Chapter 57: Solo Extreme Assessment? No, It's an Instance Extreme Assessment!

The capital, nine o'clock — the Alliance Exam officially began.

The first batch of five hundred students entered the exam instance. On the large screen that had just played the exam rules, five hundred small screens now appeared, each broadcasting footage from inside the exam instance.

To ensure fairness in the exam, everyone's exam footage would be broadcast live, subject to the supervision of all professionals!

Of course, those taking the exam in the second batch and onward clearly had an advantage — they could observe different people's combat styles, find methods suited to themselves, and earn more points.

However, past exam videos were all available online, and the vast majority of students had watched them in advance. After all, observing and analyzing combat was also part of the middle school curriculum.

Lu Zheng was in the second batch, so he was still observing the battles.

After observing, he confirmed one thing.

Inside the Alliance Exam instance, killing monsters granted no experience points — this was merely a combat simulation and could not provide experience.

This left him with little interest.

He had originally wanted to take this opportunity to raise the levels of the three immortal-grade spirit pets he had obtained the night before the college entrance exam. Now it seemed best to let them continue killing and fighting in the instance outside Fengdu City.

Even before the municipal exam, Lu Zheng had left the batch of summoned beasts that needed to continuously kill monsters to level up inside the instance outside Fengdu City. Though his own level was locked and could no longer increase, his experience points were accumulating every minute and every second.

From time to time, there was also attribute point feedback from summoned beast level-ups.

Sitting, lying down, doing nothing at all — he could still grow continuously stronger.

Even if his level could never increase again, his base attributes would sooner or later crush all Saint-tier professionals! Among the first batch of five hundred, one person stood out.

An Epic-tier professional, level 60, first-advancement perfected — Divine Fire Mage Duanmu Lin! The Duanmu family was a large family in the south, with five Saint-tier professionals among its members. Among the younger generation of disciples, there were quite a few prodigies, and Duanmu Lin was the most outstanding one in recent decades.

If Lu Zheng had not burst onto the scene, Duanmu Lin would absolutely have been the top scorer of the Alliance Exam, one of the best candidates for first place in the national professional college entrance exam.

But now, before the level 100, second-advancement perfected Lu Zheng, such strength was clearly not quite enough to look at.

In the first event, the single-player extreme challenge, the monsters fought were all of ordinary quality. Before level 70, Duanmu Lin could one-shot every monster with a single move!

However, after reaching level 70, he needed a second move.

These mage-type professions all had a casting time requirement for releasing skills — the more powerful the skill, the longer the casting time.

But Lu Zheng found that the skills he obtained through summoned beast feedback were all instant cast. In a single thought, he could complete the infusion of mana — the sky and earth would change color, with the force of ten thousand thunderbolts!

The value of an Epic-tier profession was still very high.

With unlimited mana, Duanmu Lin didn't find killing monsters below level 100 particularly taxing, basically resolving each fight within three minutes.

But when monster levels exceeded 100 and entered the third-advancement tier, their defense increased dramatically, and killing a single monster required more than five minutes.

After the monster level rose to 120, Duanmu Lin began showing signs of strain. Finally, when attempting to kill a level 134 monster, he exceeded ten minutes without completing the kill, and his score stopped at level 133! This was already quite impressive — solo killing was not a mage profession's strong suit, and the current highest record for the first event was only level 150.

After all, he had not yet completed his second advancement. The current highest records in the Alliance Exam were all held by professionals who had completed their second advancement before the college entrance exam.

The second event — single-player extreme damage output — that was his strong suit.

Large-area high damage output: 100 base level 31 monsters, one-shotted with a single skill! With only one hour of output time total, the actual combat process was even more tightly paced than the first event. Fortunately, mana was unlimited — otherwise, these large-area damage spells could only be cast a few times before mana was depleted and combat capability was lost.

The Divine Fire Mage's spell power was very strong. Before monster levels rose to 50, Duanmu Lin could one-shot all monsters with a single skill.

Beyond pure fire-attribute explosive damage, the additional divine power damage ignored defense and directly dealt true damage — simply unreasonable! But when levels exceeded 50, he needed two skill hits to kill all the monsters. After reaching level 60, it became even more taxing — he needed multiple skills stacked together and began taking attacks.

In real combat, he would not have been able to continue fighting, but inside the exam instance, he did not lose health and had unlimited mana, so he could keep fighting.

The one-hour exam time ended quickly. Duanmu Lin's exam level stopped at 76.

In fact, under the conditions of locked health and unlimited mana, he was fully capable of killing all one hundred level 76 monsters, but he ran out of time. When he killed the eighty-seventh one, the one-hour exam time ended, and total damage was calculated for ranking.

Total kills: 4,587. So far, the record for this second event was level 98, with a total kill count of 6,786.

It was set by the current Saint-tier powerhouse, Epic-tier professional Thunder Magic Cannonier Wu Tuohai. That year, during the college entrance exam, his level was 74.

Both being Epic-tier professionals, whether or not one had completed a second advancement made a great difference in strength.

The national professional college entrance exam's kill standard scoring varied each year, giving scores based on the exam performance of students over the years, but one thing never changed.

Only by breaking records could one get a perfect score! That is, to get a perfect score, the first event required killing a level 151 monster, and the second event required killing more than 6,786 monsters.

A perfect score in a single event was already extremely difficult. Perfect scores in both events would require overwhelming the strongest candidates of all previous years in level! And clearly, the level 100 Lu Zheng had exactly that capital.

So, when the second group of examinees entered, the eyes of nearly everyone across the entire Alliance fell on Lu Zheng's exam instance footage, anticipating his performance.

But before the exam began, the five hundred examinees inside the instance all heard a voice at the same time.

"Examinee Lu Zheng, attention! To prevent you from unleashing Saint-tier-or-above instantaneous destructive power that could cause the instance to collapse, you are hereby notified to restrain your combat power. The top twenty students in the Alliance unified exam will proceed to a real instance for an additional assessment, where you may go all out!"

This voice stunned all the examinees, and the many professionals watching the live broadcast were also dumbfounded.

The national professional college entrance exam had actually issued a special notice for a single person, and even specifically instructed him not to destroy the instance — this was truly unheard of!

The students in the waiting area began discussing, all extremely excited.

"Holy crap! The rumors are actually true — this guy not only reached level 100, his combat power really rivals Saint-tier professionals!"

"Good lord — what kind of monster are we competing against!"

"Does this mean that if he goes all out, the instance might not even be able to withstand it? So the instance tests our limits, but Lu Zheng is here to test the instance's limits!?"

"I heard that during the prefectural exam, Lu Zheng only brought out one summoned beast in the third round. Guess when he'll release his summoned beasts this time?"

"It's out! It's out! Lu Zheng released a little fox!"

"What the hell! You call a behemoth with a shoulder height of fifteen meters and a tail over twenty meters long a little fox!?"

Inside the exam instance, Lu Zheng, having heard the official reminder, chose to just lie flat.

Killing monsters gave no experience, and his combat power was restricted — he couldn't even be bothered to fight. He directly summoned the Three-Tailed Spirit Fox and let it do as it pleased, while he himself summoned the Crescent Moon Eagle, flew up into midair, and lay down to sleep.

(End of this chapter)