Day One: Extreme Compression and Attribute Resonance
Kayla: Villanette directly deprived her of the right to transform. "Relying on the brute force of forms is ultimately inferior." Kayla was thrown into a miniature storm eye, enduring the relentless cutting of ice crystal wind blades and the indiscriminate bombardment of violent thunder. Villanette required her to maintain her human form in this destructive storm, compressing and condensing the power of lightning into her fists, turning the frost power into body-hugging armor, and using the most basic orc martial arts to shatter the ice rock golems condensed in the storm, which were as hard as adamantine. With each punch, her skin split and flesh tore, electric arcs crackled wildly, and the ice armor shattered and regenerated. The pain drove her nearly mad, but under extreme pressure, the thunder and ice powers in her body began to resonate and circulate at a deeper level, no longer distinctly separated.
Arya: "Your arrows are too slow, too scattered." With a wave of Villanette's hand, countless "swarms" composed of pure light points and shadow particles filled the entire training space. Arya had to accomplish three things simultaneously under the swarm's lightning-fast assaults: use wind arrows to precisely snipe specific colored light points; use light-dark spiral arrows to create micro energy vortices to slow the flood of shadow particles; and condense wind platforms under her feet for nearly impossible dead-angle evasions. Her mental strength, elemental control, and dynamic vision were squeezed to the limit. Several times she was engulfed by the swarm, her body burned with fine wounds from the light-dark particles, but she broke through relying on her attachment to Fa. She began to learn to integrate wind perception into arrow trajectory predictions, making the spiral entanglement of light and dark more introverted and deadly.
TISK: His forge hammer was temporarily "confiscated" by Villanette. He faced nine frost-roaring griffins in relentless waves of pounces and cold breath sprays. Villanette required him to rely only on the dwarf's sturdy body and basic sensing of ice and fire elements, collecting specific ore fragments from the ground covered in sharp ice spikes and scorching lava debris during the gaps in the griffins' attacks, and completing preliminary smelting and shaping while dodging. "Weapons are extensions of the limbs; your body is the first weapon!" TISK was knocked flying, frozen, and burned; the dwarf's roars intertwined with the griffins' bellows, blood and sweat soaking his beard. In the hammering on the edge of life and death, his essential affinity for ice and fire elements and his body's coordination were forcibly elevated. Each roll and dodge began to draw surrounding ice and fire elements to form weak protective force fields.
Yuyuer: "Illusions are not blindfolds; they are threads weaving reality." Villanette threw him into a constantly changing mirror maze filled with visual traps and spatial distortions. The maze itself rotated and moved at high speed, while invisible wind blades and mental interference waves assaulted him. Yuyuer had to maintain a "stagnant phantom" covering himself, precisely distorting light and spatial perception, while using water magic to accurately locate the maze's changing weak points and ice magic to create key footholds or hinder trackers. His mental strength felt like it was repeatedly ground on a whetstone, causing splitting headaches. Several times his illusions collapsed, leaving him covered in wounds from wind blades. He was forced to compress the illusion's range to the extreme, focusing on microscopic "deceptions," extending his perception of water flow to spatial ripples, and making ice freezing swifter and more precise.
zhamisi: "Poison is art, not splattering ink." The "targets" provided by Villanette were a group of metallic beetles with eerie speeds and shells highly resistant to toxins. The training field was filled with perception-disrupting thick fog. zhamisi had to, under the disadvantages of high-speed movement and injuries to her snake tail, "refine and layer" her own venom—separating and purifying neural paralysis poison, flesh corrosion poison, and metal rust poison—and, based on the beetles' different charging postures and shell gaps, use water elements as precise "injectors" to deliver specific venoms with millimeter accuracy into weak points. Her snake tail wounds burst open during intense movement, blood staining the ice, but her eyes held only cold focus. Her venom fang curved blade swings became increasingly cunning and ruthless, her venom control finely detailed, even capable of briefly forming corrosive poison mist shields.
Lin Ya: "Life and withering are like two sides of a coin." Villanette placed him in a frozen soil heavily polluted by intense death aura. The plants here were twisted and withered, the soil filled with shadow energy that suppressed vitality. Lin Ya not only had to use life force to dispel the death aura, purify the frozen soil, and nurture new cold-resistant mycelium and ice moss; he also had to reverse control, transforming the polluted, withered plant remnants into "ice corpse thorns" containing death chill, constructing defenses or performing entangling attacks. At the same time, he had to soothe several low-level ice plain beasts eroded by death aura and driven mad, taming them. Emerald glow and pale chill alternated on his body, reaching a new level in understanding and balancing the two extreme forces of life and death.
salsa: "Undead are not cannon fodder; they are extensions of your will." Villanette's mental force struck salsa's soul core like invisible hammers, simulating the impact of powerful mental defenders. salsa had to endure this impact while splitting multiple fine soul force threads: controlling three ice corpse warriors in complex tactical coordination (shield strikes, executions, covers); commanding two shadow falcons for beyond-visual-range precise harassment; and maintaining a small-range "wailing souls" field to continuously weaken enemies' mental resistance within range. Her soul body felt like it was being torn apart in agony, her mechanical cat chassis joints groaning from overload. She was forced to elevate her soul force control to unprecedented precision, making each undead feel like a new sensory organ, with the embryonic form of her shadow magic dragon hatchling vaguely condensing in her soul sea.
