Chapter 1 Entering the Examination Room

As Lan Qi stepped into the massive Gate of Emptiness with his usual pace, he once again felt enveloped in an endless darkness.

Nothing could be seen, and even the sound of his own heartbeat vanished—a familiar sensation.

Only, when the surroundings lit up again, it wouldn't be that academy anymore.

Gradually, a faint glimmer of light, like dawn seen by a sailor lost in the night, entered Lan Qi's vision.

As the silver-white radiance appeared, a series of words rushed towards him like shooting stars across the sky—

[Welcome to the Registered Card Creator Examination Venue, an artificially created simulated Shadow World.]

[Currently, it is the preparation time. The official examination will begin after the preparation time ends.]

[Preparation time remaining: 29 minutes and 50 seconds.]

[Before the examination begins and during the examination process, you can make payments and purchase the necessary materials at any time. The materials will be delivered to the current examinee's artificial Shadow World within 5 minutes after purchase.]

[The purple rare-grade and above materials you purchase can only be used for the creation of examination cards. They cannot be taken out of the artificial Shadow World examination venue. Unused materials will be recycled by the association, and the examinee will be refunded 80% of the cost.]

[If you successfully create magic cards from the materials during the examination, the material cost will be refunded as a bonus in proportion: 10% for white common, 20% for blue precious, 30% for purple rare, 40% for pink sacred, and 50% for orange epic.]

[The finished magic cards and their patents belong to the examinee. The Southern Continent Card Creator Association only has the right to display them.]

[Examinees must create magic cards of no less than Tier 3. If the tier of the card is higher than Tier 3, there will be a slight scoring bonus. If the tier of the created card is lower than the examinee's tier, there will be a slight scoring reduction.]

[After leaving the artificial Shadow World examination venue, the registration examination results and evaluation will be automatically calculated for the examinee.]

[...]

[The above information can be viewed at any time during the examination process.]

[Have you read and agree to enter the examination environment?]

[Continue/Exit]

Lan Qi quickly scanned through it.

Familiar with the law, he knew that each regulation had its own considerations behind it.

For example, only refunding 80% of the price for the remaining materials was not entirely because the association was greedy for money, but to prevent some overly wealthy examinees from buying a large amount of scarce materials without any consideration at the beginning of the exam, preventing other examinees who needed them from buying these materials normally.

The fact that materials cannot be taken out of the examination venue is also to prevent scalpers from using this method to buy high-level materials and speculate on prices.

In addition, Lan Qi felt that the scoring adjustments for high-tier cards were quite fair. If a Tier 4 or Tier 5 card creator participated in the registration exam and only made a Tier 3 card, points would be deducted, but if they made a Tier 4 or Tier 5 card, they would receive an extra bonus.

Examinees like Lan Qi, who were participating at Tier 3, could only make Tier 3 cards, with no additional scoring adjustments.

As Lan Qi's fingertip touched [Continue], ripples appeared on the silver-white light screen, quickly spreading out before his eyes until they disappeared.

The surroundings quickly brightened, and Lan Qi found himself standing in a standard-sized card creation workshop.

The [Examinee Operation Panel] in front of him now had many functions such as [Select Scene] and [Purchase Materials].

During the preparation time, examinees could not start creating cards, but could only carry out corresponding preparatory work.

So Lan Qi began to select a scene unhurriedly.

The optional environments ranged from indoors to outdoors, with various styles, covering almost all the maps recorded in the artificial Shadow World.

Soon, Lan Qi chose a spacious room similar to a headmaster's office.

Only here was he most comfortable and efficient.

Afterward, Lan Qi began to select materials.

On the browsing panel, he could see all the inventory in the Ikelet Card Creator Association branch and its detailed information.

Some essential materials were already included in the registration fee, and the association would provide five sets of basic magic card creation consumables, which would be sent to the examinee's individual Shadow World at the moment the examination officially began.

These basic materials represented five opportunities and could not be purchased additionally.

Other materials could be freely selected according to the examinee's card creation needs.

Lan Qi adjusted the material filter categories to [Sealing], [Mental], [Light], and [Healing], browsing the inventory and descriptions.

