The Era of Gods

A gaze fell upon her, and an aged voice rose:

“Teacher Jin Sisi, I hear you already have a candidate in mind?”

She knew what the voice was referring to and nodded respectfully in response:

“Your Excellency, the Principal, yes.”

Murmurs rippled through the surroundings.

The aged voice continued:

“This is your prerogative as the homeroom teacher of the elite class, and in principle, I should not intervene. But as an elder, someone who has watched you grow, I must remind you here, those few top resources you have the power to distribute freely, but according to school regulations, the investment of each resource must yield a corresponding return. I will not interfere with whom you favor, but the student you favor must achieve corresponding results in the midterm exams. If they fail to meet the minimum standard, you will lose the right to allocate that resource next time.”

“I understand!”

She replied expressionlessly.

“It’s best that way.”

The aged voice didn’t mean to blame her, as the tone was neutral and fair, and after speaking to the others, said:

“This midterm exam is both an evaluation of your past semester and relates to the resource allocation for the next term. The competition of the old man from Secondary School No. 1 and me is a minor matter. The consequences of good or bad grades are clearer to you than to this old man. I won’t say more than necessary. Strive on your own!”

“Alright, the homeroom teachers of the other classes from Secondary School No. 2 are dismissed. Teacher Jin Sisi of the elite first class, stay behind.”

The homeroom teachers of Secondary School No. 2 stood up, saluted towards the center, and one by one, they disappeared, leaving only Jin Sisi sitting there unmoved.

Once the others had left, the aged voice sounded in her ear:

“Your luck isn’t great this time. We lost the last time, so for this opportunity for Radiance, out of ten slots, Secondary School No. 2 can only get four, with six going to Secondary School No. 1. Of the four slots you only have two to freely allocate, the other two to be fought over by the rest of the classes. You have no objections, do you?”

“None.”

“That’s good. You should know that many are dissatisfied with your sudden appointment as the homeroom teacher of the elite class, and many eyes are on you. The best way to shut them up is to leave them without anything to criticize. Work hard!”

“I will.”

“By the way, who is that student you favor? Send me their profile to see.”

“Sure.”

Exiting the conference room, Jin Sisi let out a breath. A flash of red light transformed into the towering figure of Counselor Zhu Hong, who asked:

“How did it go? How many slots do we have?”

“Two.”

“That’s a bit few, but normal. Anyway, other classes can’t threaten us. We only have Number One Middle School to compete with. Speaking of which, if there are only two slots, it’s confirmed that only Lin Xiao and Gu Xiaoming can go?”

“Barring any surprises, yes.”

“Then the others will either have to take the exams within the school or secure slots from their own clans.”

“Right, have you really taken a fancy to that kid?”

Jin Sisi shot a strange look her way, and Zhu Hong quickly waved her off:

“I meant your choice to support that student named Lin Xiao.”

“Yes.”

Zhu Hong looked up, pondered for a moment, and said:

“The student is indeed quite excellent, but it feels like something is still missing. Are you sure you don’t want to wait another year or two?”

Jin Sisi shook her head, her gaze firm:

“It’s him. I have a premonition—he’s different from the others.”

Zhu Hong shrugged:

“Alright then, I hope your intuition proves true and that he’ll give us a surprise one day.”

It was two hours later when Lin Xiao received a reply from his homeroom teacher. He did not question the delay, but simply asked about exchanging a few cards.

Exchanging four Golden Mythical Quality cards for twelve rare Quality Breeding Cards, merging three into one to create four Golden Mythical Quality Enhanced Breeding Cards to load into the Divine Realm, each lasting ten years for a total of forty years, just about mid-term exams.

Additionally, he exchanged two Fifth Level epic cards with the homeroom teacher for two three-star Mythical Quality Dwarf Cards, one with thirty Black Iron Dwarves, the other with ten Golden Dwarves.

The smaller the number, the lower the card level, but the Black Iron Dwarves and Golden Dwarves are both rare and powerful Dwarf races, hence the high quality of the cards.

Lin Xiao now has nine units of Creation Energy left, which may not be enough for major adjustments, but it’s still possible for the Grey Dwarves to absorb the excellent talents of the Black Iron and Golden Dwarf races.

Grey Dwarves are essentially the same as other Dwarf races, it’s just a matter of some having higher talents than others.

Lin Xiao used the Creation Magic Cube to decompose all thirty Black Iron Dwarves from the Iron Dwarf Card and ten Golden Dwarves from the Golden Dwarf Card, then consumed two units of Creation Energy to extract a talent from each of the two types of Dwarven Bloodline Essence.

Considering his limited Creation Energy, he didn’t extensively adjust the Grey Dwarves’ genes, but simply pruned their messy gene pool, made room, and fused the talents of both Black Iron and Golden Dwarves into it, turning it into Grey Dwarf talent.

