After the brutal beating session ended, Instructor Behemoth didn’t give the trainees a single moment to catch their breath.
He immediately ordered everyone to assemble and head to the Dining Hall.
The trainees could only grit their teeth and get up, lining up in the corridor before following the soldiers into an outrageously huge dining hall.
Rhombus Base was unimaginably vast, its interior space almost comparable to a small city.
Just the dining hall alone could hold five thousand people, and all trainees with numbers in the last five thousand were gathered here.
Everywhere in the dining hall was painted a glaring bright red.
The walls were covered with slogans like [Eliminators’ Home], [Cowards’ Refuge], [Doombound of the Underachievers]—words that were either meant to motivate or purely mock.
Yun Ruoxi followed the soldier’s directions to her seat, her gaze falling on a sea of densely packed heads.
The buzz of whispered conversations filled her ears, annoying as a swarm of mosquitoes.
After all, they were still children, immature in mind; even when suddenly facing life-or-death situations, once gathered together without supervision, they easily forgot the rules temporarily.
Those like her and Lin Zhen, mature and calm early on, became oddities here.
The seats for trainees numbered in the last thousand weren’t much different from the other unlucky “last five thousand,” except theirs were located deeper inside.
Yun Ruoxi sat down on a metal chair marked [9992].
In front of her was a long metal dining table with ten people seated in order of their numbers.
Not long after sitting down, the blonde girl numbered 9993 on her right side took the initiative to strike up a conversation:
“Sis, you’re so beautiful!”
“Really beautiful?”
Seeing the girl staring at her long blue hair, Yun Ruoxi gently tucked a strand behind her ear.
She smiled softly at first, but then recalled the time the star bandits dragged her by her hair.
Her expression darkened, and her voice dropped:
“But without strength… what’s the use of being beautiful?”
“Being pretty is just being pretty. Why does it have to be about strength?”
Number 9993 tilted her head, genuinely seeming not to understand.
“Because in the battle camp, beauty won’t help me survive,” Yun Ruoxi said softly. “It might even attract unwanted attention.”
She was very clear that the first two years of training in the battle camp were akin to breeding wild beasts.
The Jungle Law of the strong devouring the weak was strictly upheld.
Add the extreme high-pressure Elimination Mechanism.
Outside of classes and training, almost daily vicious incidents happened within the base.
But as long as no lives were lost, and things weren’t taken too far, the higher-ups of the battle camp wouldn’t intervene—in fact, they welcomed it.
In their eyes, anyone who couldn’t protect themselves in the camp had no right to become an official member of the Saint Hand Society.
According to the original storyline, Yun Ruoxi’s first official appearance and her connection to Lin Zhen and the main group was due to her beauty attracting other trainees’ covetous eyes, prompting Lin Zhen and company to rescue her.
But now, the plot had changed, and she had already formed ties with Lin Zhen early on.
Whether the “Hero Saves Beauty” scene would still happen as scheduled was now uncertain.
“Do you like my hair?” Yun Ruoxi suddenly asked.
“Uh-huh!” Number 9993 nodded vigorously. “I dream of having long beautiful hair like yours.”
“Then fight to survive,” Yun Ruoxi smiled. “I’ll teach you how to take care of it later.”
This time she wasn’t acting; these were sincere words.
Her energy was limited, dealing with cameras and playing roles was already exhausting.
Now, she just wanted to relax a bit when there were no cameras and no need to pretend.
This number 9993 left no trace in the script, most likely an early eliminated trainee.
Showing a little bit of her true self in front of such a character who would never appear on screen probably didn’t matter.
After all… the other party was destined not to live long.
Yun Ruoxi sighed quietly in her heart.
Soon.
All trainees arrived at two dining halls separately.
The ceiling suddenly split open to both sides, revealing a dense network of pipes.
Countless cylindrical robots shot out from within, flying precisely above every dining table and hovering silently.
Then, Instructor Behemoth’s familiar gruff voice sounded from somewhere:
“In the battle camp, we don’t distinguish between men and women.
We only need warriors who eternally thirst for battle and obey orders.
But before becoming warriors, you must first learn to be beasts.”
“Eat. This is your food for the coming year.”
Before he finished speaking, the robots opened their bellies, and basins filled with bloody raw meat slammed down onto each trainee’s table with a loud clang.
Number 9995 reluctantly shook the iron basin:
“This… this is all raw… My mother said there are parasites in raw meat!”
Number 9997’s face turned pale: “Not even a knife and fork? Are we supposed to eat with our hands?”
“I’m from the Xisi Family, we’re not beasts that eat raw flesh!”
She was actually a noble…
Yun Ruoxi searched her memories.
She had never heard of the Xisi Family’s name before.
They were probably a local noble family from some small planet, and the plot didn’t seem to have any mention of them either.
Most likely, due to their noble pride, they were eliminated early on.
“Still don’t understand Instructor Behemoth’s words? I don’t want to be shocked or beaten again!”
Number 9996 gritted his teeth and forced a piece of raw meat into his mouth.
Mumbling painfully while chewing, “This… is our food for the next year!”
He sounded as if trying to hypnotize himself.
Damn it! Number 9997 slammed the table hard, but in the end resigned herself to grabbing a piece of meat.
“Eat.”
Seeing number 9993 glance at her again, Yun Ruoxi smiled and picked up a small bloody piece with her fingertips.
She waved it slightly before slowly bringing it to her mouth.
This raw meat was by no means from livestock carefully bred by the Empire—it was more like wild beast meat without any selective breeding or **processing.
The moment it touched her tongue, a strong fishy and gamey smell assaulted her nostrils.
When had Yun Ruoxi eaten such coarse food in the past ten years? Even her family’s Pandaman ate food dozens of times better than this!
An intense wave of nausea surged up, nearly forcing her to double over and retch.
Others around her reacted no better.
For a moment, the entire dining hall erupted with vomiting sounds, the air heavy with a faintly irritating scent of stomach acid.
“Ten minutes left. Here’s a small reward, just this once.”
Behemoth’s voice rang out again.
“The first to finish all the raw meat in their basin will be awarded 100 points.
These points will determine your future ranking on the scoreboard.
“Oh, and you can check your points on your Neck Collar.”
Yun Ruoxi wiped the saliva from the corner of her mouth, ignoring the flood of comments streaming in.
She lifted the collar resting delicately and pale on her collarbone and tapped the display twice.
Sure enough, a scoreboard popped up.