Translator: Atlas Studios
Editor: Atlas Studios
“So ruthless!” a student muttered. The others nodded, lost for words.
“Quick! Call the police, and let’s go!” Chen Haiqing regained his senses first and brought them all back to reality. Good heavens, it was no mean feat to take down so many of them. No matter how he saw it, this was now a troublesome place to be.
“Boss! I’ll pay! Including all your losses today!” Chen Haiqing took out a stack of red bills and stuffed it into the restaurant owner’s hands without counting. Then he gathered everyone to leave.
When the overturned gangsters on the ground saw the students coming, they seemed to see something terrifying. They shrank back in fright and made way for the fearsome students to run away.
At this time, the students were too busy to wonder about who had used what methods to thrash these hundred-plus gangsters. There would be big trouble if they waited for the police to arrive.
This group of future pilots returned to the Aviation University dormitories quietly, as if nothing had happened.
Only Chen Haiqing was silently gazing at Lin Mo thoughtfully as he went up the stairs. What happened today was too weird. It did strike him as possible that Lin Mo could have taken down so many people in merely half a minute. But his face was neither flushed nor was he panting when he entered, as though he had not done anything.
It was too strange. He could not figure out what had stopped the large-scale fight from happening today and could only treat it as a supernatural incident for the time being.
“Damn, it was so exciting today!” Lei Dong was finally awake from his drunken stupor. He collapsed onto the single bed and was panting heavily, forgetting about the trouble he had gotten everyone into because of his drinking.
“Yeah, this place isn’t too peaceful. There are actually people like that!” Lin Mo sat at his desk. Most of the luggage he had brought was not clothes but books. The price of books in this world was quite low, and even ordinary people could freely buy the books they wanted. The imparting of knowledge was extremely convenient, and this was what Lin Mo was most satisfied with.
The humans in this world were generally weak, but they had unique weapon systems and order. Lin Mo was not in a hurry to make any special self-defense equipment.
Because of their own interests, Dragon Knights would often learn special skills that were specifically used for dealing with circumstances where they were alone. Strong logistic support was needed to sustain the expensive Dragon Knight training.
The only thing that Lin Mo felt was a pity was that there were no magic crystals in this world. Perhaps because of this, it did not develop into a magical energy civilization but instead an advanced physics civilization.
However, the lighting technology of his world was well developed, and there were many light sources available at night. Being the light attribute, Lin Mo was fortunate and like a fish in the water. He did not need to search for it purposely and could drive his remaining bit of light-attribute battle aura to draw the light energy from the outside bit by bit, anytime and anywhere. The light energy that he had accumulated in the past few days was sufficient to barely cast a couple of simple spells.
After muttering that one sentence, Lei Dong gave in to his drunken stupor and simply started snoring. This glutton was either eating, sleeping, or causing trouble.
There was a small table lamp lit on Lin Mo’s table, and he quietly read his book until late at night, when the lights-out signal came from outside the dormitory, and the power was cut off. This was the case with a semi-military management school. At that point, everyone had to stop all activities. Apart from the designated open reading rooms that could turn on lights overnight, they could only go back to their rooms honestly and sleep.
After the lights turned off, Lin Mo did not intend to use the light-attribute Illumination spell, which was frequently used in the other world, to continue reading. He put the book down, sat on his bed, and silently operated the faint and imperceptible battle aura that was as thin as a strand of hair. He checked on his recent gains from sunlight, moonlight, and other light sources. Even if his restoration was extremely slow, as long he did not give up, there would always be some gains.
Strength represented all of his survival principles, the everlasting law of the jungle between people. Lin Mo’s few remaining memories of his original soul, coupled with what he had come into contact with in this world, enabled him to understand that despite the world being wrapped in so-called laws and bound by morals, the law of the jungle was explicitly expressed between countries. Judging by the history of this world, it was at war most of the time, and peace was almost always extremely short-lived.
Although the external manifestation of everyone’s way of survival had changed, the essence remained the same. His original world used magic and swords to kill people; this world, in addition to the various firearms, used economics and moral laws to nail others to the ground. What was more complicated was that strength and battle skills were not the cornerstones of social class. All kinds of skills required by all kinds of people became the way of life for everyone to survive.
As a Dragon Knight, having to relearn other life skills was obviously less effective. Lin Mo could only choose to hold on to the strength that he was most familiar with, and returning to the sky was his way of survival.
