Chapter 1 Ranch's Choice

As Ranch stepped into the massive Void Gate with his usual gait, he once again felt himself plunging into an endless darkness.

Unable to see anything, even the sound of his own heartbeat disappeared, a familiar sensation.

Only this time, when the surroundings lit up again, it wouldn't be the academy.

Gradually, a faint glimmer, like the dawn seen by a mariner lost in the night, entered Ranch's vision.

As the silvery-white light appeared, a series of words rushed towards him like shooting stars streaking across the sky—

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

[Currently in preparation time. The official exam will begin after the preparation time ends.]

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

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

[Purple rare-grade or higher materials purchased by you may only be used for the creation of exam cards and cannot be taken out of the artificial Shadow World exam 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 exam, you will be refunded a percentage of the material costs as a bonus. The percentages are: White Common 10%, Blue Precious 20%, Purple Rare 30%, Pink Sacred 40%, Orange Epic 50%.]

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

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

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

[...]

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

[Have you finished reading and agree to enter the exam environment?]

[Continue/Exit]

Ranch quickly scanned through it.

Familiar with the law, he knew that each clause had its own underlying considerations.

For example, the fact that only 80% of the price of the remaining materials was refunded was not entirely because the Association was greedy for money, but to prevent some overly wealthy examinees from buying a large number of scarce materials without any consideration at the start of the exam, preventing other examinees who needed them from being able to buy them normally.

The fact that materials could not be taken out of the exam venue was also to prevent scalpers from using this method to buy high-grade materials and speculate on prices.

In addition, Ranch felt that the scoring bonuses and deductions for high-rank cards were quite fair. If a fourth- or fifth-rank card creator participated in the registration exam and only made a third-rank card, points would be deducted, but if they made a fourth- or fifth-rank card, there would be an extra bonus.

Examinees like Ranch who were participating at the third rank could only make third-rank cards, and there would be no extra scoring increase or decrease.

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

The surroundings quickly lit up, and Ranch found himself standing in a standard-sized card creation workshop.

On the [Examinee Operation Panel] in front of him, many functions such as [Select Scene] and [Purchase Materials] had been added.

During the preparation time, examinees could not start making cards, but could only carry out corresponding preparations.

So Ranch calmly began to select a scene.

The selectable environments ranged from indoor to outdoor, with various styles, almost covering all the maps recorded in the artificial Shadow World.

Soon, Ranch chose a spacious room similar to a principal's office.

Only here was he most comfortable and most efficient.

Afterwards, Ranch began to select materials.

On the browsing panel, he could see all the inventory and detailed information of the Ekryte Card Creator Association branch.

Some essential materials were already included in the exam registration fee. The Association would provide five sets of basic magic card creation consumables, which would be delivered to the examinee's individual Shadow World at the moment the exam officially started.

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.

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

[Curse Seal Ring: Blue Precious Item; Required for sealing minor magic or creature-type 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 spells, which can suppress evil creatures; ￡65.]

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

[Healing Magic Flower: White Common Item; Can be ground into medicinal powder or blended with magic ink; ￡0.5.]

[Light Feather: Purple Rare Item; Originates from light fairies, it can be used as a medium for casting powerful light-based magic; ￡115.]

[...]

After clicking on an item, you could also see its detailed color, detailed introduction, evaluation, and recommended usage methods.

Although Ranch would mainly focus on sealing due to the success rate, if he wanted to create high-quality cards with high scores, he would also have to refer to the available high-rarity materials in the current inventory of the Ekryte Card Creator Association branch.

It might be necessary to integrate other categories into the sealing system and turn it into a composite magic type.

Ranch quickly added some essential consumables for making sealing-type magic cards to the list. There was almost no need to hesitate about these.

Only when he saw some materials of other magic types in the middle did Ranch need to think a little about whether to make them optional when creating high-quality magic cards today.

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

Ranch's strategy was to make a white-quality guaranteed card in the equipment card, which he was least good at, and make blue or purple cards in the summoning and spell cards, which he was relatively good at.

In this way, as long as he could successfully create the cards, he would at least be rated at the bronze level, or even the silver level if one of the purple single cards in the two purple and one white cards was exceptionally highly rated.

Just as Ranch quickly browsed through the materials in these four filtered inventories.

He was looking at the interface that was originally being quickly swiped through in an assembly line manner, when he suddenly swiped back immediately after swiping through a certain page.

Ranch's hand became slow and gradually stopped.

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

According to the evaluation of the Card Creator Association, there is currently no plan to catalyze and process it. According to the traditional direct use method of element stones, it may only be able to exert purple rare-level effects.

Even so, this single stone alone costs 1250 pounds.

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

But he frowned more and more as he carefully looked at the shape of this element stone.

He had seen this kind of chondrule structure in science magazines in his previous life.

This doesn't seem to be a stone on the ground, but a solid formed by the condensation and precipitation of solar nebula matter, which can only form the appearance after accretion and long years!

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

Ranch stood in front of the light screen for purchasing materials, holding his chin and thinking.

Hyberian didn't want any of the 650-pound bonus last time and gave it all to him.

When Ranch left the South Vantina border territory, he gave Talia a lot of the 1,000 pounds or so of property he had on hand, and would continue to pay her in the future.

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

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

If possible, he still didn't want to ask his family for money again in a short period of time.

Ranch knew that the butler Hans must want to see the fun, so he didn't let Ranch's old man Noe, who was far away in a foreign country, know that Ranch had been admitted to the Sage Academy for the time being.

Ranch himself didn't care. He was just preparing to make a name for himself and show off his skills in the royal capital Ekryte before giving his old man a surprise, preferably after he came back from doing something big in the North Continent.

Since his old man Noe gave him investment, Ranch would definitely reciprocate Noe's expectations!

After considering it for a while.

Ranch still made a decision.

He removed most of the optional purple rare-quality materials, bought this element stone, and re-selected other matching materials for it.

Just like that, time passed minute by minute.

And finally, the prompt for the official start of the exam arrived!

There will be 4 updates today, and 2 more chapters later

(End of this chapter)