Stars Fury

The next day turned out a bit different than he thought it would go, two of the dantian refinement level 7 cultivators abstained, and a peak dantian refinement stage 9 couldn't suppress his cultivation, and broke through to the third star level, 'Hazku' or 'Core Formation', making him ineligible for the survival competition.

Jacob has been getting rather upset because of this elimination tournament, except for the first round, everything else went too smoothly for him. He watched other people's matches and realized that it was only him that got two surrenders and a self knockout. Everyone else's matches went normally, with most of them being evenly matched.

He had a sneaking suspicion that something wasn't right, but he could not put his finger on what it was. He was at a loss. Maybe he was poisoned by novels too much, always expecting arrogant young masters, or sleazy guys to pop out one after another. Or to have epic fights filled with hot blood every day.

He had none of that, besides for the first couple day issue when his transmigration happened, nothing major happened. Everything progressed oddly normal. He lacked motivation. He had no grand goals in his last life, just wanting to be a salted fish and hanging out with friends and family occasionally.

This life, while his family isn't crazy rich, they are pretty well off, and their love for him is real. He tried to analyze if there was any hidden crisis that he needed to solve, but there was none. He shook his head to get rid of the messy thoughts. It would be best then if he could live an unhindered life of cultivation without ruffling people's feathers.

He decided to set small goals and continuously accomplish them, instead of some grade goal. He set two small goals, reach the peak of stage 9, and perform well in the survival challenge. He then opened up the internet to study the rules of the challenge seriously, and make a plan for it.

~~~~~~~~~~

As he read the rules, he found three things that stood out.

1. Only those below core formation are eligible.

2. Any items found before deployment to Daliomon will be confiscated.

3. Any items gained on Daliomon, can be kept.

The first one, he did not know why, but it really irked him, like there was something hidden in it. The second one was blatant, "If you can sneak it past us, you can use it", the last one was the true kicker for him, as while he did not have a setup yet to train wild exo beasts, snatching a bunch of growing spirit herbs was easy enough.

While Daliomon is seen as an extremely wealthy resource planet, that is only to exo beasts and spirit herbs. For humans, it is a hellish landscape filled with many dangers. One such danger is the water sources, most of them are unable to be used by humans, and boiling only slightly makes it drinkable, you still have to spend time flushing out the impurities using your cultivation base.

Another issue is food, while exo beasts are plentiful, and many being actually quite tasty, the issue is cooking them. Roasting them over a normal fire, will just slightly cook it, otherwise it will be very unpalatable. While most spirit herbs can be eaten directly, in most cases it wastes most of the efficiency of them.

He solved the water problem by buying an industrial grade water purifier. He solved the cooking issue by buying an outdoor cooking set, made specifically for cooking spirit beast rank 3 and below. The last thing he had to worry about was shelter.

The Survival Challenge lasts one whole month. You can't spend all your time fighting during that time, you must rest. If your resting place is not safe then, you will be beset by troubles non-stop. For this he had a myriad of options. Self-assembling buildings are pretty common nowadays, they are never recommended for long time use over years or decades, but for a month or two, there are tons of self-assembling fortresses.

He decided to go all out and be unscrupulous, aiming for a complete bombastic showoff, because he has a huge cheat called the 'Cultivation Dimension'. He made various purchases, from laser turrets to self-assembling fortresses, he even bought a bunch of bombs. Maybe he will be put on a watchlist, but he doesn't care.

So, the rest of the day was spent planning for various scenarios, it got more and more over the top, before he realized he hit his spending limit for the month. He then looked up confused, not even realizing he had a spending limit.

He then slowed down his craze, then decided to go to bed.

~~~~~~~~~~

A few days passed, as he finally reached the peak of stage 9. He was going to school today to be picked up by a spaceship that will take everyone to Daliomon. Before he left his house this morning, Saiya gave him a lot of data on Daliomon that she said she got from her friends.

Jacob was happy about this, as information about the planet itself was rather scarce, only a bit of public information was made for the challenge. The information Saiya gave him was a comprehensive list of the exo beast habitats, that also included positions of the more well known spirit herbs.

As he was studying the information, he was called over by a teacher, who said that they have arrived, and will be sending a dropship for pickup. Jacob immediately got excited, as this was the first time that he will be going into outer space. Past Jacob had already gone into space, but his memories of it were sparse as he was never interested.

After about 15 minutes of waiting, a sleek silver space ship broke through the clouds. Shaped like an elongated bullet, with two thrusters on each side, and a large thruster on the back, it seemed rather plain. Jacob was a little disappointed in his heart.

A man in a military uniform came off the ship and greeted the teachers, while another man read off the list of names of the participants. Before everyone got on the ship they had to sign various waivers, nullifying any responsibility. Jacob carefully read each waiver, having heard many contract horror stories before he died.

After finding nothing wrong, he signed them and was the last to get on the ship, the others not paying as much attention. The military man quickly bid farewell to the teachers and the drop ship took off. After about another 15 minutes, he finally saw something that took his breath away.

Measuring at more than 5 kilometres long, decked in a vast array of armaments, the first battleship of the Star Dreadnought class owned by humanity, Stars Fury. It radiated an aura of vastness ferocity.

Although it has been decommissioned over time, and has been turned into a historical museum, and transport for large government events. It is still the most iconic ship of humanity today. There is a saying in the federation, the two places one must visit, are Earth, and the Stars Fury. That is how high a position it holds in the heart of humanity.

It was the first warship of its class developed by humanity, and it led on the front lines in various wars humanity led against other races. It is said some of its weapons are still ahead of some current military models. It can display the power of a star level 7 cultivator.

After Jacob spent a long time marveling at the absolutely massive space battleship in front of him, he was all the more eager to ride on it.