.

At most, they can restrain and stop a few rank 11s with rank 12 bodies; as for fighting rank 12 ... a rank 12 can kill them all with one look.

Dyer reached the transport area. 

There are a few options: teleportation, an airship, or a ground carrier. 

Dyer chose the ground carrier and waited for a few seconds. Then, a hovering square-shaped carrier the size of a two-story building arrived. 

Its door opened, and a few servants came bowing. Dyer nodded and went in. 

The research task is part-time, with 120 days of work per year.

Dyer preferred it to be full-time, but the laws are clear; only officially confirmed immortals can be hired full-time.

The carrier hovered and started moving. It didn't fly; it remained as close to the ground as possible; after all, it's not an airship, so it's not supposed to fly.

Dream City had no tall buildings; everything was built in the basement. 

Basements thousands and even millions of floors deep are not uncommon. Most mortals live in dense basements hundreds of millions of floors deep. Still, mortals in this city are wealthy and fortunate; they live like kings compared to most other mortals.

After a while, the ground carrier stopped. 

Dyer, reading a book with glasses on, looked and nodded.

"Let's go!" he thought excitedly. 

When Lewis left him, he lost his motivation to advance, but he steeled himself again after a few million years.

Masteries are crucial to reaching rank 12. 

Dyer had no masteries before, but now, he has mastery of the formation concept of quasi-grandmaster! 

In only a billion years, he reached from blank to formation quasi-grandmaster! It shows how talented he is!

This place is the Formation Research Center. Here, he can study the formations, learn, and enrich the Great Dream library. 

Great Dream has a terrifyingly massive library of nearly every concept. The formation library alone has enough material that a rank 11 can read for billions of years without reaching it all. 

Dyer both reads and writes. 

The reason he reached the quasi-grandmaster level lies in both his talent and this massive library.

There are a few professors with Grandmaster and quasi-great-grandmaster status, too, who come and lecture once in a while.

There is even a quasi-supreme grandmaster of formations in the capital; she is called Honey Formation Master. It's unimaginable that a rank 11 managed to reach these levels. 

But it does make sense; Honey Formation Master has been around since the beginnings of the universe!

Dyer went in and started his research on an incomplete rank 12 formation called 'Space Disturbance.' Only studying complex rank 11 and incomplete rank 12 formations can help at his level. 

He chose to study the latter because he could also learn about universal laws.

...

Lana is sitting in her palace with a few subjects kneeling before her.

"Your Majesty, the contest is about to end!" A handsome man who looked like the prime minister spoke.

"Yes, Your Majesty! It's time to make an appearance!" another, even more handsome young man spoke.

Lana smiled and nodded. 

This time, she chose the role of a queen looking for a husband. She set up a contest for the best shooter. As for why she chose shooting, it's because she had already tried swordsmanship, horsemanship, martial arts, etc. 

At the end of every cycle, she erased the memories of these poor mortals and caused them to forget, then did it all over again.

"Good, let's go!" she said with a smile.

...

In a large arena with millions watching, ten men were standing in separate places with bows in their hands. 

Even though this contest is in a modern world, the competition is about shooting with a bow. Lana had already done shooting with guns before.

"Her Majesty has arrived," someone announced, and everyone went quiet and bowed. 

Adam bowed along with everyone else. 

He is not a young man. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world, 70 years old. Still, his bow skills were good enough, leading him to the finals.

Soon, the match began. 

In the first round, everyone got the center.

In the second round, everyone got the center again. 

In the third round, everyone got the center again.

The distance increased substantially in the fourth round.

It was still within a reachable distance, so it wouldn't be a strength contest. 

In the fourth round, someone missed and scored only 90 points, leading to his elimination.

At the end of every round, the one who gets the lowest points loses. 

Hitting the center gives 100 points; the further away from the center, the lower the score.

Each round is one shot, so effectively, anyone who misses the center even once loses. 

In the next round, two people missed, both receiving 90 points. 

In this situation, another individual contest took place between those two.

After three shots, one missed the center twice, while another missed it once. The one who missed twice was eliminated, and the one who only missed once returned to the match. 

