Chapter 78: Chapter 78: Shock

Vice-Captain Meridian, observation deck:

“Did everyone see that?”

The observation deck had gone silent. Twenty Federation officers, all of them experienced combat veterans, all of them watching the assessment feeds with expressions ranging from shock to disbelief.

The main display showed tactical overlays of the entire battlefield. Hundreds of candidates engaged across different sections, point totals updating in real-time beside each name.

Two names sat at the top of the leaderboard, both showing identical numbers:

Runar Cross: 10,000,000 Celestia Stormwind: 10,000,000

Vice-Captain Meridian rewound the footage. Watched it again at normal speed.

The boy—Runar Cross, Satellite Orbit, Stage unknown according to his file—appeared in open space and raised his hand. His domain deployed instantly, a perfect sphere of spatial manipulation that locked down everything within its radius.

Then the killing started.

Meridian had seen spatial techniques before. Had fought alongside Space Law masters, watched them demonstrate what complete mastery looked like.

This was different.

The spatial attacks deployed simultaneously across the entire domain. Not sequentially—simultaneously. Hundreds of different techniques executing at the same time, each one controlled independently, each one achieving its intended effect with perfect precision.

That required processing power that shouldn’t be possible. The mental coordination to maintain a fifty-thousand-kilometer domain while executing hundreds of techniques simultaneously…

“He’s using parallel processing,” one of the other officers said quietly. “Has to be. The only way to control that many techniques at once is multiple thought streams operating independently.”

“How many streams?” Meridian asked.

“Based on the attack complexity? Minimum fifty. Probably more.”

Fifty parallel thought streams. The officer corps’ best theoretical maximum was forty, and that was after decades of training and mental refinement techniques.

Well apart from those freakish genius in the academy.

But this kid was sixteen years old.

Meridian switched to Celestia Stormwind’s feed.

The girl moved through space like physics was optional. Time Law, Space Law, Void Law all working in perfect fusion. Her spear killed everything it touched, and it touched targets across distances that made conventional weapons look primitive.

“Law fusion,” another officer observed. “Five Laws working in complete harmony. I’ve never seen fusion that perfect.”

“Neither have I.” Meridian used her authority to check Celestia’s file.

Satellite Orbit, Stage unknown.

Law mastery: unknown

But from what she was seeing it was a perfect fusion capability.

Combat power assessment: Insufficient Status level.

Then she checked Runar’s file too, it was the same result, she could only check their name and age.

This surprised her, it had to be known she was a soldier with plenty of battle merits and she couldn’t check Runar and Celestia file.

The file had to be wrong. Meridian pulled up the combat recording again and analyzed the actual power output.

Not wrong. If anything, understated. The girl’s attacks were hitting harder than Peak Supernova. She was operating at Early Neutron Star combat levels.

“Captain Vael?” Meridian activated the communication channel.

Captain Vael’s voice came through immediately. “I’m watching the same feeds. Yes, they’re real. Yes, those are their actual power levels. No, I don’t understand how either.”

“They maxed out points in seven seconds.”

“I’m aware.”

“They killed fifteen thousand pirates including nine Star Fusion cultivators.”

“Also aware.”

Meridian looked at the main display again. The two names at the top of the leaderboard, both showing maximum points while everyone else was still in the hundreds of thousands.

“We’ve got monsters in this batch,” she said quietly.

“Two of them,” Vael confirmed. “The rest are geniuses. Those two are something else entirely.”

On screen, Runar Cross and Celestia Stormwind sat peacefully on the Absolute Infinity’s hull, watching the other candidates fight.

Marcus Sunfire’s perspective:

Marcus incinerated another Stellar Ignition pirate with a compressed fire technique and checked his point total: 389,000.

Good progress. He’d been fighting for maybe three minutes, killing efficiently, using techniques that maximized damage while conserving qi. His combat style was aggressive—overwhelming offense, constant pressure, make the enemy react instead of act.

It was working. Pirates died quickly when you hit them hard enough that their defenses didn’t matter.

He spotted another formation approaching. Fifty pirates, mixed realms. Marcus gathered qi and prepared a large-scale attack. Flames erupted around his body, condensing into a massive sphere that he launched at the formation. The technique detonated on impact, creating an explosion that consumed everything within a hundred-meter radius.

Two thousand points added to his total: 391,000.

He was on pace to hit the hundred thousand minimum easily. Probably finish with five or six hundred thousand if he maintained this rate.

Then he noticed the leaderboard update.

The assessment system displayed top performers in real-time. Rankings visible to all candidates as motivation and competition.

Marcus had been watching his name climb steadily. Started at position forty-seven, moved up to thirty-two, currently sitting at nineteenth place.

But the top two positions…

1. Runar Cross: 10,000,000

2. Celestia Stormwind: 10,000,000

Ten million. Maximum points.

Both of them.

