DALOA CH17

[Love/Emotional Intelligence Category Selected.]

[Random Scenario Question: You are walking on campus when a pretty omega classmate passes by and says to you: “Your earring looks really good.” What is his intention?

A. To compliment your earring.

B. To try to get your attention.

C. To imply he wants you to pursue him.

D. To trick you into giving him your earring.]

After the question appeared, a long silence fell over the beach.

“The correct answer is B, right?”

“No, no, it’s C. Isn’t that just a normal way to hit on someone?”

“I think it’s B. Omegas these days are so proactive; you don’t even need to pursue them.”

Qian Can heard the group of students discussing earnestly and rolled his eyes. The military academy was truly a gathering place for socially inept straight men. He glanced at Song Jin, then at Li Xiao.

What a coincidence, he thought. The boss actually did compliment Li Xiao’s earrings.

Seeing Li Xiao looking over, Song Jin, thinking the chaos was worth the show, shrugged helplessly: “Why not try your luck? Maybe you’ll draw something useful?”

Even if there were good things among the prizes, the probability of drawing them was likely very low. Li Xiao’s goal wasn’t the assessment anyway, so he preferred to keep things simple. Options B and C had similar meanings, so he eliminated them, leaving A and D. The “pretty” and “omega” parts of the prompt were just distractions; the standard answer was A.

Before the countdown ended, Li Xiao said nonchalantly: “D. He wants to scam me out of my earring.”

Song Jin: “…”

Who are you hinting at?

Everyone else: “…”

How do you manage to say that with such a serious expression?

Da Bei failed to stifle his laughter, bursting out loudly. Once he started, others couldn’t help but laugh along. Jiang Hao asked seriously: “If you get it wrong, do we not have to draw a prize?”

A line of text appeared on the giant screen:

[Answer Incorrect.]

[Li Xiao’s system rating for the swarm assessment is 10 points; an additional lottery reward is granted.]

Li Xiao: “…”

Everyone: “…”

There really was no need for that.

A small robot flew in front of Li Xiao, and Qian Can and Da Bei approached nervously.

“Boss, choose the food category!”

“Brother, food! Let’s not take that risk!”

Li Xiao swept his gaze over the various scraps of junk on the beach and calmly chose the food category. The colorful indicator lights flashed.

[Ding~ Congratulations on winning a bag of corn~]

A rustling sound suddenly came from the dense bushes behind them. Everyone turned their heads sharply as a giant burlap sack flew out and slammed into the ground with a heavy thud. Jiang Hao walked over, pulled a corn cob the size of an arm out of the bag, and turned to Li Xiao: “Big brother, it’s gotta be over 200 pounds.”

Li Xiao: “…………”

All the students gasped. They thought the food category would be safer, but it turned out to be even more terrifying! Just imagining carrying 200 pounds of corn while traveling was enough to make them want to die on the spot.

Song Jin: “Your luck is terrible.”

Li Xiao: “I hope yours is better than mine.”

Song Jin hadn’t even finished processing that when the small robot flew in front of him.

[Song Jin’s system rating for the swarm assessment is 10 points; an additional lottery reward is granted.]

Qian Can cried out: “Boss, maybe you should wash your hands first? We can’t take any more of this!”

Song Jin: “…”

Since all three prize categories were traps anyway, Song Jin chose food and pressed the button.

[Ding~ Congratulations on winning a bundle of green onions~]

The same rustling came from the bushes as a bundle of green onions—as thick as a person’s torso—flew out and landed next to the sack. Each onion was taller than a person and sturdier than a broom.

Qian Can screamed in despair: “Help me!”

Da Xi’s eyes went blank: “That’s a ‘bundle’? Not a mountain?”

Qin Le turned his head away, unable to bear it.

It looks like we’ll be driving this excavator until tomorrow.

Li Xiao looked at the bundle of onions: “Your luck is pretty average too.”

Song Jin gritted his teeth: “I’ve never had good luck with windfalls.”

As for the remaining four questions, no one dared to answer anymore. The system simply made anyone who moved answer, which kept the whole group so terrified they didn’t dare to move. Food was strictly forbidden; they’d rather gamble on tools or transportation. Before long, the beach was littered with two rusty dump trucks and two giant iron discs.

Luck—it’s impossible to have luck. It’s never going to happen in this lifetime.