Rex: "Technology is a tool, but also a mindset." Villanette directly disrupted his link to satellite sensors and created strong energy turbulence and optical distortion fields in the training field. Rex could only rely on basic armor sensors and a limited nano-drone swarm. In the harsh environment, he had to calculate the dynamics of the griffin flock (simulated targets) in real-time, reprogramming the drone swarm: some forming dynamic changing energy shield matrices to resist attacks; some carrying micro freeze bombs or EMP bombs for precise weak point strikes (like joints, eyes, energy cores); and others responsible for environmental scanning and data feedback. His processors ran wildly, heat vents spewing scorching airflow. He began optimizing core algorithms, developing the limited drones' functions to the extreme, with prediction and dynamic response capabilities leaping forward.
Celestia: Her training field was the edge of the void turbulence outside a cliff. Villanette's mental force acted like the strictest mentor, urging her on. "The texture of space... feel the flow of wind... the folds of shadow... fuse!" Celestia closed her eyes tightly, veins bulging on her forehead, sweat soaking her gray prison garb. The sealing shackles restricted her power output but also protected her. She tried to integrate her perception into the howling gale, touching the invisible "warp and weft" of space, then guiding the faint shadow power in her body to "smooth" a small patch of spatial folds ahead. At first, there was no response, only dizziness from intense mental consumption. Villanette's icy words exploded in her mind: "Fool! Wind is the carrier, shadow is the portal! Will is the key! Think of the place you want to go! It's not 'flash,' it's 'become' the wind and shadow itself!" Countless failures, countless splitting headaches, until finally, facing a boulder ten meters away, her figure suddenly blurred! No flashy lights or shadows, no spatial fluctuations, as if the frame skipped; she was erased by an invisible eraser and instantly redrawn at the target point, appearing directly on top of the boulder! Though she landed unsteadily, stumbling to her knees, face pale, breathing rapid, her eyes burst with incredulous ecstasy—Shadow Leap, entry level! Immediately after, Villanette's mental pressure descended again: "Delusion-Breaking Spear! Condense! Compress! Lock onto that ice!" Celestia gritted her teeth, compressing all her hatred for Doomsday Rebirth, worry for Aelius, and pain from her own sins into madness! No longer a diffuse shriek, but an invisible, intangible "spear" condensed from her entire mental edge! Her will locked onto a solid ice a hundred steps away, thrusting fiercely! Silently, a thumb-sized, perfectly smooth piercing hole appeared in the ice's center! The ice didn't shatter, just pierced through! The mental consumption blackened her vision, but her lips curled into a cold, sharp smile—Delusion-Breaking Spear, initial formation!
Day Two: The Forge of the Mind and the Concerto of the Team
At dawn on the second day, Villanette's figure appeared once more on the training field. Without superfluous words, she simply snapped her fingers, and a rune slate emitting faint light floated before each team member.
Kayla: Villanette threw Kayla into an arena filled with phantoms. These phantoms were her past enemies, from Doomsday Rebirth's vicious minions to former defeated foes, even including the self she least wanted to face, who had lost honor. Kayla had to shatter these constantly regenerating phantoms without transforming, relying solely on precise control of thunder and ice powers. Villanette's requirement was that each strike achieve the exquisite degree of "destroying the illusion without harming its essence." Under the siege of phantoms and torment of the mind, Kayla's rage nearly consumed her, but she was forced to learn to bundle the violent thunder-ice power, turning it into the most precise strikes, controlling power rather than being controlled by it. This elevated her understanding of the Thunderfrost Annihilation Beast form to a higher level, realizing that true power stems from self-mastery.
Arya: Arya was placed in a space full of twisted light and profound shadows. Villanette required her to use the interweaving of light and dark to precisely ignite or extinguish randomly appearing "light candles" and "dark embers" in the space without producing any sound. At the same time, invisible mental interference surged like tides, testing her focus. Each mistake triggered violent spatial shocks, subjecting her body to heavy pressure. Arya was forced to elevate her use of light-dark magic to the realm of "hearing wind to discern position, sensing light to identify shadow." Her arrows no longer relied solely on vision but integrated wind's gentleness and light-dark's concealment, making each shot as silent and invisible as a ghost, yet lethally precise. She also learned to maintain calm under extreme mental pressure, turning her longing for Fa into an unbreakable will.