Marcus stared at the numbers. That couldn’t be right. The assessment had started maybe four minutes ago. Maximum points was ten million. That required killing—

He did the math quickly. Even focusing exclusively on Star Fusion pirates at two million points each, you’d need to kill five of them. And Star Fusion pirates weren’t easy targets. They had 100% Law mastery and decades of combat experience.

Marcus had been avoiding Star Fusion pirates specifically because they were too dangerous to engage.

So how had those two maxed out points in four minutes?

He pulled up their position markers on his tactical display. Found them sitting on the hull about eight kilometers from his location.

Just sitting there. Not fighting. Not moving.

Because they were already done.

“What the fuck?” Marcus said to empty space.

Khan Storm’s perspective:

Khan killed another Solar Flare pirate with a lightning technique that left the body charred and smoking. Twenty thousand points added to his total: 312,000.

He was fighting well. Using his Lightning Law mastery to maximum effect, striking fast and hard, eliminating targets before they could mount effective defense. His cultivation was Satellite Orbit Stage 170, and his combat power was solidly in the Solar Flare realm.

Better than most of the other candidates.

Not better than the two names at the top of the leaderboard.

Khan had noticed them immediately when the rankings appeared. Runar Cross and Celestia Stormwind, both showing ten million points while everyone else was still climbing toward their first hundred thousand.

Looking at the leaderboard, Khan reconsidered his assumptions.

Ten million points in four minutes.

That wasn’t genius-level performance. That was something else entirely.

Lyra Moon’s perspective:

Lyra’s illusions made her invisible to normal perception. She moved through the battlefield like a ghost, appearing behind high-value targets, eliminating them with precise strikes, disappearing before anyone noticed.

Her point total climbed steadily: 447,000.

Good progress. Her combat style relied on stealth and efficiency rather than overwhelming power. Kill the valuable targets quietly, avoid attention, accumulate points through intelligence instead of brute force.

It was working perfectly until she saw the leaderboard.

Two names at maximum points. Both of them candidates she recognized from the shuttle bay briefing.

Runar Cross—the silver-haired boy who’d stood quietly near the back. Celestia Stormwind—the girl with the spear who’d stayed close to him.

Lyra had marked them as potential competitors based on their spiritual pressure and the way they carried themselves. Strong, definitely. Probably top ten material.

Not this strong.

Maximum points in four minutes wasn’t just strong. It was overwhelming. Dominating. The kind of performance that put you in a completely different category from everyone else.

Lyra adjusted her strategy immediately. Competition for top rankings was pointless when two people had already maxed out. Better to focus on securing a solid placement in the upper tier, maybe top twenty, and save energy for future assessments.

She activated her illusions and moved toward a new cluster of pirates.

The hull of the Absolute Infinity:

The clone and Celestia sat peacefully, watching the battle continue around them.

Space shattered in the distance. Some candidate deployed a technique powerful enough to create spatial tears—cracks in reality that glowed with unstable energy before the universe’s self-repair mechanisms sealed them. The shockwave from that attack should have propagated across the entire system, potentially damaging the local star.

It didn’t. Hundreds of domains absorbed the shockwave before it could spread. Every candidate strong enough to deploy domain-level techniques had done so, creating overlapping barriers that contained the destruction. The pirates had deployed their own domains as well—the Star Fusion cultivators maintaining spatial locks that prevented stray attacks from escaping the battlefield.

A battle of this scale should have destroyed the galaxy they were in. Hundreds of Satellite Orbit cultivators with Law mastery, thousands of Planetary Core and higher pirates, techniques being deployed that carried planet-destroying power.

All of it contained within carefully maintained boundaries. Domains overlapping, formations reinforcing, spatial barriers redirecting stray energy. The Absolute Infinity’s own defensive arrays contributed as well, creating a massive sphere of protection that kept the combat localized.

Outside that sphere, the Kaelen System continued undisturbed. Stars burned normally. Planets orbited peacefully. The only indication of the massive battle happening in one small region was the spatial distortions visible to high-level scanners.

“Marcus is at four hundred thousand,” Celestia observed.

The clone checked the leaderboard through his system interface. “Khan’s at three-twenty. Lyra’s at four-fifty.”

“She’s efficient.”

“Illusion techniques let her target high-value pirates without fighting through formations.” He watched Lyra’s marker on the tactical display as she moved through the battlefield like a ghost. “Smart approach.”

More candidates were hitting their hundred-thousand-point minimums. The lower-ranked ones would struggle to reach that threshold, but anyone in the top fifty would make it easily.

The assessment would probably run for another few hours. Let everyone accumulate enough points to establish clear rankings, give the weaker candidates time to hit minimum requirements, ensure thorough evaluation of combat capabilities.

For the clone and Celestia, their evaluation was complete. Maximum points, overwhelming performance, established dominance without question.

Now they could relax and watch the others work.

A Stellar Ignition pirate flew past their position, pursued by another candidate. The pirate saw them sitting on the hull and immediately changed direction, abandoning his escape route to avoid coming within five kilometers.

The clone smiled slightly.

Smart pirate.

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