Drop Day

Immediately upon docking on the Stars Fury, Jacob and the other students had to go through a security check. Anything other than the clothes they were wearing were taken from them, including their smartwatches. The confiscation so early on startled Jacob, because apparently they won't deploy to Daliomon for another week.

They were then led to a dorm area and assigned a room. Luckily each person had their own rooms. They were also instructed to change into military issued clothing, to make everyone equal. It was nothing more than a brand less pair of black combat pants, a pair of combat boots, and a black t-shirt. This hit his father's plan to use him as a billboard.

Everyone was given two extra sets of clothes, free washing until they were dropped on Daliomon. There was a mess hall that served three meals a day at certain intervals, and a gathering area. Besides leaving his room every time for food, Jacob rarely left his room. He was devising a plan for Daliomon, He spent the last two months preparing for it.

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Jacob was eating food in the mess hall, a lovely burger and fries. As he was finishing up, he heard some yelling, he turned his eyes to see a guy confronting another guy. The guy who was yelling, was a big buff kid, a little bigger than the previous Macho Man Kid. The person who was being yelled at… well he could be described as a trap.

At first Jacob thought he was a girl, but his voice was masculine. As he paid more attention to their argument he found the large kid was named Ian, while the trap-like kid was called Emmanuel.

"-I will surpass you in this challenge! You may have held first at school, but now we are out of the well and into the pond! I will beat you here!" Ian shouted.

Emmanuel just responded with a cold dismissive face, then pushed Ian aside as he got food. As the fight ended, Jacob went back to paying attention to his lovely fries. As Jacob started to continue to plan the 31 day challenge, he was interrupted by a person sitting across from him at the table.

Jacob looked up to find the trap-like kid, Emmanuel, sitting across from him. Jacob raised an eyebrow at the newcomer, and greeted, "Hello?" The cold faced Emmanuel responded, "I just want to sit in a quiet place. This was the best choice." Jacob looked around the room, he sat pretty far from other people, directly in the corner, purposely isolating himself.

Whether Jacob believed the excuse or not, he decided to pay more attention to his food and ignore the other kid. He went back to another thing that has been troubling him. His cultivation at the peak of stage 9 of dantian refinement. If he was not suppressing it, they next step to breakthrough would be to condense the ethereal universe energy in his dantian into a gaseous state, promoting him to the third start level, 'Hakzu' or Core Formation.

Recently, he has been having a weird feeling, that his dantian isn't expanded to the limit. As days passed, the feeling became more and more pronounced. He decided to quickly finish his food and try to make a breakthrough, his intuition tells him there is more to the Dantian Refinement stage.

He gobbled down his fries in a hurry, startling Emmanuel. He did not care and sped to his assigned room. He sat down cross legged on the bed. He started to cultivate, first he drank some pond water, and instead of going through the steps of stepping into the third level, he acted as if he was trying to break a tenth barrier.

The first few times, nothing happened. But, on the 12th try, he finally had a purchase, it felt like he touched a huge barrier, one several times stronger than the one he had to break through in the 9th stage. He kept at it, until finally, the barrier broke. He immediately felt a huge change.

If before, breaking through only doubled his capacity and recovery, this time it directly tripled. He also vaguely felt that he could keep breaking through in dantian refinement after he stabilizes. This immediately excited him as it gave him another card during this challenge.

For the following few days, besides stabilizing his foundation at dantian refinement stage 10, he was either eating or thinking about his plans for the challenge. Before the last day, he broke through the 11th level, and was excited that he felt he could still keep going. During the last few days he also chatted with Emmanuel a bit.

Finally the day came, everyone was gathered and sent to different drop ships while being given a special parachute. It will disintegrate upon landing to not give any advantages. Jacob boarded the drop ship.

A while later the drop ships took off and started to enter Daliomon's atmosphere. Besides for a bit of mild turbulence, the ride was smooth. As the drop ships were flying around 3 kilometres height, the bay door on the drop ship opened. They were then quickly instructed by a military officer to start jumping.

As Jacob was called up to jump, his lips twitched, his last thought before jumping, 'This is fucking PUBG!'

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As the students were deploying from the drop ship, on the official Stars Fury Museum Website, a few different live streams were currently being played. Each live stream focused on a different perspective. Each one followed a different student. There were about 200 different streams, with around 50,000 students total, that was only a small fraction.

As the students jumped out of the planes, the scrolling comments were already spewing.

"Thank the bus driver!"

"Thank the bus driver! +1"

"Thank the bus driver! +2"

"Haha! Look, one guy fell into a Pond!"

"That girl landed on a bees nest!"

As the survival challenge was being broadcast to the entire federation, most citizens who had the time tuned in. The various people who had early mess ups were horribly mocked. Jacob did not have a camera following him, otherwise people would start to curse him out.

Right now, Jacob, having landed, climbed up a tree, and started to release scouting drones. He wanted to quickly find an area to build a base, enacting the first stage of his plan. He sent out around twenty drones, controlled by a brand new smartwatch.

He is currently in a forest, as the drones flew out, he quickly found a possible place, it was a plateau that rose almost unnaturally out of the forest, about 60 meters high, the tallest tree in the forest barely exceeds 40 meters. The plateau also had a rather large lake on it.

He marked the area on a digital map that was being created. He quickly found a second place. In an area where the forest started to turn into a mountain range, he found a cave. He sent some drones in, and found it was rather large, and it connected to an underground river. There were some one-star exo beasts making the cave their home though.

He quickly continued his search, and came upon a vast plains. The grass was around a meter in height. He could not find any exo beast in the plains though. There was a river that ran through the plains that could be used as a water source.

He eventually decided upon the Plateau. Driving the drones back, he collected them and made his way to the plateau. He trekked through the forest avoiding any exo-beasts, eventually he found a large rock wall bared his path. This was the plateau. He made his way around the side until he found a large pond area.

He pulled out a set of climbing picks, equipped some safety gear, and started to quickly scale the wall.