Class Awakening: Working Hard Can Evolve My Classes

A wide, yellow sky stretched along the horizon. Underneath this blanket of gold was an endless forest, with trees as tall as a hundred meters. Five trees stood as the tallest among the rest, reaching up to five hundred meters, and each possessed a unique color.

When Zeke opened his eyes, he was lying on the grassy plains. Feeling the caress of the grass on his back, he was slightly at a loss, but then, remembering his situation, he snapped out of his daze and immediately sprung up.

He instinctively reached out for the sword on his back. Once he felt a cold sensation, his tense nerves loosened.

’Is this a dungeon?’

Zeke surveyed his surroundings cautiously, seeing nothing out of the ordinary as of yet. But he was certain that this was a dungeon, so he didn’t let down his guard in the slightest.

’A forest...’

Dean Pooler said that there were various monsters and threats in this exam.

Forest terrains usually had fox race monsters, but the ones to watch out for were the bear race and the bird race. Bears were creatures of destruction, while birds were gliders of the sky.

’Oh right, the Herta ID.’

Zeke paused his thinking and looked at his Herta ID. He turned it on and found that two new features had suddenly become available to him. A resignation option appeared at the very top, which functioned as both the resignation and emergency button.

After confirming that it was working, he raised his head and continued his thoughts.

The class exam this time was a treasure hunt. From the rules themselves, one could infer that this was actually a battle royale between all students. There was no mention of any deduction for robbing other students, even for those from the same class.

Only the rewards were mentioned during Professor Xavier’s explanation.

Just from this alone, Zeke inferred the academy’s intention in this class exam, looking at it from their perspective. They were certainly aware that not all students had the same strength, and those at the top could easily dominate this exam.

But it wasn’t hopeless for those at the bottom.

To be precise, Professor Xavier had mentioned it during his explanation.

"Focus on treasure hunting."

This wasn’t an assessment solely for strength, but also encompassed knowledge, luck, and recoinassance ability.

To put it as plainly as possible, this class exam was nothing but a modified hide-and-seek.

The entire dungeon was the playing ground. Those with strength, or the seekers, will certainly rob other students they encounter, while those who were weak, or the hiders in this analogy, must do their best to hide from the seekers until the end of the exam.

After all, it was made specifically clear that killing monsters or surviving other threats rewarded nothing.

In a sense, students robbing other students was also a "threat".

"Now, what should I do?" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Now that he finally understood the nature of this exam, Zeke quietly planned his next moves. With his current base strength, he was confident enough to achieve an above-average performance.

If he wanted to surpass that, he’d need to use some trump cards like Gamer Overload and Heart Blade, but Zeke didn’t know if it was worth it to expose them this early on.

’... I’ll think about it when it comes. But for now, let’s focus on finding treasures.’

Zeke quickly made up his mind.

He utilized his Herta ID once more and utilized the Treasure Sense feature.

Beep.

A loud sound came from his Herta ID, startling him.

A moment later, a full scan was completed around him.

[No treasures found.]

[Scanning area: 80-meter radius.]

"It’s more advanced than I thought..."

Zeke exclaimed in surprise.

Seeing that there weren’t any treasures nearby, he wasn’t disappointed.

"But the scanning area is only 80 meters?"

He frowned, feeling a slight headache.

He wasn’t sure how large this forest was, but as far as he could see, there was an endless stretch of trees and grassy terrain around him. If the treasures were small in size, they were going to be hard to find with all the grass and logs around. The only way to find them was by scanning repeatedly with his Herta ID.

"But the issue with this approach is the noise the Herta ID makes when scanning."

Zeke showed a wry smile.

Doing that was just basically announcing to anyone nearby his position, which was unideal.

Even if he was going to end up fighting someone, Zeke would prefer to be the "seeker" instead of the one being discovered.

Seems to him that the best choice was to arbitrarily decide a spot to scan every minute. Why a minute? Well, he could close a distance of 80 meters in under a minute. This ensured that every scan was in a new area.

His issue with this plan was the fact that he’ll have to rely on his intuition and luck to find treasures... just thinking about it made him feel unconfident.

Zeke clicked his tongue.

Luck was the most unpredictable variable, and relying on it solely put a bad taste in his mouth.

"Maybe, I should just rob others instead."

He mumbled, but then quickly rejected that idea. He had just gotten his footing in the academy. It wasn’t wise to make any enemies this soon. Even if he had Andrei’s help, there were a lot of students who wouldn’t care about that if push came to shove, namely those in the top 10 and those who were related to them.

Besides, if relying on luck put a bad taste in his mouth, relying on someone else put him in an even more terrible feeling.

Irked, Zeke forced his wandering thoughts back to the present and focused on his situation. Since he couldn’t come up with a better plan, he stuck with his luck plan.

"I’ll go here then."

He chose a random direction and kept walking. Every time a minute went by, he utilized the scan feature. The first ten minutes were rather uneventful, and his suspicions were being quickly proven by discovering no sign of any treasure at all.

Was it because of his spawn area? Or was it because of his luck?

But soon, he had to shut up because he finally found a treasure, a sparkling one at that.

It seems his luck was finally turning around...

... Or not.

"ROAR!"