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nTo have students train to resist pirate incursions if random designs would make them extremely adaptable to such situations should they happen. A student who went through this world many times would be a nightmare for a pirate crew, and would probably be their last ‘score’.

nDante had an interest in these worlds for sure. He was going to select one of them to partake in and harvest as many Supercoins as he could within reason.

nHe first looked at the fourth and fifth most visited worlds just to be sure.

nWorld Name: Rising Star

nWorld Owner: Eternal Academy

nWorld Creator: Eternal Academy

nWorld Size: Medium

nWorld Type: Instanced

nWorld Genre: War

nBionics Allowed: Yes

nPsionics Allowed: Yes

nSuperpowers Allowed: No

nRequirements: Student ID

nDuration: 90 days

nDescription: This is a world that has been styled in a medieval setting. You are a random footsoldier assigned to one of the various armies of the kingdom you are serving, thrust into full-blown war as your King has ambitions to rule the entire continent.

nObjectives: Survive for 90 days or rise through the ranks to become a General.

nLimitations: Your Bionics and Psionics will be limited to your military Rank in terms of power, and all entities in this world have the same power as you per rank.

nProvisions: You are given free rein to raise your rank through any means you can think of.

nDante nodded his head. This world was perfect for the students who wanted to experience the hierarchy of power, something that was integral to creating great leaders.

nIt was often why CEOs of companies would not immediately appoint their sons as leaders but have them start as clerks and then rise up. Without the experience of tasting the life of a worker at each rank, you would never be able to understand or lead them truly.

nIt wouldn’t even really be your fault, but just an unfortunate matter of disconnect. Your employee was speaking language A and you were speaking language B, how could you possibly understand each other?

nDante was not sure why they used a medieval world, but then that would negate hot weapons which kinda ruined the hierarchy. A person with a plasma rifle and no bionics could shoot down a person with level 5 military bionics.

nObviously, that was not very conducive to training a batch of capable leaders. Best to put them in a world limited to cold weapons where they could display the full range of their physical and mental ability to take advantage of the situation.

nWorld Name: Pioneer

nWorld Owner: Eternal Academy

nWorld Creator: Eternal Academy

nWorld Size: Medium

nWorld Type: Instanced

nWorld Genre: Exploration

nBionics Allowed: Yes

nPsionics Allowed: Yes

nSuperpowers Allowed: Yes

nRequirements: Student ID

nDuration: Unlimited

nDescription: You were traveling through space in your ship with your crew and discovered a lush planet filled with life. You set up a blockade in orbit and went down with a shuttle to explore and map the planet as best as you could, either to claim it as your own property or sell it in an auction.

nObjectives: Map as much of this world as you can.

nLimitations: The situation differs each time and there may be natives who are hostile, among other hazards.

nProvisions: You have a strong crew to assist you and a lot of good equipment to work with.

nAh, another sensible world. In this ever-expanding universe, it was a fact that there was more than 50% of it that was undiscovered and uncharted.

nIt was a frequent occurrence in society that a person would come upon a new planet in uncharted space, and there were whole professions and industries centered around such a thing.

nFortunately, there was a world like this to help students go through the process of mapping out a discovered world. After all, you can’t just lay claim to what you don’t know.

nThere were rules about such a thing.

nDante looked at these five worlds and juggled them in his head. He glanced at his schedule and saw that his first superpower class in the Black Land would occur in two days with Xue Bing, so he had time.

nIn the interim, he could set himself up in one of these worlds and then continue later. The reason why most students even required four years and above of study in this academy, and in all learning institutions of all grades, was the fact that the Virtual Worlds in the Etraverse do not have time dilation.

nSo if a world says 30 days, it meant 30 days in reality too would pass by the time you were done. So not only did you need time to complete some higher-difficulty words, but you also needed to balance it with your real schedule.

nFortunately, it’s not like when you began a world, you were forced to stay in it till you were done. As long as your avatar or body within the world was left in a safe place, you could log out of the quantum universe and do other things in reality then pop back in.

nHowever, this too was susceptible to poor timing. For example, the Pirate Incursion world had a 1-day timer, so if you logged out to attend to an emergency that took hours or a full day, you would likely log back in to see that time had elapsed and you had failed. 𝑜𝘷𝑙.𝘰𝑟𝑔

nWith this in mind, Dante chose the first world, the Apocalypse World to start. Not only was it the number 1 world, but he could definitely use 2 days to hide himself somewhere when it was time for his session at the Black Land.

nAs for other worlds, their timers were either too short, or in the case of the Rising Star world was in constant war, so where could he hide? In 2 days, he could not become a general and if he missed any postings or orders, that would be a dereliction of duty.

nDante chose the most popular world and was taken to a login screen. Here, his student ID was entered and his name was generated as his real name. His character avatar was also modeled after himself 100% and he had no say in this, nor did any student.

nAs you could imagine, the Eternal Academy disdained such methods. You were in a fictional virtual world for the love of god, who do you think you are that only you must hide your precious face?

nBecause of revenge? Then what were you doing taking up a precious slot in this prestigious academy for elites? Go back home and apply to some lesser institution where you can be protected and coddled like a baby!

nAfter all of that, Dante was presented with an overview map of the entire world, which was about the size of half of earth. It was a Pangaea-like continent with a few settlements and large cities marked as territories he could be bound to.

nThe rest was ruined wasteland and even some marked danger zones as well as death zones where even the toughest would die unless they had the luck of the cosmos on their back.

nDante could also see the ‘player’ population of each city and choose the most remote one with the least players called ‘The Fallout Shelter’. However, he had already been informed through his AI chip by the world that he would not conveniently drop into the city at the start.

nNo, rather he would be spawned in a random place within the territory of this city and have to make his way over quickly through the dangerous wasteland to seek shelter.

nLuckily, all players were given an ‘awakened’ superpower the moment they dropped into the world from the highly concentrated radiation, which also acts as the reason you survived all this while out of safety in terms of backstory.

nThe superpower was random, and what everyone got varied. Those who already had superpowers would get an extra one for free for fairness’ sake, so if your base superpower was fire control, you could unlock another one like flight!

nDante finished his assessment and descended into the world. It wasn’t dramatic or anything, the ‘screen’ blacked out and he found himself kneeling in a bush, warily watching a bunch of mutated two-headed dogs that were tearing a nearby corpse up.

nDante looked down to see his tattered clothes which were the same as the corpse being torn up and ascertained that they had likely traveled together all this while as partners and well, something clearly happened.

nDante remained still while in the bush, not daring to move since there were about 5 of the mutated dogs there. If they spotted him, with their strength and numbers, he would follow the person on the ground and be eliminated within seconds of arriving.

nHe certainly wouldn’t be the first as many people had landed in worse situations due to bad luck, but it would certainly be embarrassing.

nHe took his eyes off the dogs for a second and opened his current in-world SDI. This did not require the AI chips which were blocked, and was a feature of every virtual world.

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