The star was about to set. There was only a small forest near the beach, and with no signs of mutant beasts nearby, it was relatively safe. Li Xiao had Jiang Hao and the others gather firewood to set up camp. Other students, after observing the surroundings, also decided to set up camp. Entering the dense rainforest again before dark was too dangerous.

Li Xiao chopped a few bamboo sticks into skewers, washed the corn with the purified water in his cup, and roasted them by the fire.

Meng Tao walked by while fetching water and sneered: “You should really eat it fast, otherwise how will you carry it tomorrow?”

Da Bei: “Do you want some?”

Meng Tao laughed, pulling at his swollen lip: “You guys keep such ‘great’ stuff for yourselves.”

Da Bei said impatiently: “If you aren’t eating, can you shut up?”

Meng Tao: “I’m talking to Li Xiao.”

Da Bei, who had disliked Meng Tao for a long time, stood up to snap back but was stopped by Li Xiao.

Li Xiao said casually: “Don’t make it hard for Meng Tao. Look at his mouth; it’s so swollen he can’t even open it—how would he be able to bite into corn?”

Meng Tao’s expression changed instantly, and his smile vanished. Da Bei sat back down and rolled his eyes at him: “Your mouth’s too swollen to open, yet you’re still this bitter.”

Finding himself humiliated, Meng Tao huffed and returned to his own team.

The prize corn wasn’t a mutant variety, and after a simple roasting, it gave off a rich, fragrant aroma. Students kept glancing toward Li Xiao’s side, swallowing desperately, their stomachs growling. Li Xiao acted as if he were completely unaware of the eager gazes around him; he blew on a roasted cob and began to eat it himself. He was handsome, and it seemed like the corn in his hand tasted better than normal.

Song Jin appreciated the beauty while chewing on a nutrient pack. Although nutrient packs were “junk food,” at least they were clean. But seeing Li Xiao eating so happily, he felt that deadly urge to join him.

Noticing Song Jin’s gaze, Li Xiao tilted his head: “Is there something on my face?”

Song Jin: “Is it sweet?”

Li Xiao: “Yes.”

Without a word, Song Jin grabbed one and took a bite, only to have his breath hitched by the heat. Seeing his pretty features scrunched together, Li Xiao laughed: “I’m not fighting you for it.”

Song Jin blew on it vigorously, chewing with puffed-out cheeks. The taste was indeed good—better than the nutrient packs.

The four people sitting around the fire: “…”

Something about the atmosphere between these two makes it hard for others to join in.

After taking a few bites, Li Xiao realized the bait had been taken and gave Jiang Hao a look. Jiang Hao understood, took a few roasted corns, and gave them to the group nearby: “Do you guys want to eat? We can’t finish all this anyway.”

“How could we be so rude?” the students said, but reached out and took the corn immediately.

Qian Can turned around and beckoned to the others: “If you want some, go take them. My team’s two bosses are treating everyone tonight.”

The others were amused.

“Thanks, Boss.”

“Then we won’t be polite.”

The group went to take corn, and while they were at it, they grabbed some green onions. If they didn’t help consume some, carrying such a huge bundle tomorrow would be fatal. Over a hundred people ate almost the entire sack of corn.

Shortly after, a notification popped up on everyone’s scoring device:

[Your performance in the swarm assessment was excellent. System rating: 10. Instructor team average rating: 9.9. Additional points awarded: +100.]

Li Xiao and Song Jin received +100, Qian Can’s group of four +90, and other teams received between 10 and 50 points.

Meng Tao looked at the points deduction notice on his screen, his stomach churning with anger:

[Your judgment regarding swarm movements and crises was inadequate. Points: -20.]

One deduction meant he hadn’t gained a single point.

As the sky began to darken, the students, full and satisfied, prepared to set up tents and assign shifts for the night. Song Jin returned after washing his hands and, seeing Li Xiao staring blankly at the sky, joked: “Don’t tell me you’re homesick.”

“It’s going to pour,” Li Xiao said, surveying their surroundings. “The terrain here is too low. We need to find a higher spot to set up camp.”

When the swarm came, he had sensed a subtle change in humidity and air pressure, and now that feeling was even more pronounced. Song Jin couldn’t sense it, but remembering the swarm that had suddenly run away, he thought there was some credibility to the claim: “If we go, we only have that place.”

To the left was a small, barren hill that wasn’t very high. There were several natural rock caves nearby, and one glance was enough to see if there were dangers. Some students who had already set up tents were told to move, but they were skeptical. This sky doesn’t look like it’s going to rain, does it?