TISK: Before TISK, the rune slate displayed his life's most perfect masterpiece—a legendary warhammer that had never been truly forged. Villanette required him to recreate every detail of this warhammer on the mental level solely through will, from ore refining to rune inscription, to elemental infusion, without the slightest error. However, whenever he thought it complete, the rune slate would point out minor flaws on the mental level and trigger a forge-like scorching backlash. This forced TISK to elevate his understanding of metal and elements to the atomic level of subtlety, uniting mind and spirit to simulate the most perfect forging process. He began to truly understand the principle of "as firm as the heart, as sharp as the weapon," elevating his control of metal magic to the realm of mind-over-matter.
Yuyuer: Yuyuer was thrown into an illusion related to his deepest fear: a deep-sea vortex occupied by sea beasts with twisted tides, where he became an ordinary fishman deprived of magic and helpless. Villanette required him to find the "gate of life" to escape the vortex without being detected by sea beasts, relying solely on faint perception of water elements and the most primitive deceptive instincts of illusions. Mental interference constantly distorted his perception, making it hard to distinguish true from false. Yuyuer struggled in despair, forced to abandon reliance on power and instead seek flaws from the subtlest changes in water flow, using the simplest illusions to mislead powerful enemies. He learned to pass off the fake as genuine, to overcome the strong with the weak, making his illusions not only deceive enemies but also "himself."
zhamisi: zhamisi was trapped in a constantly shrinking dark space filled with thin yet intangible "poison mist," where each inhalation numbed her body and blurred her vision. Villanette's requirement was that, without completely holding her breath, she use water-poison magic to form a "pure water membrane" around herself to isolate the poison mist, and within the membrane, practice the ultimate precise cutting with her venom fang curved blade—slicing water droplets in the air to split them into uniform-sized microparticles. The space's compression and the mist's erosion caused bodily pain and breathing difficulties, but she was forced to push the refined control of water-poison magic to the extreme, making the water membrane like a second skin, and the poison blade like the most precise surgical scalpel, reaching new heights in toxin resistance and application.
Lin Ya: Lin Ya was thrown into a trial field with constantly changing environments, from scorching volcanic lava zones to extreme cold glacial wastelands, to corroded death swamps. Villanette required him not only to make plants grow in these extreme environments but also to guide them to mutate with corresponding attributes (like fire-resistant lava vines, cold-resistant ice crystal trees, purification flowers that cleanse death energy), and use these plants to construct a safe passage within a limited time. This forced Lin Ya to combine druid magic with environmental adaptability, gaining a deeper understanding of life's resilience and diversity. He began to guide plants into precise mutations in shorter times and use mycelial networks to form broader natural sensing.
salsa: salsa was required to confront waves of "mental parasites" in a simulated Doomsday Rebirth laboratory. These parasites could attach to her undead and mechanical cat chassis, attempting to steal her soul force and control her summons. Villanette's requirement was that salsa, while ensuring the undead's integrity, use shadow magic and mental magic to strip and thoroughly destroy these parasites from the undead bodies, while controlling her shadow magic dragon hatchling form to perform a "precise mental roar" to intimidate the final, stronger wave of parasites. This greatly tested salsa's control over soul force, mental force, and undead summoning. She was forced to abandon sheer quantity advantage, focusing instead on the quality and efficiency of undead, making her undead legion more tactical, and her shadow magic dragon's power beginning to truly awaken slowly.
Rex: Before Rex appeared a simulated "out-of-control ancient ruin" scenario, filled with chaotic energy pulses and failed ancient defense systems. Villanette required him to not use offensive weapons, relying solely on nano-drones and the ion cannon's "non-lethal mode," to precisely repair and restart the ruin's eight energy weak points without triggering any defense traps. Each misstep would activate the ruin's self-destruct program and cause energy backlash against him. This forced Rex to shift technology application from destruction to reconstruction, reaching unimaginable levels in judging energy flow, nano-drone programming precision, and ion cannon energy control. He began to integrate his understanding of himself and ancient technology, becoming a true "technology inheritor."
Celestia: Celestia was required to perform high-speed movement and spatial shuttling in a training field filled with "spatial rifts." Villanette's mental force constantly pointed out her deficiencies in perceiving spatial fluctuations like sharp blades. She had to judge the safest spatial shuttle path in extremely short times, while using wind, mental, and dark magic during movement to shatter randomly appearing "void crystals" at the rift edges. Each shatter must achieve the precision of "destroying only the crystal without expanding the rift." This tested Celestia's ultimate fine control over space and energy in high-speed movement, forcing her to combine speed with precision. Her understanding of shadow leap shifted from "flash" to "integration," and the use of delusion-breaking spear shifted from pure attack to precise stripping of void energy.
