Chapter 21: End of trial
Soon the time hit 0.
Beep!
Time seemed to stop at that moment, and the pup's body suddenly inflated like a balloon.
It was so fast that Glitch could not even blink. He got blasted up into the air.
As he flew up, came the delayed loud rupturing sound.
Boom!
It was so loud he felt a burning sensation in his ears. His head was about to burst when everything became silent. He lost his hearing with only an eerie beep ringing in his head.
Streams of blood dripped down from both of his ears.
Then came the burning sensation all over his body. He started having trouble breathing. He tried to look down, only to find himself floating 10 meters above the treetops.
Before he could make much sense of the situation, he started descending. As he fell, he saw the massive crater with the pup lying motionless at the center of the crater.
Luckily, he fell directly on top of the pup's body.
Bam!
A cloud of dust rose around him.
Ding!
He heard the notification in his head with tremendous pain. With that, he blacked out.
…
When Glitch came to his senses, he was floating in the dark space. A blue screen popped in front of him.
[Player Glitch Died!]
[End of trial!]
[Performance calculation in progress…]
These notifications helped him gain clarity. He realized he had died. He thought he could survive, but never expected the pup's body to expand like that.
'Did that pup survive?' Even though he did not see any moment, he was not sure of the answer. He rubbed his eyes in frustration.
At this time, Ai started recounting his trial performance. He stopped lamenting and focused on trail assessment.
[Evaluation of trial grade:
Evaluation of quest progress.
The basic quest failed.
(Forced plenty of players to choose a path before seeing species)
Quest taken: 0
Current Grade: F
…
Hunting evaluation in process.
Beasts killed in the first phase of the trial: 1000.
Beasts killed in the second phase of the trial: 29.
Current Grade: E
…
Special event progress:
Special event one: complete.
Kill the king!
Lead the war!
Player contribution: 57.23 percent.
(More than 50 percent contribution detected. 2 x contribution.)
[S rank event detected 3x contribution.]
Special event two: complete.
(The player died before killing all the canines.)
Current Grade: A
…
Special achievement
Kill the unkillable!
Contribution: 100%
Current Grade: SS.
…
..
Final grade: SS.
]
Glitch started reading his evaluation. First was his quest panel. This was so much worse. He even failed the mandatory basic first quest.
It was a quest where he needed to gather information about the ruler and 3 paths. Though this was not a big deal for him.
In Universal Online, each ruler has to select 3 important things, and any experienced player develops expertise in one thing.
Some were good with certain species, while some focused on source power.
He fell into the third kind that focused on one of the paths. So choosing a path before knowing species was not bad for him. After all, he saved 2 hours of his time not doing this quest.
His hunting evaluation was the same as he predicted. It barely increased his grade to E grade.
As he read the event evaluation, his mouth fell in shock. "What the hell, that silver wolf was the young king?" He slapped his forehead in tension.
Now that he realized the pup was not the young king, he realized all his theories behind it, being a commander type, were bogus.
He shook his head, making sure not to take unnecessary risks next time. But then, as the evaluation continued, he became quiet.
It was not like he was not excited, but actually, this was the first time he had heard of the SS rank.
In his past life, he always thought that S rank was the maximum, but no. Only now did he realize there were so many things a low-level player like himself did not know.
He was sure that there was no way none of the top players got anything above the S rank in the past 4 years. It's just they hid it from common folks.
As he thought more about his trial, basically he wasted 23 hours in initiating this quest. If someone used that time and also used the event triggered by others, they could get SSS or some higher rank.
This was a reminder for him to learn more.
He knew it was not a what-if situation as there were a few rich kids who played the game with the support of others. Few went as far as buying all the players on the planet so that they could gain the most out of the initial phase of the game.
He shook his head and focused back on the screen.
The evaluation panel closed in front of him, and a massive wall-sized screen appeared in front of him.
[It's time for the player to make 3 selections.]
As the player fails the basic quest, the game will present basic information about the path as compensation. But as plenty of players had to choose their path first.]
With that, three small windows opened in front of him with an AI voice in the background.
[In Universal Online, all the rulers need to select one of the three paths to lead their species. First is the path of study.]
The window on his left shone and showed him pieces of information.
[Path of Study: It lets you develop methods to use the source power. Users can develop powerful magic spells, precise martial arts, and more.]
Then the middle window started shining, and the next path appeared in front of him.
[Path of Hierarchy: It lets the ruler develop a complex social structure and hierarchy structure within your civilization. It's a species-dependent path.]
Then the last path became visible.
[Path of Evolution: It lets the ruler evolve their base species into different sub-variants. This path is independent of source power and species.]
[Player Glitch, please make your decision.
(Note: A ruler will never be able to change its path, so select with care.)]
Glitch smiled at the screen and clicked on his favorite path.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone