The People's God: Sacrificing Trillions to Ascend

Six Microcosm locusts now stood outside the portal. Their stats were abysmal across the board, but their 1,024 Attack was quite respectable. Against the invaders at this stage, they were essentially one-hit killers.

After arranging the locusts, Han Wu began drawing more units and checked his treasures and clearance rewards. The draws remained dismal, with over eighty percent being Common locusts.

Han Wu gave up on expecting anything worthwhile. He merged the locusts and stationed them near the portal as a cleanup force. The remaining units were distributed across the front, middle, and rear positions based on their roles.

After merging the special units he had drawn, Han Wu finally obtained a stronger unit. It was a Blood Wraith, the ultimate form of his recovery and enhancement evolution line. He placed it close to him so that it could continuously restore his HP.

[Blood Wraith: High Lord life form. Attack type: Corrupted Blood Rain (multi-target). Attack range: 100. Damage: 400. Attack interval: 1 second. Skill: Crimson Halo. It absorbs blood within the halo’s range to heal the host.]

With the Blood Wraith in place, Han Wu could keep his HP at peak levels indefinitely.

Then there were the treasures. The 5,000 Bloodthirst Bats had dropped 100 Bloodthirst Fangs. Han Wu merged them into one powerful treasure that boosted Attack and added poison and lifesteal effects. He equipped it on the Dark Curse Bug, which had the fastest attack speed among his units.

He obtained another SS rating for the current wave. He received a summoning scroll that allowed him to summon one unit from his divine realm, provided it was no higher than the Sage rank.

For an ordinary student, that would have been excellent. For Han Wu, it was useless. He had too many Sage life forms to even keep track of, so he randomly picked a Nuclear Locust from his massive roster.

[Nuclear Locust: Sage life form. Attack type: Nuclear Detonation (multi-target). Attack range: 200. Damage: 2,000. Attack interval: 1 minute. (After Self Detonation, the Nuclear Locust reforms 1 minute later and can attack again.)]

It was simple, brutal, and effective. Its huge range and high damage output were the Nuclear Locust’s greatest strengths. With it deployed, Han Wu was fairly certain that nothing in the next ten waves would get anywhere near him.

Before long, the fifth wave arrived. It was a Mammoth Legion, numbering 1,001 creatures. One thousand were Elite Mammoths, while the last one was a miniboss, a Heroic Duramammoth.

Han Wu shook his head in mild disappointment. He had been hoping for greater numbers, but the fifth wave had sent fewer creatures his way.

He checked the miniboss’ stats panel but only bothered looking at its HP. The Duramammoth had 5,000 HP, a figure worthy of a miniboss. It could survive two Nuclear Detonations and then some. However, its movement speed was slow, and Han Wu wondered whether it could even survive the Microcosm locusts guarding the portal.

As the fifth wave descended, the Mammoths marched proudly out of the portal. Their 1,000 HP was laughable, and their movement speed wasn’t fast either. All 1,000 of them were annihilated and devoured before they could get past the six locusts at the gate.[1]

Only the miniboss was strong enough to survive. The Duramammoth tanked the hits from the locusts, the Dark Curse Bug, and the Mechanical Locusts all at once before forcing its way through that brutal gauntlet. The effort cost it dearly, and it lost 3,400 HP in the process.

When the miniboss entered the Nuclear Locust’s attack range, a single Nuclear Detonation ended the fifth wave. The Duramammoth died without ever seeing what Han Wu looked like. It was quite a humiliating end for a miniboss.

Han Wu just shrugged and went back to setting up his defenses for the next wave.

***

Inside Imperial College, the third-year lecturers monitored every student’s progress through surveillance feeds. Han Wu’s progress was leagues ahead of everyone else, advancing at more than twice the pace of the second-place student, Qin Shuang.

The lecturers turned their attention to Han Wu’s channel and studied his unit lineup. What they saw was both expected and surprising. That roster was stronger than most students’ rosters would be at the fiftieth wave.

“This final exam is way too easy for Han Wu,” one lecturer said.

His remark resonated with the others.

“Well, obviously. Han Wu is the Dark God King now! If the Dark God King struggled with a little exam like this, that’d be an embarrassment to all God Kings,” another lecturer gushed, praising Han Wu without a second thought.

He didn’t even realize that Han Wu himself hadn’t become the Dark God King. That title belonged to Dark Locust, a unit of his core race.

“That’s not what I meant. I’m thinking that we should raise the difficulty for Han Wu. It’d keep him from getting bored,” the first lecturer suggested.

Every lecturer turned to look at Han Wu’s advisor, Saliya. As long as she approved, they could make it happen.

Saliya knew Han Wu was wasting his time at the current difficulty. However, as his advisor, she had a responsibility to him. An exam was still an exam, and they couldn’t just change the difficulty on a whim.

She was about to refuse when the Wisdom God King came down to inspect and overheard the suggestion.

Xu Hai glanced at the feed, where Han Wu looked on the verge of falling asleep from boredom, and waved his hand. “If I remember correctly, this final exam has a hundred waves. After the hundredth wave, students can choose Infinite Mode, right?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Saliya answered respectfully.

Xu Hai nodded. “Skip the remaining ninety-five waves. Throw them all at Han Wu at once, then open up Infinite Mode for him.”

Saliya felt a flicker of panic. “Your Majesty, wouldn’t that be too extreme a jump in difficulty?”

“For an ordinary student, sure. But for Han Wu, it’s just right. Go ahead and raise the difficulty. Save him from dying of boredom,” Xu Hai said as he watched Han Wu yawn from boredom.

He was Han Wu’s mentor and the future chancellor of Imperial College. His word was final, and Saliya had no choice but to comply. She immediately notified the civilization where Han Wu was stationed and switched the attack mode. Han Wu deserved a final exam that matched his strength.

As Saliya adjusted the exam difficulty, one lecturer quietly slipped out of the monitoring room, hurried back to his divine realm, and called an unregistered channel.

“The plan worked. It’s your move now,” he informed.

A raspy voice echoed from the other end. “Well done. Payment has been wired to your account. I’ll throw in a Profound Water Divine Pill as a bonus. It’ll help you comprehend your River Jurisdiction.”

“I can’t thank you enough. If anything like this comes up again, please don’t hesitate to call me,” the lecturer said excitedly as he accepted the incoming mail.

Inside was 100,000 Divine Essence and one Profound Water Divine Pill. The lecturer swallowed the pill immediately, already fantasizing about comprehending his River Jurisdiction and ascending to a God King.

As the pill dissolved, an unknown toxin spread silently throughout his body. By the time he realized it, the toxin had already reached every part of his body. He didn’t even have a chance to call for help before he died in his divine realm.

On the other end of the channel, Di Bin watched the lecturer’s icon go dark in his contact list and exhaled.

“Dead men tell no tales,” he murmured to himself. “As long as the Wealth Faction can’t trace it back to anyone, it has nothing to do with the Chaos Clan. I won’t let a once-in-a-lifetime chance like this slip away.”

The life forms he had arranged had already been smuggled through special channels into the civilization that Imperial College was using for its final exam.

1. What? You have 6 locusts with 1,024 Attack each. It wouldn’t even get past them... ☜