Chapter Ninety-Six: Cutting Through the Ranks, Part Two

The three rounds of the college entrance trials were, in truth, much the same. Each round mostly drew from the same fixed archetypes of opponents, with only slight adjustments from one round to the next, so things would not become utterly monotonous.

Even so, Chu Cheng still felt the difficulty was not enough.

Through his own tireless effort, together with the meager assistance of his hidden advantage, his strength at this stage was simply too overwhelming for a student.

Even though the opponents in the third round had already reached level thirty, a threshold that placed them in a completely different class from anyone below that level, and their strength had indeed undergone a real transformation, they still could not compare with him.

His first opponent in the third round was a level thirty elite ogre, wielding a spiked club. Its strength was at least eighty points.

Bloodthirst, Cleave, Heavy Strike.

Like a drifting leaf, Chu Cheng slipped nimbly away from the elite ogre’s furious barrage, losing not so much as a hair.

By the third stage, there was no need to rush the clear time anymore. In the first two stages, speed mattered; in the third, only the number of victories counted.

With quick, agile steps he easily avoided the ogre’s savage blows, and now and then the point of his sword would flick out to carve a long, open wound across its body.

Still an all-around suppression. Without much effort, he ground this thick-skinned, heavily armored elite ogre to death.

Then came the second opponent, the familiar tank type.

Only this time, instead of the tank class from the first two rounds, it was a druid transformed into a bear.

Not only was it thick-skinned and hard to kill, it also possessed many combat techniques that ordinary beasts lacked.

Charge, Cleave, Thunder Strike, Heavy Strike, and several more besides. The moment it came rushing in, a massive bear paw was already swinging straight for his face.

Chu Cheng opened with Blade Storm to cut damage and took the initial burst head-on, then answered with Frost Thrust to slow the target. After that came a Heavy Strike and Frenzy, and in a single burst he drove the target straight into critical condition.

Even with over six thousand health, a level thirty elite could not withstand his full-force output.

And then the opponents that followed were all variations on the same theme as the first two rounds. The third round of testing still posed him no real threat.

Whether it was a rogue, a ranged archer, or a mage.

His current physique, health, endurance, regeneration, skills, and speed, as well as his defense and resistances, all far surpassed those of his peers. Add to that the damage reduction from his talents and skills, and his survival ability was pushed entirely to the limit.

As for offense, he had two epic-grade weapons. At this stage, there probably were not many people who could even equip two epic-grade weapons at once.

"Hm?"

One staff member suddenly heard a warning chime. He hurried over to the glowing screen where Chu Cheng’s battle was displayed, examined it for a moment, then glanced at the progress of the other contestants nearby. A flicker of surprise crossed his face.

"Interesting."

At that moment, another staff member walked over and gave the screen a look. He said with mild astonishment, "Already five straight wins this fast?"

"Yes."

"Where’s he from? Tianshui?"

"No, Yuntai City No. 5 High School."

"Yuntai City No. 5 High School? Even a remote school like that has a talent of this caliber? Rare indeed."

"Very rare."

As he spoke, the first staff member entered Chu Cheng’s information into the registry.

The other staff member pulled up the earlier battle records and reviewed them one by one. Nodding, he said, "This kid is no ordinary one. Looks like he has no obvious weakness at all. He went ten wins in both the first and second rounds without losing a single match."

"Mark him specially. We’ll send him to the chief examiner later."

"All right."

The two did not stay long, because others nearby were gradually reaching five victories in the third round as well.

Chu Cheng was the first to achieve five wins in the third round, but he was not the only one. With several thousand examinees in the vast Tianshui provincial testing grounds, there were still plenty who could keep pace with him.

Chu Cheng did not know how many people outside were watching him. He simply did his utmost to defeat each opponent in turn, without holding back at all.

This was the college entrance exam. This was not the time to hide his strength and play the harmless fool.

After all the effort he had poured in for so long, this was the moment to shine and seize a good starting point and a proper platform for himself.

Within human civilization, the major school powers could roughly be divided into three broad tiers: ordinary institutions at the lowest level, first-tier institutions, and the elite institutions at the very top.

To put it in a more familiar way, the elite institutions were roughly equivalent to top-ranked universities from his past life, first-tier institutions to the next rank down, and ordinary schools needed no explanation; anything below those two belonged there.

Chu Cheng’s minimum target was the equivalent of a first-tier institution. If there was a chance, he would naturally aim even higher and try for an elite one.

No matter which elite institution it was, even the worst of them far surpassed any first-tier school.

Those top institutions had long histories, and the resources in their hands were beyond ordinary imagination.

Large and extra-large realm dungeons, inheritance from upper-tier heroes and above, guidance from god-and-demon-class powerhouses, experience and knowledge for advancing into the transcendent, legendary, and god-and-demon tiers, various top-grade power systems, and more. These were all resources that second-tier institutions simply did not possess.

If you were admitted to an elite institution, then as long as your strength met the standard, all those resources and pieces of information could be obtained for only a symbolic pittance.

If one wanted to reach the peak, one first needed a good platform.

His sixth opponent was a level thirty dragon-blood warlock.

While possessing formidable spellcasting power, it also had a strong body, great strength, and solid melee ability.

By rights, it ought to have been somewhat stronger than a pure mage, but for Chu Cheng it was actually a little easier to deal with.

His will was too low. He could not resist many of the mage’s control spells that targeted willpower, which made it easy to be locked down and then beaten to a pulp in a single burst.

Warlocks did not have nearly as many flashy spells as mages. Their magic was generally known for one thing: killing power. For Chu Cheng, that was actually easier to handle than a mage’s varied tricks.

His seventh opponent was a half-dragon with full marks in physique, strength, agility, and perception, and it could also use several powerful spell-like abilities.

It was much the same as the level thirty dragon-blood warlock, yet in the opposite extreme, leaning mainly toward melee combat.

This opponent took Chu Cheng quite a while. He first traded a burst with it, then created distance and kept it at range. Relying on the Blood God Body’s formidable regeneration, he dragged the fight out until all his combat techniques had cooled down, and only then did he finish it off with a second burst.

His eighth opponent was a level thirty elite storm elemental.

It could fly, possessed powerful spellcasting ability, and every three seconds it would spit out a bolt of lightning to strike the enemies around it.

This kind of foe was a perfect counter to melee classes. If not for his spatial deflection talent, and if that talent had not been upgraded, he really might have fallen here.

But there were no ifs in this world. In the end, Chu Cheng relied on his talent’s damage absorption and reflection, plus the extra damage from spatial marking and the Precision Heart-Piercer effect, to go toe-to-toe with the storm elemental and grind away the last sliver of its health.

His talent reflected one hundred points of true damage, and the spatial mark added another one hundred points of true damage. Each arrow reliably stripped away more than two hundred and fifty health.

"Remember, next time I have to get myself some ranged ability."

The farther he went, the more glaring this weakness became. He had no combat technique at all, and when he next encountered this kind of opponent at a higher level, he would truly struggle to win with talents alone.

One minute later, his ninth opponent appeared before him: a vrock demon that had summoned more than a hundred lesser demons and fiends ranging from level ten to level thirty.

That was essentially an upgraded version of a necromancer, and the difficulty was extremely high.

But as always, once the numbers came up, the result for Chu Cheng remained the same.