Lin Mo lightly stroked the metal egg with a faint rune on the surface. It was the only memento that his Metal-Attribute Giant Dragon, Gold Coin, had left him. It had the strange, inexplicable feature of devouring metal, though its size did not increase much. After sneakily eating his Dark Steel Mystic Armor, it had grown a bit, restoring to its original size when Lin Mo had found it. It was no different from the size of a chicken egg. He kept it beside him as a keepsake.
If Gold Coin had followed him to this world, it would probably be endlessly happy. The metallurgical capabilities of this world were many times better than his original world. Any city had more metal reserves than the Sland Empire. Doors, windows, roadsides, handrails, trash cans, gates… Metal was everywhere.
A Metal-Attribute Giant Dragon would probably be in food heaven here. It probably did not even need to move and could easily eat large chunks of high-purity metal. Even if all the Metal-Attribute Dragons came here, the waste metal alone was enough to feed them like pigs, more than enough for them to eat until they died.
Fortunately, he was in a country that was strong enough. Although there were hostile forces, they were negligible and did not pose any threat of war. This allowed Lin Mo, who was constantly vigilant and tense during the Sland Empire and the Tersi Empire war, to finally relax. Being in a constant, long-term state of battle was not something even a strong warrior could bear. For Lin Mo, this was an extremely comfortable and relaxing environment.
Lin Mo sat on his bed like this for the entire night, and only the sound of Lei Dong’s snoring accompanied him. Luckily, there was heating in the room all night and no risk of getting a cold.
In the distant horizon, the sky began to brighten, and the wake-up call blared from the various speakers near the dormitory buildings.
The registration of specially recruited pilots had officially closed, and today was the first day of their official start of school.
This batch of students had a total of forty-seven people. The recruitment of pilots was never done on a large scale, and the school would naturally not hold a large-scale opening ceremony for them. Instead, they took their attendance in a large classroom, and after they saw the school leaders, they were split into two classes, A and B, on the spot.
Lin Mo was randomly assigned to Class B, and Lei Dong was also in the same class. After the students were split into classes, their excited expectations of being able to fly in the blue sky were immediately shot down by the instructors. They needed to go through at least half a year of theory courses to be qualified to even touch an aircraft. And that was restricted to ‘touching’ only. They had to go through simulator training for some time before they were allowed to follow the experienced pilots up into the sky. If they wanted to actually fly a plane, it would have to depend on their individual performance. No one could fly in the blue sky directly, and there would be a lot of training and tests in between.
The reasons given by the school were very simple. Flying a plane was not like driving a car. Every training plane, even the most basic ones, was more expensive than any name-brand luxury sports car on the market. Any accident would result in both a loss of human life and the plane. Therefore, no one dared to let these rookies that had not even touched a plane fly one for fun.
Being a pilot was a high-risk occupation. A moment of distraction could mean a plane crash and losing their lives. This was what the school leaders focused on reminding all the first-years on the first day of school.
There were brutal elimination rate quotas in the selection and training of these specially recruited pilots. This was no surprise to Lin Mo. The Dragon Knight Legion training camp even had a death quota for the knight selections. The competition was extremely harsh.
Rather than being defeated by the enemy in the sky, leading to defeat in battle, it was better to eliminate those they did not make it in the selection. This also caused every warrior who succeeded in becoming a Dragon Knight to treasure every comrade they had. Before they could set foot on the battlefield to gain victory against the enemy, they had to step on the corpses and blood of their own people to become glorious Dragon Knights.
People would become beasts for the sake of survival. These harsh criteria were nothing. Lin Mo, who was once a homeless orphan in a small border town of another world, understood this more than anything.
The instructors from the two classes took turns teaching. The first thing they were taught as new students was military training.
It was not to torture them for fun nor improve their stamina, but to create strict discipline and have them maintain a high degree of discipline even after giving their all. This was what the military wanted. They did not want careless souls who could drop bombs over their own people.
On the athletic track with a circumference of four hundred meters, more than twenty figures were running sparsely. Compared to the Class A instructor—who was strong, tall, and as sturdy as a bull—the Class B instructor was tanned and skinny but exceptionally alert.
The hoarse tone unique to soldiers rang out, constantly reporting the number of laps run. This unique hoarse voice passed down from generation to generation by soldiers had almost become a special dialect.