Day Three: Joint Trial
On the third day, the cruel trial reached its climax. Villanette gathered all team members on a vast platform. She scanned the group, her ice-blue eyes flickering with faint light.
"Today's test is no longer mere strength and will. It is 'connection.'" Villanette spoke slowly, her voice calm yet echoing in everyone's hearts, "You are a team, but is your connection unbreakable? Can your powers serve each other, surpassing individual limits?"
With a gentle wave of Villanette's hand, a massive "inheritance altar" composed of starlight runes rose in the center of the platform. Around the altar, nine energy light pillars matching the group's attributes shot skyward, each emitting the purest essence aura of that attribute.
"What you need to do is integrate what you've learned over the past two days and, with team power, activate the altar's core." Villanette pointed to a massive dormant crystal in the altar's center, "The crystal contains the power of 'Stellar Reversion,' which can only be awakened by achieving perfect resonance among your powers."
However, this was not simple energy infusion. Villanette set strict restrictions:
1. Attribute Rotation Suppression: The altar would constantly change, randomly weakening one to two attributes' powers, forcing the team members to adjust strategies in short time, fill gaps, or find alternative solutions from other attributes.
2. Illusion Interference: The entire platform would periodically be shrouded in illusions, simulating their most feared scenarios or hardest-to-handle enemies, disrupting their minds and cooperation.
3. Energy Backlash: Any mistake in a link or uncoordinated energy output would cause the altar to produce strong energy backlash, inflicting indiscriminate physical or mental impacts on all trial participants.
4. Time Pressure: The altar's energy drained extremely fast; they must complete activation within limited time, or all efforts would be wasted, and they would endure Villanette's merciless "punishment" again.
The trial began.
Kayla had to quickly adjust the ratio of thunder and ice powers each time an attribute was weakened, using her tough body to shield teammates from energy backlash, and maintain clarity in illusions, using orc roars to dispel teammates' fears. She learned to turn thunder-ice power into more "controlled" shields and impacts, rather than pure destruction.
Arya needed to constantly observe the altar's energy flow, quickly using light-dark arrows to precisely guide other attributes to fill in when weakened, or wind arrows to accelerate energy transmission. In illusions, she purified shadows with light's power, guiding teammates forward with firm will; her arrows were not just attacks but the team's "signals."
TISK was responsible for sensing the altar's minor "cracks" during attribute transitions using metal magic, and repairing energy transmission "weak points" at the fastest speed to ensure stable output. He was not only a fighter but the "core hub" maintaining team power output, reaching the realm of "all things can be weapons" in understanding metal and energy.
Yuyuer, during the most severe illusion interference, had to use his superior illusions to distort enemies' perception of the team, buying precious adjustment time for teammates. He used ice magic to create sturdy energy transmission conductors, water magic to lubricate energy flow; his illusions became the team's "invisible protection and accelerator."
zhamisi, during each energy backlash, used dual poison-water powers to erode and decompose the backlash energy, converting it into harmless elements for the team. Her venom fang curved blade became an energy flow "diverter," cutting and guiding chaotic energy at critical moments to ensure team output.
Lin Ya always maintained the life energy cycle around the altar, using life force to stimulate teammates' potential when attributes were weakened, compensating for energy shortages. He used wood magic to build stable energy transmission networks around the altar and stabilized teammates' minds with healing magic during mental impacts.
salsa's undead army became the best barrier against illusions, fearless of fear, precisely striking illusion cores. She used shadow and mental magic to draw out the team's latent energy when attributes were weakened, converting it into shadow energy to inject into the altar, or communicating invisibly with teammates through mental links.
Rex constantly monitored the altar's energy data; his nano-drone swarm became flexible "energy converters," quickly adjusting energy spectra during attribute imbalances, converting one attribute into another needed by the altar. His ion cannon was no longer an attack weapon but a high-precision "energy corrector," ensuring accuracy in every energy output.
Celestia, using her understanding of space, wind, and shadow, opened tiny "spatial shortcuts" to accelerate energy transmission when flow was obstructed, or used shadow leap to "pull" teammates from danger zones during intense illusion impacts, and delusion-breaking spear to tear the core illusion sources; her speed and penetration became the team's "breaker."
The nine individuals' powers, under Villanette's extreme compression, began to fuse and complement each other in an unprecedented way. They were no longer mere individuals but an organic whole composed of various elements; each attribute rotation, each illusion impact, elevated their tacit understanding.
When the final wave of energy backlash was perfectly resolved, the nine powers flowed like rushing rivers, converging into a grand and harmonious energy torrent, surging into the altar core's crystal.
Buzz—!
A louder, more vibrant hum resounded through the stone house; the crystal in the altar's center erupted with brilliant starlight, where nine colors intertwined, finally condensing into a gentle beam shooting skyward, piercing the stone house's roof and even the layers of the eternal storm.
In the end, all nine lay collapsed on the platform; they had succeeded.