18. End of Protection Period, first contact with Virtual Reality

Another 2 months passed in the blink of an eye. Long Yin kept accumulating her cultivation at the peak of second stage and currently she felt she was nearing the point where a good battle would let her reach 3rd stage of Core Formation. The rest of the class wasn't idle either. Aside from Yue Yan, who, as Yin predicted, was facing an enormous bottleneck due to exhausting his potential, the rest of the class 1-E students advanced 1 stage on average. Long Tian was currently facing bottleneck of Foundation Establishment stage five, while both Chen Hao and Rou You were currently at early stage nine of Foundation Establishment.

Today's combat class was different that usual, as the class was led to a gigantic room filled with chairs connected to computer equipment. They were welcomed by a red-haired man looking to be in his thirties who was wearing a dirty, white tank top and torn jeans that gave him the classic "car mechanic" look. Before the excited students could start talking he introduced himself:

- Hello everyone, I'm Teacher Zhao. As the Headmaster finished scouting your skill I'll be taking over most of the combat classes. This change also means that your protection period is about to run out. From this day onwards you'll be added onto school rankings and you might get challenged by upper years. Your place in rankings directly relates to resources you'll be recieving. The room we're in right now is the VR Arena. Once per month instead of training with each other you'll be sparring in VR. Now, everyone, please take a seat and put on your VR devices, the class will continue once you all load in.

The VR devices were comfy seats with a VR headset in the form of a tiara that you put on your head. Long Yin took her seat and put on her headset. After activating the headset blinked green, then Long Yin felt wightless and only saw darkness. A few second later she opened her eyes and saw that she was now standing on a giant plaza in what looked like an ancient cultivation sect, if you ignored the gigantic "#1 Foundation Establishment High" sign over the entrance to main pavillon. On the outskirts of plaza she could see some upperclassmen observing the newly arriving freshmen. As the class finished loading in Teacher Zhao once again started talking:

- Welcome to our VR training hub. There are three objects of intrest you'll find here. Behind me is the Main Pavillon. There you'll find Mission Board, Exchange Center and Mission Office. The Board contains missions from other students and teachers that will reward you with merit points. In Exchange Center you can exchange your merits for cultivation resources that will get delivered to your dorm. In Mission Office you can register your requests for Mission Board or turn in completed missions. Don't expect too much, most missions are requests for help with studying, group project or requests to clean school facilities. To the left you can see the Trial Tower. It is a combat trial that will reward you merits based on your performance. It's also used to give you your initial school ranking. It is mandatory to take the trial every month, if you improve you'll recieve more merits, otherwise you won't gain anything. Lastly, to the right is the Combat Arena. There you can choose to either do Casual spars for some combat experience or Ranked matches to improve your school rank. There are five thousand students studying here. Ranks 3000-5000 give you one merit per month. Ranks 2000-2999 give you two merits per month. Ranks 1000-1999 give you five merits per month. Ranks 501-999 give you ten merits per month. Entering top 500 gives you twenty merits per month. Top 300 is fifty merits. Top 100 is hundred merits. Top 50 gets 1 day of Golden Core Qi Gathering Room per month in addition to previous reward. Top 20 gets 200 merits and 3 days in Golden Core Room per month. Top 10 get a cultivation supplement every 6 months. Top 3 get respectively 5, 8 and 10 days in Golden Core Room and 500 merits a month and a top-grade supplement every 6 months. First Place gets a Spiritual Crystal every two months.

You might wonder, with Elite class being 30 people how were there 5000 students? The answer was simple, the Elite class was just that, elite. In regular class there were usually around one hundred students, with twelve classes per year, averaging 1250 students per year. Regular class recieved no guidance from expert teachers and had to do additional self-study if they wanted to improve above basic curriculum level. They were there just to fill government's quotas while the Elite class was where all school's resources were focused. Despite that #1 High's recruitment lists were always overfilled, with people hoping to get to Elite class, which showed just how prestigious it was.

The students immediately started a commotion. The top rewards were really amazing, while lower ranks felt like getting dregs. Seeing that weaker students felt they were being treated unfairly Teacher Zhao decit to explain the value of merits:

- You should stop complaining. The school isn't heartless and prices are fair. For 10 merits you can buy one day of access to Golden Core Room. That means even the weakest students are guaranteed at least one breakthrough per year. Cultivation supplements start from 50 merits upwards depending on their strength. You can even exchange for Spiritual Crystals, though their prices are in tens of thousands merits range.

- That is everything I have to say about the VR facilities. Now it is time for your attempts at Trial Tower. Please follow me there.

Upon hearing "Trial Tower" a commotion erupted among the upperclasman.

- You guys heard that? The firsties are about to start their Trials. Let's call others and see if there are any monsters among freshman.

- Sure I'll give them a call. I wonder if anyone from Ten Overlords will be spectating.

- Hmph, wishful thinking. Do you think experts like that are so free to watch freshman playing around? They are all trying to breakthrough before Galactic University exams.

The commotion continued as they arrived before Trial Tower. Long Yin felt her blood boiling with excitement. This was going to be her first real combat experience in this life. She could finally see how strong she was. As the students settled in Teacher Zhao started calling their names one by one to enter the tower:

- First! Yue Yan.

Yue Yan groaned, holding his face in his hands. After a minute of thinking he seemed to make up his mind and entered the tower. The students quietened and started looking at the progress board...