"However, come to think of it, besides her, you're the only other fledgling Undead Mage at the Sea City Military Academy. Not to mention, you've performed so well, truly redeeming the Undead Mage profession's shameful reputation. Given Instructor Su Xinyan's professional pride, she'll probably offer to enchant it for you without you even having to ask."

With that, the One-eyed Instructor gestured for Fang Zhou to wait a moment and turned to head into the depths of the storage room. Shortly after, he came back out holding a silver vessel.

"Fang Zhou, I've already registered it in the system. Next, Instructor Su Xinyan will perform an Enchantment on your [Sea City Military Academy's Number One Seed Medal] with the [Transcendent] affix. Here, this container holds the Magic Materials for the [Transcendent] Enchantment: [Star Dew]. Given Instructor Su Xinyan's expertise in Alchemy, this amount of Star Dew is more than enough for the Seed Medal's Enchantment."

Fang Zhou cautiously took the silver vessel from the One-eyed Instructor's hands. Peering through the gap at the magnificent, shimmering liquid sloshing inside, his eyes filled with amazement.

The One-eyed Instructor gently patted Fang Zhou's shoulder and smiled. "What do you think? Beautiful, isn't it? I think Star Dew is the most beautiful of all the Magic Materials. Off you go, Fang Zhou. I look forward to your future performance."

Fang Zhou opened the [Miniature Space Storage Capsule], placed the resource box and the Star Dew inside, then saluted the One-eyed Instructor. "Don't worry, Instructor," he said seriously. "I'll redouble my efforts and make sure I don't waste any of the resources the academy has provided."

After exchanging a few more pleasantries with the One-eyed Instructor and seeing that it was getting late, Fang Zhou took his leave. Turning around, he gently but firmly pushed past Bai Xiaochan and Meng Hongzhuang, who were pouting and trying to look pitifully cute. He then left the logistics department and headed toward the Undead Mage Project Laboratory.

At that moment, Lu Renjia, who had been observing silently from the side, suddenly grit his teeth and rushed forward. "Junior Fang Zhou," he said with an expectant look, "when you break through to upper-rank Apprentice, could you take me with you to the upper-level Apprentice Simulation Battlefield?"

Beside him, Lu Yiyi quickly reacted, nodding enthusiastically. "The upper-level Apprentice Simulation Battlefield is called the [Shelter Defense Battle], and it's also a three-person team simulation. However, it's different from the offensive-type battles like the lower-rank Apprentice's [Little Inferior Demon Camp] and the middle-rank Apprentice's [Horn Demon Outpost]. The [Shelter Defense Battle], as the name implies, is a defensive battle. Trialists must defend the ordinary people in the Shelter from a massive demonic siege until reinforcements arrive.

"Lu Renjia is an upper-rank Apprentice Warrior, and I'm an upper-rank Apprentice Archer. We've both cleared the [Shelter Defense Battle] on hard difficulty with a 'Pass' combat evaluation. Among all the second-year, upper-rank Apprentice students, our results are considered above average. Elder Fang Zhou, we definitely won't hold you back."

When the other first-year Seed Students saw Lu Renjia and Lu Yiyi, two notoriously proud second-years, shamelessly trying to ride the coattails of the first-year No. 1 Seed, they felt a strange mix of bewilderment and relief.

With Fang Zhou's strength as a middle-rank Apprentice, even senior students from the second year who were upper-rank Apprentices were scrambling to reserve a team slot with him for the Simulation Battlefield. This alone proved that Elder Fang Zhou's prodigious talent was on a level that they, as mere first-years, couldn't possibly fathom. Looking at it from another angle, if even the senior students were starting to latch onto Fang Zhou, why should they, his own classmates from the Seed Student cohort, hesitate? First come, first served! They had to hurry and fleece him for all he was worth before he soared beyond their reach! It was only natural. This was completely understandable.

The Seed Students exchanged glances, their eyes filled with newfound determination.

For a moment, a chill ran down Bai Xiaochan's and Meng Hongzhuang's spines. They suddenly had a terrible premonition that their precious treasure was about to be shared with everyone else.

