A few moments after they started cheering, a blinding flash of light filled the place. When Shen recovered his sight, he saw that probably everyone who had died was now on the bleachers. They looked incorporeal though, transparent, like ghosts.

If he had to guess, they had been revived but no longer participated in the battle. The middle boss fight was over. They had been brought here for something else.

Tutorial - 3rd Stage - Middle Boss

Once upon a time, the newly established Alliance Against the Void found itself with irreconcilable disagreements.

On every moment of relief from the fight, they fought each other rather than plan how to deal with the true enemy.

The Void saw it, waited, and then struck.

A black bolt came from the skies and hit the center of the grassland.

A Void Spawn was there.

Then another bolt came, and another, until thousands of Void Spawn were there. As more and more came, the stupider the thoughts in his mind became.

'Boundlessness has failed me,' his mind whispered to itself. 'Reality has failed me. My Emperor has failed me. My father is gone. I'm all alone in the multiverse. People reject me. I should leave forever. I should go. There's a better alternative out there, easier, more subtle. Like zephyr. Live the Void.'

Shen ignored it easily this time when compared to last time. His Path was much more stable, and thus so was he. He still felt a slight pull to just join the Void, but it wasn't strong enough.

Others couldn't say the same.

Five hundred elites had won against the "middle boss." One of them stepped ahead toward the Void Spawn as soon as there were a few dozen of the creatures. Other elites followed the more Void Spawn came. After thousands of Void Spawn had appeared, almost one hundred people were moving slowly toward them.

"Wake them up!" Evelyn yelled with urgency. "If anyone stays infected, grab them! If they fight among themselves until only one remains, they'll turn! I haven't seen anyone who turned return to the tutorial! It's an undisclosed way to get kicked out of the tutorial!"

Shen realized only then how close he had been to failing when he almost fell to the Void. The sane people yelled and pulled the insane back. That was enough to wake up most of them, but at least a dozen remained "infected."

The infected started fighting back, but Evelyn's forewarning had been enough. They were properly held by their fellow elites.

Tutorial - 3rd Stage - Middle Boss

Countless worlds fell when the First Alliance fought against itself.

The survivors were too weakened to resist when the Void came.

Species were scattered throughout the universe. Those that could escape to other universes did so at a high cost. One of them stumbled upon the Primordials.

Only the strongest of us know more of the Primordials. They are a species so strong the Void doesn't dare to invade their galaxy. They only battle against Void Spawn when they, themselves, enter deep phase space to gather resources.

Primordials are not known for their kindness, but that one day, so long ago, one of them took pity on us.

They called her the Primordial Maiden.

She answered our call for help and picked the scattered survivors for the First Alliance through the universes. Then she gave them the Primordial Gift to grow strong enough to fight the Void: mana.

Blue energy fell from the skies, a beam of pure power and destruction. Shen felt pressured despite it not being aimed at him. The world seemed heavy, and most elites fell to their knees.

The wide beam fell on the Void Spawn, and they screamed in terror. It was a scream so primal and terrifying, like myriad souls being tortured, that Shen felt his skin crawl.

But silence soon reigned again. The beam dissipated, and a scorched area was all that remained; the Void Spawn were gone.

Tutorial - 3rd Stage - Middle Boss

The Primordials taught the Second Alliance, currently called Multiverse Alliance, how to produce and harness the power of mana. The Alliance learned quickly, and they fought back. Untold years ago, we found you.

In the meantime, we have found quarrels are impossible to avoid when two or more beings are in the same space. We regulate infighting to prevent a new disaster from happening.

It's never enough. Enmity breeds enmity. The Alliance weakens itself, and sooner or later, a planet or a species is lost forever.

If you were to fight the Void Spawn you saw, you would've died. While you fought among yourselves, the Void waited.

The Void is always waiting.

Remember it well.

A few moments later, they were teleported away.

Shen reappeared back where he had been when the system took them to the middle boss, in the middle of the AP Arena. It seemed all who had been there also came back to it.

Tutorial - 3rd Stage - Middle Boss

The elites have won.

The deferred points will be rewarded to the winners.

| 423,770 AP received

| Total AP: 644,964

Shen first reaction was of utter surprise. He had killed over forty thousand people?!

Then came pride. There had been less than two hundred thousand regulars. He alone had dealt with a fifth of them.

And then came suspicion.

Shen considered his resolve as significant as the next mortal, maybe more. He could deal with long periods of boredom or repetition because he had been trained as a Keeper of Knowledge. Though he hadn't been a cultivator back then, a lot of the training involved things that cultivators were trained on, like meditation and self-control. One couldn't read the same books for years without end otherwise.

Likewise, cultivating helped one's drive. Laws were things beyond the mortal mind, and by connecting with Concepts, Shen evolved. He became more than a mortal, yet less than an immortal. His Path cemented his will and kept his determination where others might waver.

But something was different in this tutorial.

