I Can Only Cultivate In A Game

"How do they coordinate like this?" Mia asked breathlessly with her palms against the glass.

"Mana defense units undergo strict synchronization training," one of the assistant instructors replied. "Each team operates like a single nervous system. The warriors create openings. The mages control the terrain. The summoners bring disruption and backup."

As if to emphasize this, another instructor raised her staff high, and the ocean water beneath churned unnaturally.

"Aqua Siphon Spiral!" she chanted.

A swirling column of sea water rose upward like a summoned deity and twisted into a helix as it captured three beasts mid-motion.

Their bodies froze midair, trapped in a cyclone of their own element. With a flick of her wrist, Instructor Maria compressed the spiral into a water lance and hurled it downward.

It impaled all three.

The explosion of elemental energy that followed lit the entire stormy skyline in violet and blue.

Then came the next wave of sea beasts but unlike the usual, these ones had flight capabilities.

Skyborne leviathans coated in barnacled armor emerged from the clouds with their wings drenched in glowing spores that rained acid. One dived toward the observation tower where the students stood.

"Barrier!" the assistant instructor barked.

A dome of mana shot up around the deck, just as the beast crashed into it. A rippling dent formed in the shield causing the students to fall back in horror.

Within it, their heart rates surged.

Outside, Instructor Maria shot upward like a bullet with Arcane Fire coiling around her arms.

She hurled a ball of blue flame.

"Skyburst."

The moment it connected with the leviathan's head, it detonated inwardly, compressing the beast into itself until it collapsed in on its own weight and crashed into the ocean like a meteorite.

The battle between the mana defense officers and the magical sea beasts continued for a couple of hours until the storm calmed.

At this point, nearly the entirety of Sector K-22 was coated in the remains of hundreds of sea beasts.

Fortunately, the remaining beasts fled.

And all that remained was mist… blood… and silence.

A floating comm-sphere lit up before Rukia's face and a voice came through.

"Commander, sector breach neutralized. Casualties?"

"Twelve Berserkers, Seventeen Warriors, two mages... Minor injuries on six others. No civilian harm. Students are safe."

The orb blinked off.

Back on the deck, the students stared at her descending form in silent awe as she landed lightly with a thud and turned to them.

Officers had died in this fight but her expression didn't change in the slightest... this seemed to be a normal ordeal in the apocalypse.

"This…" she voiced while brushing wet hair from her face, "is why we train. Not for games. Not for showing off. For survival."

No one spoke. They didn't need to.

The sound of crashing waves and fading thunder filled the silence.

And for the first time, many students understood what it truly meant to be part of this world.

For the rest of the day, the students couldn't stop talking about what they had witnessed.

They realized that they still had a very long way to go before they could be able to stand against such beasts.

The outside world was truly much more dangerous than they had expected.

"Do you think you could have survived an onslaught from any of those beasts if they broke through the barrier?" Felix questioned Victor once they arrived back at camp.

Victor thought about it for a moment, recalling how he was ready to attack when one of the beasts slammed into the barrier.

Although, he couldn't get a read on mana due to being a qi user, he had a sense of how powerful those beasts were.

Most of the mana defense officers that engaged the sea beasts were within ghe range of level 50 - 60 and both the female instructors with them at the time were above level 60 so Victor wasn't too sure about being able to properly engage these beasts like they did.

However, one thing he was certain of was the fact that he would be able to deal significant damage if push came to shove.

He smiled briefly and then responded to Felix; "I guess we'll never know."

"Phew, I can't believe we're headed back to the academy tomorrow... this past week has been the craziest week of my life," another student voiced out from the side.

"Yeah, except for nearly dying today I think it was pretty fun," another D ranked student inputted before chuckling.

"I saw them carrying corpses away... what if that ends up being one of us some day," a girl who wasn't too ecstatic about the day events, voiced with a fearful tone.

"Well... we all came into this knowing how dangerous it was. If you were scared of death, you should have never joined the awakened academy," Jonas stated while shrugging.

"Don't be so quick to dismiss death..." Victor voiced from the side with a solemn tone.

"The only reason we're here in the first place is because we fear it. If not for ourselves, for the ones we love. That is why we fight..."

Victor words immediately triggered a stunned silence from the students in the surroundings.

The realisation sunk into them as he stood to his feet and proceeded to walk towards his tent.

...

...

Batch N and O were up early, buzzing with a mixture of excitement and melancholy.

A week had gone by in the blink of an eye, packed with sight seeing, lectures, and countless lessons about survival in the outside world.

Some students had made new friends. Others had developed rivalries. But most were just grateful for the experience.

Now it was time to leave.

The floating spherical transports, constructed of mana-powered alloy, were already lined up in hover mode, waiting to take the students back to the academy.

One by one, students filed into them with their gear slung over their shoulders and reluctant expressions painted across their faces.

All except one.

Elyra frowned as she glanced around.

"Where's Victor?"

Her question was met with shrugs.

"No idea."

"I saw him earlier, but not recently."

"He said he'd meet us at the hub."

It had already been over thirty minutes since the students started filing into the transport hub.

With a worried expression, Elyra left her transport pod and took off through the dusty terrain of K-22.

Her eyes scanned every corner of the sector as she searched for Victor.

Eventually, her search led her toward the outer edges of the restricted zone, where large structures of crystalized black stone rose in eerie silence.

This place was where the Drakenars that tried to slip into the sector had been left in a state of suspended animation.

Their scaly red frames were locked in time like grotesque statues.

That's where she found him.

Victor stood in the distance with his coat flapping behind him as he drove his hand through the skull of a Drakenar.

The blood didn't even splatter out due to the mana construct surrounding it that paused time. Victor's hand would have been affected but it was layered in void qi.

He wasn't a novice when it came to space and time related matters due to his Void Emperor Bloodline so he could easily bypass the restraints.

He pulled his arm out but his face… wasn't calm.

It was contorted with hatred.

With qi coiling around his fist, he proceeded to crush the next Drakener.

He sent forth his void qi into the wide open mouth of the Drakenar and tore a hole straight through its head from the inside out.

A guttural growl escaped his lips as he turned toward another still form. The air sizzled as he unsheathed his Legacy Sword.

With a swing, Shadow Crescent Strike ripped through the ground, bisecting a dormant Drakenar before it could even twitch.

It was instantly, sliced into two halves while the surroundings trembled from its power.

Elyra approached cautiously.

"Victor," she called out but he didn't stop.

"I had to," he muttered without looking at her. "I couldn't just leave them here, alive. They don't deserve to be."

Elyra looked around at the field of slaughter. The heat was still rising off some of the evaporating corpses. Victor's fists were steaming.

"I get it," she whispered. "But… we need to go. The hubs are about to depart. If we stay too long, we'll be stranded."

Victor expression softened as he turned to her.

"…Thanks."

Elyra gave a small smile and nodded. "You needed this. I understand."

A quiet moment passed between them and with a tired exhale, Victor nodded. "Let's go."

She reached out and grabbed his arm.

But the instant they turned to leave, the sky transformed.

It was subtle at first like an odd veil of mana spreading through the air...

But in the next instant, a sound rang out.

It was like a chime so deep and powerful, it reverberated in their bones.

A massive red magical circle began forming high above them. Etched in countless glowing runic symbols, it pulsed ominously as if drawn from the blood of a thousand fallen warriors.

The entire sector darkened, bathed in the crimson hue radiating from the sky-spanning seal.

"What the hell is that…?"