Chapter 559: Testing Time

"I have to say those three gods making the system events are crazy." Maike concluded when Thalion told the two a bit more about the three gods. "Seriously, every single one of the events had huge flaws in the design if you ask me. The first system event had the huge problem of the last stage rewarding so many points. The second, from what I heard, had more flaws than things that went well, and I don't even want to think about what the third is going to be."

"Just think about it. There are people paying five hundred years to join this shitshow. Your life is in danger, and the reward is also going to be horrible if you don't place in the top fifty." Kaldrek followed up. He also clearly had enough of system events.

"True. How are you two feeling about the academy? If you want to join, there is no way around a system event." Thalion felt like he had to bring up the topic at some point.

"Hmm, if I'm completely honest. This academy sounds more like a place for you, Thalion. I'm not bad, but in the end I'm lacking the conviction to truly be a threat to someone at the level of a Chosen. Jack, Josh, and Thalassan will definitely go for it. Especially Thalassan scares me from time to time.

There you think that Jack and Josh are at the peak, but she still tops them. Where did she come from again? I can't remember her in the tutorial, and someone this strong I would have definitely noticed." Kaldrek talked like a waterfall that only found its end because he couldn't hold back from shoving a piece of dried meat into his mouth.

"Mhmm, delicious." he mumbled.

"Kaldrek, she joined us after the tutorial. How couldn't you remember that? Thalassan wasn't even human from the start but a fish that evolved into a human at E grade. Where do you think the scales on her skin came from?" Maike said in an accusatory tone.

"Ah right, I completely forgot. The best part about her is that she wanted to drown her victims, but with the system everyone can hold their breath for hours. Then she added some sort of salt to the water and is now effectively drying them out.

No idea how she did it, and her enemies also have no clue what is happening to them. I mean, who would come up with something like that? Well, now she is working on water that rips the oxygen out of everything it touches, but not sure if it's already working." Kaldrek giggled.

Thalion felt a bit bad that Kaldrek wouldn't join the academy. To have the whole team there would be so cool, but Kaldrek was probably right. The elite of the elite would be there, which would lead to a whole different kind of competition.

Thalion only hoped that he managed to get his D-grade evolution before then because against someone like Solan's and Nyssa's daughter he didn't give himself a realistic chance.

"Maybe the situation on New Earth will calm down when all the Chosen go to the academy." Thalion suggested, but Kaldrek and Maike didn't look that optimistic.

"Most of the Chosen haven't placed first in any system event yet. I also doubt that the gods want their factions to stop the war. They made an investment by giving out so many blessings, and they want that investment returned at the very least." Kaldrek said coldly.

"But without the Chosen the factions are far less dangerous, and I have full confidence in you holding your ground, especially with Lucan's defenses." Thalion chuckled, thinking of the crazy smith.

"Let's not jinx it. There are a bunch of D-grade factions coming too. Teleportation between planets and vessels capable of traveling through space will ensure that the conflict won't be ending too soon." Kaldrek muttered, clearly not happy about the prospect.

They talked a bit more about the factions of New Earth and how they planned to expand. The idea was to have many little outposts far away from each other but connected through the teleportation network.

This way they could still go farming even should their capital be under siege. At the moment they still needed more crystals, and Maike was still a bit angry at Thalion for sacrificing a bunch of crystals for his darkness body tempering.

Crystals were the best target for his dark tendrils and converted to much more darkness than anything else. Sadly, the good time didn't last much longer than an hour, and when the Krakenink Liquor was out Thalion decided that it was time to leave.

"We need to repeat this after the third system event is over. I'll try to hunt a few spiders before I leave too." Thalion said, standing where the door once had been, only to see a large crowd looking directly back at him.

"Hey, the live theater is over. Don't you have something to do?" Thalion shouted at all the people standing on the street.

Thalion waited there for a few minutes to allow his body to burn the alcohol away before he started with a bit of soul strengthening. He now had less than two weeks, and he already had a plan on how to proceed. First he would work on his soul, which was something he hadn't done in earnest for quite some time.

There was the slim chance that one of the Chosen he was about to face was a mentalist, and then he wanted to be prepared. After that he would dive into the ocean to test the new time skills and get more practice with his Water Serpent.

Next was the wyvern. Kaldrek and Maike both had complained loudly about the spiders, so Thalion would reduce their numbers. He had already gotten a bit of experience when fighting the idiots who had captured his friends, but he wanted to get a bit more practice in.