It took four units of Creation Energy to extract the talents from the two Dwarf races, and another four units to prune the Grey Dwarf gene pool and fuse the talents, consuming a total of eight units of Creation Energy, birthing a new Dwarf race that combines the talents of three kinds of Dwarves.

Since no adjustments were made, the appearance of the newborn Dwarves did not change, except for their dark golden skin color; however, their potential and strength have indeed undergone enormous changes.

The talent of Black Iron Dwarves is called Black Iron Blood—immune to bleeding, poisoning, diseases, and curses below Legend level, reducing certain physical damage, and enhancing resistance to lethality and fatal wounds.

The talent of Golden Dwarves is called Golden Bloodline—immune to curses, fear, charm, and blindness effects below Legend level, reducing certain magical damage, and increasing resistance to all spell effects.

Lin Xiao remembered that Golden Dwarves have a powerful talent called Son of Earth, which could be excavated with enough Creation Energy.

Unfortunately, Creation Energy is limited and further excavation is not possible.

For now, there’s no way to proceed, so he’ll just keep it in mind and wait for sufficient Creation Energy next time.

The newly fused Earth Dwarves have been named by him, combining the two strong talents, and their strength…

“This is quite strong!”

Black Iron Blood reduces physical damage, Golden Bloodline reduces magical damage and spell resistance, plus a slew of immunities…

He was surprised to find that Earth Dwarves, after fusing these two talents, have a considerably high fighting power.

This talent, equipped with elite weapons and armor, can completely serve as the core force of the Divine Realm, fully capable of replacing the previously imagined Zoel Elves.

This is a pleasant surprise.

Just wait for their numbers to grow, and they will definitely be a formidable force.

For the time being, these Earth Dwarves were placed in the Earth Divine Realm; they quite enjoyed this environment filled with rocks and minerals. Previously, Lin Xiao didn’t know how many minerals he had plundered and moved into this massive Earth Element Domain, which was almost full. Now, at the foot of a mountain made from piles of minerals, they had started building a camp, vigorously excavating and constructing a city.

These Dwarves currently have no leader, and their level of faith is not very high, most being only casual believers, with less than one-fifth being True Believers, and only a dozen being Devout Believers—their level of faith is the lowest compared to other clans in the Divine Realm.

Slarda was already preparing a group of Priests to transfer over and raise the level of faith; he doesn’t require them to match other clans, but at the very least, all of them should be true believers to meet the standard.

This is also Lin Xiao’s minimum standard; how could his Divine Realm kin have anything less than True Believers?

Subsequently, time passed rather quietly; the theoretical classes that followed were all geared towards theory—about Magic Puppets and Golems, as well as the application of various war machineries in war.

Thus, the main content of the fifth major class was about them manually crafting all sorts of puppets and golems to pair with war machinery for combat, with each student allocated the same amount of materials to create various golems for battle.

This lesson was right up his alley. With the Tower of Truth, he had an entire race of Wise Goblins as his support, excelling in both theory and practice in this area, boasting an expertise that even some older college students who aren’t skilled in this aspect couldn’t compare with.

While other classmates were using Stone Golems or Armored Golems, he drew from the experience of the kin hero Alemente, who had painstakingly created Steel Golems, easily securing a very excellent ranking for his fifth major class.

With this, the five major classes of the previous semester had all concluded, and he, along with Gu Xiaoming, were the only two students to achieve excellent evaluations in all the major classes.

One day, Lin Xiao projected his will into the Earth Divine Realm where, after decades of reproduction and construction, a booming population of over twenty thousand Earth Dwarves had finally built a massive Dwarf city within the Earth Divine Realm. A huge statue of the Main God and Creator was escorted by hundreds of Earth Dwarves. Over twenty thousand Earth Dwarves knelt devoutly on the ground, watching the statue slowly moved to the center of the city.

Slarda himself descended to the Earth Divine Realm to preside over the city-building ceremony. Lin Xiao expended over ten million Power of Faith to bestow a large Divine Miracle, significantly boosting the faith of countless witnessing kin.

Main Divine Realm.

Over the decades, with his unwavering use of Reproductive Divine Extraordinary Abilities, coupled with the five-hundred percent reproduction speed bonus from the Enhanced Breeding Cards, and a strong call for procreation, the current total number of Shura Naga had doubled, exceeding twenty thousand.

With a large base number, the speed of reproduction also increased. Though still not fast, it’s certainly much better than the previous few dozen a year.

With a total of nearly twenty-two thousand Shura Naga, including 1254 children, the rest were all adult warriors.

With the Ancient Arena in operation for over thirty years, even if the chance of ascending to Transcendent was low, with continual training in the Arena over the years, there are now over two thousand one hundred Rank 6 Shura Naga warriors and thirty-six Rank 7 Shura Naga Knights.

This is still without the benefit of actual combat experience. If they had enough real battles, a large number of the eighteen thousand Rank 5 Naga warriors would break through their limits and ascend to Rank 6 Transcendence, and many Rank 6 Naga warriors would likewise break through and ascend to Rank 7 High Transcendence.