[Curse Seal Ring: Blue Precious item; requires use for light sealing magic or biological magic; ￡12.]

[Mysterious Gem: White Common item; can be used as a medium for sealing power; ￡1.]

[Holy Seal: Purple Rare item; produced by the church, a seal engraved with divine magic, which can suppress evil creatures; ￡65.]

[Holy Water: Purple Rare item; a consumable with extremely strong healing effects, which can also be used as a projectile against undead or as a harmonizing agent when making items; ￡20.]

[Healing Magic Flower: White Common item; can be ground into powder or mixed with magic ink; ￡0.5.]

[Light Feather: Purple Rare item; originates from light fairies and can be used as a medium for casting powerful light magic; ￡115.]

[...]

After clicking on an item, he could also see its detailed quality, detailed introduction, evaluation, and recommended usage.

Although Lan Qi would focus on sealing for the sake of success rate, if he wanted to create high-quality cards with high scores, he would have to refer to the available high-rarity materials in the Ikelet Card Creator Association branch's current inventory.

It might be necessary to integrate other categories on top of the sealing system, turning it into a composite magic type.

Lan Qi quickly added some essential consumables for making sealing magic cards to the list; these required almost no hesitation.

Only when he saw materials of other magic types in the middle did Lan Qi need to think slightly about whether to choose them as alternatives for the high-quality magic cards he might create today.

Although there was half an hour of preparation time, he had almost finished selecting in less than ten minutes.

Lan Qi's strategy was to make a white-quality bottom-line card on the equipment card, which he was least proficient in, and make blue or purple cards on the summon cards and spell cards, which he was relatively proficient in.

In this way, as long as he could successfully create cards, he would at least be rated as Bronze, or even Silver if one of the purple single cards in the two purples and one white received an extraordinary evaluation.

Just as Lan Qi was quickly browsing through the materials in these four filtered inventories in an assembly-line manner, he suddenly swiped back immediately when he swiped past a certain page.

Lan Qi's hand slowed down and slowly stopped.

He saw an extremely special pink sacred-grade material [Unnamed Light Element Stone].

According to the Card Creator Association's assessment, there is currently no plan to catalyze and process it. According to the traditional direct use method of element stones, it may only exert the effect of a purple rare grade.

Despite this, just this one item cost a full 1250 pounds.

Lan Qi originally didn't want to consider such an expensive single material.

But he frowned even more as he carefully examined the appearance of this element stone.

He had seen this type of chondrule structure in scientific magazines in his previous life.

This didn't seem to be a stone from the ground, but a solid formed by the condensation and precipitation of the solar nebula, which had undergone accretion and other processes and a long period of time to form its appearance!

In other words, it was actually a cosmic meteorite...

Lan Qi stood in front of the light screen for selecting materials, resting his chin and thinking.

Hyberian gave him all of the 650-pound bonus from last time, without taking a penny.

And when Lan Qi left the Southern Vantiner border territory, he had already given Talia a lot of the approximately 1000 pounds of property he had, and he would have to continue to pay her in the future.

In other words, if he bought this material and successfully made a magic card, he would still have a little bonus as the remaining money.

But if he failed, he would suddenly become poor, and he might even have to seek some support from his family before he earned money in the next Shadow World.

If possible, he still didn't want to ask his family for money again in the short term.

Lan Qi knew that the housekeeper Hans must want to see the fun, and had not temporarily let Lan Qi's old man, Noe, who was far away in a foreign country, know that Lan Qi had already been admitted to the Sage Academy.

Lan Qi himself didn't care. He was just preparing to make a name for himself and show off his skills in the royal capital Ikelet before giving his old man a surprise, preferably after he came back from a big deal in the Northern Continent.

Since his old man Noe gave him the investment, Lan Qi would definitely repay Noe's expectations!

After considering it again.

Lan Qi still made a decision.

He removed most of the originally selected purple rare-quality materials, bought this element stone, and re-selected other materials to match it.

Just like that, time passed minute by minute.

And finally, the prompt sound of the official start of the examination arrived!

Today there are 4 updates, there are 2 more chapters later

(End of this chapter)