At this point, after a moment of contemplation, Fang Zhou gave Lu Renjia and Lu Yiyi a noncommittal nod. "Seniors, you're too kind. I don't even know how long it will take me to break through to the upper-rank Apprentice level. When that time comes, I'll need to ask for your guidance regarding the specifics of the [Shelter Defense Battle]."

What Fang Zhou said wasn't mere pleasantry. The [Little Inferior Demon Camp] was one thing. Since it was a solo instance, he had already dominated the top of all the speedrun leaderboards with his personal strength alone. However, in the team-based [Horn Demon Outpost] instance, his rankings on the simple, normal, and even hard difficulty speedrun leaderboards weren't particularly high. This excluded the Abyss Difficulty, which was so tough that it forced teams into direct brute-force confrontations and stumped many of them.

There was, of course, the main reason: the lower difficulties were too easy and offered no challenge, so Fang Zhou couldn't be bothered to grind them repeatedly for better times after clearing them once. But another reason was that he was just one person and could only cover one front in a battle. For example, he had watched the clear video of the top-ranking team for the [Horn Demon Outpost] on simple difficulty, Wen Jiu's team, and saw how they leveraged their numerical advantage by splitting their forces. Wen Jiu and her Little Fire Dragon went one-on-one with the middle-rank Horned Demon Boss. Meanwhile, her two teammates went to another room to quickly slaughter the swarming Little Inferior Demons. With this two-pronged attack, Wen Jiu's team naturally cleared the instance much faster than Fang Zhou.

Based on his own estimates, Fang Zhou figured it would take him less than a month to break through to the upper-rank Apprentice level. By then, the upper-rank Apprentice [Shelter Defense Battle] would unlock, and he would once again find himself a full rank ahead of his peers. According to the current rate of cultivation, even the strongest students in his year, like Meng Hongzhuang and Ye Fan, would at best reach the middle-rank Apprentice level within a month, making them unable to help him.

To avoid another situation where he would have to fight alone, like in the [Horn Demon Outpost], Fang Zhou decided to accept Lu Renjia and Lu Yiyi's invitation and join their team to challenge the [Shelter Defense Battle].

Upon hearing Fang Zhou's reply, Lu Renjia and Lu Yiyi glanced at each other, their faces breaking into excited smiles. They looked at Fang Zhou and said excitedly, "Thank you, Elder Fang Zhou! Once you break through to upper-rank Apprentice and are ready, you can contact us anytime.

"After all, we only just reached the upper-rank Apprentice level ourselves not too long ago. It'll probably take us another year or so to break through the bottleneck and advance to the Black Iron rank. In the meantime, we'll keep challenging the [Shelter Defense Battle] to gather more experience from our successes and failures. We'll send all that data to you via our personal terminals."

Fang Zhou nodded. Teaming up with these two second-years had another benefit: he wouldn't have to go in blind.

Lu Renjia and Lu Yiyi weren't second-year Seed Students. Their strength was significantly weaker than that of the No. 8 Seed from the second year, Liu Diewu, whom Fang Zhou had met at the Nature Series Professional Association. Due to their limited strength, they had only managed to clear the [Shelter Defense Battle] on hard difficulty with a barely passing evaluation. Even so, for Fang Zhou, as long as Lu Renjia and Lu Yiyi had some familiarity with the Simulation Battlefield and could provide him with useful information, it was more than enough.

Besides, even if he wanted to team up with second-year Seed Students, he wouldn't be able to find anyone suitable right away. Elites like Liu Diewu had either already broken through the bottleneck to advance to the Black Iron rank or were mysterious and elusive, undertaking various missions both inside and outside the academy. Fang Zhou didn't have the patience to wait for all of them to return before tackling the [Shelter Defense Battle].

Thinking of this, he spoke politely to Lu Renjia and Lu Yiyi. "Then I'll have to trouble you both, seniors. I still need to find Instructor Su Xinyan with the Undead Mage Research Team and ask her to enchant my [Number One Seed Medal]. If there's nothing else, I'll be on my way."

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