Against the top of the new universe every form needed to be on point. If there was still some time left he would work a bit on his human form and the Eclipsari just to be on the safe side.

Two weeks wasn't that much time to progress as an E grade, and Thalion was quite happy with how strong he had gotten. Especially the Eclipsari had made great progress, surpassing all of his expectations with its last upgrade. No, he should be fine. Just the last fine-tuning, and he should be good to go.

The first days passed quite quickly while Thalion worked on his soul, looked through Ankhet's tablets, and paid his armor a visit from time to time. The armor was far from ready but definitely on the right track. The blood pond would do the work for now, and after the third system event he might invest a bit more blood into hardening it even more.

Ricarda was looking worse with every day that passed, and Thalion began to question why she had even become a Chosen in the first place. She was far too soft for such a job. What surprised Thalion was that she had been growing multiple dark-affinity plants, which he could consume as an Eclipsari to accelerate his body tempering. Dark-affinity plants were almost as good as small crystals, which was very welcome.

The days passed, and Thalion decided that it was time to go for a little swim. There was no reason to drag it out any longer, and he wanted to test his new skills. They had a total of three outposts on islands in the ocean, but Thalion decided to use the portal that brought him right to the one led by Seraphina.

The base had also undergone some changes. The walls had doubled in size, and a few more towers had risen over sixty meters into the sky.

The harbor had vastly increased in size, but the most imposing sight were the large ships with their decks over thirty meters above sea level. Elves and humans scurried over the decks in the first orange rays of the rising sun. Thalion didn't bother to announce himself and just moved to the harbor, where he without further ado jumped into the sea.

The water was cold and filled with water cultivators who were about to set out on their own. Thalion waited until no one was looking directly at him before shifting into Myrelith, the Serpent Crowned by Tides. His long body shot into the depths with only a few swipes of his tail. None of the humans or elves noticed how he glided by, well hidden due to his passive skill.

Thalion immediately felt the passive effect of Flow of Ages. He had been incredibly fast before, with the water offering little resistance, but now that effect felt even more accelerated. In fact, Thalion hadn't experienced a passive skill with similar power. It felt almost like after the evolution to E grade when he could move through water far faster than before.

Thalion enjoyed himself a bit too much in the newfound power and forgot to dive deeper, and one of the E grades above noticed him. This led to mass hysteria, which caused over fifty E grades to immediately soar to the surface.

Thalion quickly corrected his mistake and dove further into the depths until he lost sight of all the humans and the few elves. He could only imagine how he would feel seeing the vague form of a thirty-meter-long serpent gliding past below him.

Thalion now significantly sped up while he fully focused on his two titles. The moment he got a strong D-grade mana signature, he would go after it. The ocean had also changed quite a bit since he had gone for a dive the last time. Normally you would think that it was getting empty with everything killing each other, but the opposite seemed to be the case. Especially the underwater plant world had grown vastly.

Thalion came by numerous floating kelp forests, which looked like giant green spheres. Tiny baby fish were growing in there, but kelp forests weren't the only objects floating through the depths of the ocean. Small coral blocks also slowly moved with the current. They didn't show any signs of life besides the occasional crab sitting on top of them.

What hadn't changed was that the stronger beasts lived in the depths, and the mana signature Thalion picked up grew stronger and stronger the deeper he dove.

He came by a giant fifty-meter-long fish getting devoured by a mixture of sharks and some sort of evolved underwater lizard. The fish probably had been D grade, but the sharks and lizards were only high E grade. Still, they were good subjects to test his new time skill, Frozen Epoch. According to the description, he would freeze everything around him for a few seconds while he was able to move freely.

Thalion waited with activating the skill until he was only fifty meters from the sharks and reptiles circling the dead fish while the bigger ones ripped pieces of meat out. Thalion quickly checked the surroundings just to make sure that there wasn't a D-grade beast close enough. When he was sure that there wasn't anything big nearby, he activated the skill, and everything changed.

Hi,

There were a lot of comments recently criticizing the characters for being too simple, and I wanted to share my thoughts behind them. It was also probably the most respectfully written criticism I've ever received :)

So let's start with Ricarda's critic: She seems to have become too whiny all of a sudden and doesn't act like the typical arrogant elf.

Back on the elven homeworld, Ricarda was just a farm girl who wasn't treated particularly well by the other elves. (The later part hasn't been revealed yet.)