Li Xiao didn’t necessarily have to bring this whole crowd with him; he’d given the information, and whether they believed it was their own business. Jiang Hao threw the remaining green onions into the back of the vehicle and drove a team toward the hill. The students looked at each other, and some chose to trust Li Xiao, packing up their things to leave.

The weather changed in an instant. Within ten minutes, a layer of dark clouds piled up in the sky. Just as they reached the foot of the hill, the raindrops began to fall.

A torrential downpour began; visibility dropped sharply, and the muddy, waterlogged ground made it easy to slip, making the journey difficult. Qian Can let Song Jin get into the vehicle, but was refused. He muttered: “Unbelievable. The earring guy’s mouth is more accurate than the weather forecast.”

Qin Le turned his head back toward the beach they had just camped at; mountain water was pouring down, and that area was already flooded.

Upon reaching the hillside, Li Xiao looked for a cave to shelter from the rain and heard a few shouts. On a hill across a mountain ravine, a group of students were fleeing with a large herd of mutant wild boars following them. Li Xiao frowned slightly. There was no path in front of that hill, and the ravine below was being scoured by rainwater, the current fast and dangerous—it was a dead end.

“Their luck is even worse than ours,” Song Jin said, standing on the roof of the vehicle in the heavy rain and watching that direction. “There are no trees nearby, the soil quality is loose, and the launcher’s claws won’t hold.”

Li Xiao: “Jumping into the ravine is also dangerous.” Even if they activated their life-saving airbags, there was no guarantee of safety in the torrential water. The edge of the hillside was already beginning to landslide, and one student almost fell. Li Xiao noticed two exchange students among them and knocked on the roof, saying to Jiang Hao: “Go save them.”

The students in the back also noticed the situation across the way and gasped.

“That’s too dangerous! Should we call for rescue for them?!”

“But if you call for rescue, you’re disqualified!”

In the warship’s monitoring cabin, the staff sitting at the console received a system warning and reported loudly: “Sudden torrential rain in Zone D9; twenty-three students are trapped on a hillside. Should we call the rescue team?!”

Chen Xing and the group of instructors looked sharply at the monitoring screen that popped up, their expressions serious.

“This is bad, call the rescue team.”

“Why would they panic and run that way? Their training is clearly insufficient.”

“Experience is accumulated slowly in real combat; they are only first-years, after all.”

Seeing the excavator appearing in the corner of the screen, Chen Xing suddenly raised his hand to interrupt: “Wait! Have the rescue team stand by in the vicinity first! They’re thinking of a way!”

Chen Xing stared intently at the excavator gradually approaching the edge of the hill, repeating with pressed excitement: “They’re thinking of a way!”

Q303 Exam Hall.

The excavator stopped at the edge of the hillside, and the mechanical arm reached toward the other side. The mechanical arm was ten meters long; stretching it out wasn’t enough, but the remaining three-plus meters was a distance they could jump across.

In the torrential rain, everyone shouted to the other side of the ravine: “Hurry up! Come over!”

The students nearby saw the mechanical arm. Seeing wild boars running down from the forest in the distance, they didn’t hesitate, taking a few steps to sprint and jump onto the mechanical arm, crawling forward along it.

The heavy rain caused a landslide. A piece of ground underneath the excavator hung in mid-air, and the mechanical arm shook violently.

“Ah—!”

More than a dozen students clung tightly to the mechanical arm, not daring to move.

Jiang Hao stabilized the vehicle and said anxiously: “Big Brother, if we don’t reverse a bit more, it’s too dangerous!”

The weight of the excavator pressed on the edge of the hill; no one knew how much longer it would hold, and they might all flip down into the ravine together with the car.

Li Xiao quickly observed the surroundings and found a tree on both the left and right that wasn’t too small. He took out his launcher, just about to speak, when he saw Song Jin had already tied a rope to a tree more than twenty meters away on the left.

Noticing Li Xiao’s gaze, Song Jin urged: “What are you looking at? Hurry.”

Li Xiao didn’t say anything more. He fired the rope to bind the tree on the right, threaded the handle through the open rear window, and locked it together with Song Jin’s launcher handle. The two connected ropes held the excavator firmly in place.

Song Jin: “Tell them to speed it up!”

All the students shouted in unison in the rain.

The first student successfully crawled to the front of the vehicle, panting, legs weak, unable to finish even a “thank you.”