Shen had killed forty thousand people without faltering even once. His only pause had been to watch Scott's group fight, then to strategize with Evelyn's group. Such single-minded focus made no sense. He didn't think he had low willpower, but he wasn't that good.

Shen had noticed it in the first stage's final boss, too, but had deluded himself in that he was just that good. Not anymore.

The system had changed their minds and hadn't told them.

"How much for a class explaining how to break free from a mental compulsion that would make you single-mindedly pursue any goal?" he asked.

He wouldn't say the modification to his very mind wasn't valuable—it was great, in fact—but he wanted to know how to get rid of it if he wanted. And if he found how to do that, he might also discover other ways his mind was being meddled with.

Instead of a quote, he got a system message.

Tutorial - Time Perception Dilatation

The Multiverse Alliance constantly evolves to fight the Void. Warfare has become a precise science, perfected day after day over tens of thousands of years.

That had led to multiple improvements. One of them is changing our Guardians' bodies to have health points rather than the most standard physiological processes seen in unchanged creatures. That alone increased survivability in the front lines by nothing less than five hundred percent.

Likewise, after long research, we concluded that the passage of time affects young beings in undesirable ways. They lack the perspective of a long existence to learn to focus on what truly matters.

The longer a young being is subjected to the same task, the more likely they are to grow bored, distracted, lax, or impatient.

Growing lax in guard duty when the Void can attack at any minute is undesirable. Getting impatient while under siege from the Void Spawn can have unimaginable consequences.

A step was taken to change that: time perception dilation.

When perception of time gets dilated, one doesn't feel the passage of time as much. Weeks feel like hours, days like minutes.

We understand your concern, but the Multiverse Alliance operates under what your world would call martial law. Not exactly, but close enough. Some deliberations respect the right to privacy and personal property. Some don't.

We are at war, and sacrifices must be made.

As such, all Guardians below C-rank have their minds changed. Removal of it is against the law until one reaches the C-rank. Upon achieving C-rank, the change can be removed or reinstated at will.

We didn't reveal it to trainees beforehand because it had an 83% chance of causing widespread panic. Everyone shall be told at stage six. We ask of you to keep this secret.

Thank you for your understanding.

Shen frowned but understood it. Indeed, theirs were a war for survival. Prices did have to be paid.

He had read about multiple instances when that had happened on the Eternal Empire. Alien invasion wasn't common but not rare either. When they came in strength, the Eternal Empire mobilized in ways that affected everyone.

He was also no stranger to a need-to-know basis. Lying to your subjects was terrible, as he had told Mark, but it was a leader's burden and privilege to decide what was too dangerous to be revealed. The only issue was if they used that prerogative in dishonorable ways.

It wasn't pleasant to be the ignorant party, but he was no stranger to that. Even the Feng Clan hadn't revealed all their secrets to him, a mere mortal at the time.

Anyway, that answered his question. Time to get to his goals.

"Teleport to Alicia Winter."

He found himself in front of her bedroom an instant later. It opened by itself before he could knock. She was standing on the other side, looking at him with surprise. It was a mirror of when they had arrived at this stage.

Teleportation lights flashed around him in the corridor. He could probably leverage his participation in the middle boss fight to make allies, but he had to talk to her about keeping secret about the Empire as soon as possible.

"Can I enter?" he asked, remembering that bedrooms could only be entered by those with permission.

She nodded. He stepped ahead and closed the door as soon as the first person materialized outside.

Shen realized too late that he was alone in a girl's bedroom. That was... unbecoming. They had stayed alone in many places before during the second stage, but a bedroom was intimate. It was wrong of him to be there.

"Congratulations on your victory," Alicia said with a smile.

She didn't care; of course, she wouldn't. She had called him a prude before. Their cultures clashed.

Yet what was the alternative? As far as he knew, only bedrooms were private at this stage, and he needed to talk to her uninterrupted.

"Thank you," he said and smiled back. He had learned she appreciated facial expressions and did his best for her like a good friend.

"I thought I was imagining things," Alicia said, approached, and touched his arms. "Dude, you're thick. Did you grow up too? What did you do?" Before he could even get embarrassed by the touch, she removed it and touched his spear, tracing the mystical drawing with her fingers. "This spear looks cool as fuck."

"I ranked up and reached E- stats," he explained. "This is an E- spear."

"Cool!" She stepped back then sat on her bed. "Thanks for not killing me, by the way. Back in the middle boss, I mean."

Shen didn't hide his frown. "I would never."

She smiled sweetly. "I know. Weird as it is, I believe you."

"Why is that weird?"

Alicia patted her bed. "Sit, we gotta talk." Shen didn't move; sitting on the same bed as her would be way too intimate. She rolled her eyes but didn't insist. "I got... an offer. At first, I didn't understand why they wanted me, but it became clear when I saw you in the middle boss. You're way above everyone else. I need to tell you some things about me, then about the sneaky, sneaky Alliance."