She always had a great connection with plants, and when the System arrived, she was even chosen by a god. Nothing in the Tutorial could stand in her way, and together with her new—and best—friends, the plants, she quickly grew in power. Then she was nearly killed by Thalion while many of her best friends were slaughtered. Her previous belief that strength solved everything was shattered, and she was forced into an alliance with a human while betraying all the other elves on her planet, including her parents, who might be killed by the other elves for her actions—or even worse, tortured.

While she tries to adjust to this new reality, the other elves refuse to do the same, and Maike constantly orders her to speak with them. Her class revolves around sending her plants out to gather experience, but that's exactly what the ants are taking advantage of, killing many of her new friends. To Ricarda, her plants are like family, and seeing them suffer or die is the worst thing imaginable. As one of the Chosen, she has completely lost control over the current situation, and then the gods arrive and force her into another System Event with an even higher danger level than the last one. All that pressure is far too much for a simple farm girl, which is why she has become much more emotionally fragile compared to the arrogant elf Thalion first encountered.

I think the next point was about the other Chosen, as well as Kael and his friends all having similar traits.

This hasn't been explicitly mentioned because I thought it would be more interesting if it remained a mystery for a while why so many people with blessings slowly begin to change. When it comes to ordinary blessings, the gods don't have particularly high hopes that those individuals will ever reach godhood. They see them as temporary vassals, and in the gods' eyes, they don't need friends or a personal life. All that matters is getting a return on their investment. (To be fair, it isn't even that much of an investment—but they're gods.)

The gods want their followers to become as ruthless and powerful as possible because that makes them more useful. They don't want independent thinkers—they want soldiers who follow orders. They can't outright manipulate someone's mind, but when a god tells you something, those words carry tremendous weight.

Now let's talk about Eric.

Think about everything that has happened to him. He is genuinely trying to build a safe haven for humanity. Then Thalion, even after saving Eric's life, deliberately allows someone as evil as the prince to escape. If you were Eric, would you trust someone like that?

Then the pressure back on New Earth keeps increasing. The elves have far more Chosen, and humanity has no choice but to either avoid them or fight them using their defenses. As one of humanity's Chosen, it is Eric's responsibility to confront the elven Chosen, who are both strong and more numerous. That creates far more pressure than I think many readers give him credit for.

When people are under extreme pressure, they are much more likely to misjudge situations or make poor decisions. On top of that comes Ethan's constant manipulation. (This isn't in the story yet, but he's simply following the orders of his patron. Ethan knows he's spreading propaganda.) Later Ryan joins their faction, and he also speaks very negatively about Thalion.

Then Thalion enters Eric's base, and that same night Eric loses many of his best fighters as they decide to leave with Thalion. By this point, Eric has spent a great deal of time with Ethan, whom he completely trusts after fighting so many life-and-death battles together. What happened during the first broadcast was simply the final drop that made everything overflow. In Eric's mind, he has been treated unfairly over and over again. He also believes Thalion has been plotting against him for a long time, which is why he has now started doing the same.

Then there are the elves as a race in general.

The criticism here was that they aren't rational by not working well with humans or even try to harm them.

Well, the elves genuinely believe themselves to be superior to every other race. Think of it like this: if someone had told people before Abraham Lincoln that black people should be respected and treated equally from now on, how many would actually have followed that order? How many would still have looked down on them?

For elves who have already lived for hundreds of years, taking orders from a thirty-year-old human is similar to you taking military commands from a talking chicken. Most would naturally be skeptical, especially when their own lives depend on it.

Finally, the gods.

There are different reasons for each of them behaving emotionally, and I can't explain every god's motivation because that would spoil future parts of the story.

Let's start with Nyssa and Solan, since I suspect they were the main targets of that criticism.

Their situation is actually quite simple. Throughout their incredibly long lives, neither Nyssa nor Solan has ever truly cared about anyone except themselves. The only reason they cared about their Chosen was because it would benefit them if one eventually reached godhood.

Now, all of a sudden, they have a daughter they genuinely love in a world that is essentially one endless war. They've already experienced many perfect Chosen dying, and now their precious daughter has to face the very same dangers. I think it's only natural that they behave the way they do because they've never truly loved someone before or experienced comparable emotions.

Some people might argue that they could simply have another child, but no loving parent thinks that way.

As for Solan, there are also a few other reasons behind his behavior, but I can't reveal those yet.

I think that covers everything. Let me know if I forgot anyone.

Especially when it comes to Ricarda, I tried to show her emotions instead of simply telling the reader how she feels. Maybe that was a mistake because her development is spread out over such a long period of time.

Anyway, since I'm already writing this: the next chapters are going to be bangers, and next week we'll finally reach the third System Event.