“Oh no, so many bugs!” someone in the crowd screamed.

Countless bowl-sized ticks were crawling out of rock crevices from all directions to avoid the rain, covering the entire hillside.

Qin Le: “Mutant ticks suck blood, be careful!”

A shadow flickered in his peripheral vision. Li Xiao’s military saber was drawn, sweeping across as a mutant Harp Frog half the height of a person fell to the ground, its internal organs sliding out of the wound and flowing all over the ground.

“So many mutant frogs are crawling up from the ravine!” Qian Can exclaimed.

Harp Frogs ate ticks, but since they were in the center of the battlefield, they were inevitably going to be affected.

Li Xiao: “Watch out for the Harp Frogs’ mucus; don’t stand directly in front of them!”

Song Jin: “Use the green onions to sweep the bugs away! As long as the bugs don’t get close, the Harp Frogs won’t come over!”

The two hadn’t discussed it, but they tacitly organized the students on the left and right sides to fight the swarm.

The torrential rain continued, and another chunk of the hillside fell away. The excavator’s wheels were half-suspended in the air. The mechanical arm shook violently, even pulling the anchored tree sideways. There were no more trees around that could be anchored. Seeing this, Qin Le called to Qian Can and the surrounding students to bind their launcher ropes to the excavator and pull backward with all their might. Seeing this, other students took out their launchers and followed suit.

The excavator was bound by dozens of ropes, suspended on the edge of the hillside.

Students crawled over one after another, but there were still a few people on the other side who were far away, chased by wild boars and unable to find a chance to get close to the mechanical arm.

Qian Can pulled his launcher with one hand while dealing with ticks and Harp Frogs. His vision was a blur in the heavy rain, and he cursed: “Are they taking a walk?! Why aren’t they over here yet?!”

A high-pitched screech came from high above, and Li Xiao looked up abruptly. Several mutant Imperial Eagles with wingspans of nearly five meters flew over from the distance, circling above the mountain ravine. Imperial Eagle feathers were waterproof, and they loved to hunt on rainy days—all small animals were on their menu.

Li Xiao frowned, reminding everyone: “Watch out for the Imperial Eagles!”

As soon as he finished speaking, an Imperial Eagle flew low, its sharp claws aimed at Da Bei’s head. If that claw hit, it would crack even a skull made of steel. Da Bei’s eyes widened, and he crouched down abruptly.

Song Jin pulled out his military saber and threw it hard, accurately piercing the Imperial Eagle’s neck. The Imperial Eagle gave a miserable shriek and flapped its wings, crashing to the side. Song Jin grabbed a student’s launcher, wrapped the rope around the hilt of the saber, and pulled it out.

Just as he caught the saber, he heard movement behind him. Before he could turn around, Li Xiao pressed him down by the waist. The Imperial Eagle’s claws grazed the top of their heads.

The smell of Harp Frog blood would attract more Imperial Eagles; things couldn’t go on like this. Li Xiao grabbed a launcher from the backpack of a student who had just crawled over, noticing Qi Ge following behind him in his peripheral vision.

In the torrential rain, their eyes met. Li Xiao suddenly smelled a familiar scent of rotting tomatoes, and his heart tightened, as if squeezed hard by a beast’s claw.

Qi Ge stared at him. As they brushed past each other, he said in a voice only the two of them could hear: “Jump down.”

Song Jin had just finished dealing with two Harp Frogs when he smelled a strange odor. He turned around suspiciously, only to see Li Xiao jump off the hillside with resolute determination, passing by him. Before he could even think, he reached out to grab him, but was a step too late.

“Li Xiao!”

Song Jin realized something and looked sharply at Qi Ge, but the latter got off the excavator like nothing had happened, a suspicious smile on his lips.

Mental control?

Song Jin walked toward the front of the vehicle with a gloomy face, preparing to go down to find him, when an Imperial Eagle screeched and dived from behind. He rolled on the ground, holding his military saber across to block the Imperial Eagle’s claws.

In his peripheral vision, a figure flew up rapidly from below the ravine. A flash of steel passed, the Imperial Eagle’s blood splashed, and it plummeted straight down into the ravine.

Song Jin looked up. Li Xiao was hanging high in the sky with a rope bound to the leg of another Imperial Eagle. The military saber in his hand was stained red with blood, and a large amount of rainwater mixed with blood dripped from the tip of the blade. The intimidating aura he exuded didn’t look like someone who had been controlled at all.