The contest continued.

In the sixth round, everyone performed flawlessly. 

The targets started moving rapidly in the seventh round, and wind was introduced. 

The wind had a constant intensity throughout, generated by advanced technology specifically made for this match with great care.

Adam felt the wind's intensity and gathered his maximum concentration. The referee shouted and opened the round. 

All shot, and all, except Adam, missed. 

"I won!" he felt unbelievable! Even though he is a fantastic shooter, he is not as good as he was in his youth; to think he could win even with so many talented youngsters ...

He should be fortunate! It must be his lucky day!

The laws stipulate that only one person with the lowest mark would be eliminated at the end of each round. But there is an exception. 

If only one person gets the center, then that person directly wins. Everyone else missed the center, and only Adam hit it, so he won while the others lost. 

It was obvious from their faces how sad they were, with a few barely holding back tears.

Still, with the queen watching, all behaved respectfully. They received a few prizes prepared and left. 

Some came and guided Adam to a podium. Everyone was cheering for him, and cameras focused on him. 

People stopped chanting, waiting for him to speak.

"Ahem, when I joined this contest, I did it as a sign of loyalty to Her Majesty. Her Majesty deserves the best and most experienced husband! It would have been a shame if a youth with only bowing skills were to win. That's why I, with my skills in …"

His speech ended after a few minutes. 

He didn't prepare any, so he only spoke nonsense. 

Most people listening felt him to be narcissistic, someone who values himself too highly. Still, they cheered and admired him.

...

Adam looked at the door. 

That is the room the queen is in. 

To be honest, he didn't expect it to be so abrupt; he didn't even talk to the queen, and they had already brought him for 'conceiving a child.' 

A few minutes later, a servant pointed to the door. 

In thin clothes, Adam swallowed and went before the door, opened it, and entered.

What greeted him was what he expected: a naked, smiling woman beautiful beyond imagination. 

She was so flawless she looked fake, like one of those artificial photos. 

He felt unable to speak, maybe from joy or surprise. 

Still, he readied himself and wanted to cough. 

But he couldn't even cough. 

He tried to smile, but he couldn't! 

Couldn't even smile? 

He tried to bring his hand up to wave. 

But he couldn't! 

Wait, he couldn't move his hand? Something is wrong! He tried to move away but fell to the ground! He was paralyzed!

Suddenly, the adorable woman just now turned into a giant, meters-long creature with gray skin, and horns, like a demon in those paintings! 

"No! What…" his mind went blank; he couldn't comprehend what just happened!

It must be a dream! Right, wake up!

Unfortunately for him, all were real.

Lana sat on him and did unimaginable things to him that can't be described here because of their extent of cruelty. 

One sentence. 

She ate one of his lower body organs, literally! 

He felt unimaginable pain but couldn't even die. Lana wouldn't let him pass out or bleed to death. 

After a few hours of suffering, he finally was allowed to die! 

"It's so fun! I never can get enough of it!" Lana laughed. She was covered in blood, laughing. 

One of the servants came in and screamed. These servants are ordinary people. 

More came in, and all began to tremble in fear, not even daring to run. Some peed in their pants. 

"Let's do a painting contest next time! I want an artist as my 'husband,'" she thought. Then, she snapped her fingers. 

As the creator of this world, she can easily manipulate the time. 

Everything changed and returned to how it had been a few years before. 

All the blood, the screaming servants, and the corpse disappeared. 

Then, she changed her looks to an unbelievably beautiful woman and went to announce a new painting contest. 

She likes to do a lot of build-up, hyping things up, only to ruin it in the final moment. 

The contest participants would expect a perfect night and life in luxury, work for it for years, win by defeating billions, and, in the end, die in fright.

She feels this scenario is so amusing! It makes her prey much more delicious.

Rachel's incarnation present watched all this emotionlessly. 

These days, she rarely talks to Lana. She only produces the one rank 11 pill, and that's it. 

As for all this evil, she won't care one bit. Her host, Lana, enjoys it, and that's enough justification.