Thankfully though, these missions weren''t thatmon.


    If they were, the federation wouldn''t be as safe as they imed it to be.


    But there still were millions of people at risk all over the federation from situations like rogue awakened going on killing sprees, floodgates opening on remotes, or awakened dying, causing a beast of equal rank and ss to cross over from the Primordial Expanse.


    These were just a few examples of the types of missions that could be offered.


    Alex only had these floodgate missions in his mind though.


    For one, if he were lucky and encountered a Mutant ss beast through one of them, and even luckier to obtain a Soul orb from ying it, then he would be one step closer to reaching D rank.


    It would be even better if he could find a Variant ss beast...


    Secondly, these missions were popr among students.


    As they were one of the only types of missions where no matter how many students epted the mission, they wouldn''t fail it as long as they just showed up and participated.


    Their rewards would be dependent on their contribution to suppressing the situation.


    "And finally, before we end this emergency meeting, I have one more thing to say."


    The Principal ended the chatter among the students with just a flick of his hand, suppressing them all from speaking or moving once again.


    "Your new schedules will arrive as soon as this meeting is over in a few moments. You are not to go back to your dorm and ck off. We are now in wartime, and any acts of rebelliousness orziness will be punished much more harshly than normal."


    As the Principal finished his speech, the sound of millions ofmunicators pinging simultaneously started to echo across the clearing, notifying each and every student of their new schedules.


    ''The higher ups must have the administration team working overtime… Pushing out millions of new schedules and organising such an emergency meeting before even an hour passed since the broadcast is insane,'' Alex thought, impressed at the efficiency of the school.


    But what he was unaware of was the fact that there was no administration team…


    There was only one, central AI that controls the university''s day to day affairs, and it had only taken a few microseconds to create these new schedules.


    ''Let''s take a look at my new schedule then.''


    Alex looked down at hismunicator, just like everyone else.


    ''Combat sses first, huh? Sounds good to me.''


    This would actually be his firstbat ss, if he didn''t count thebat assessment as one.


    But after hisst performance in that assessment, he had no doubts that this would be anything but easy for him.


    He wasn''t bothered about whether he would be ced in the same ss as Niks, as he had already moved past that incident.


    He had bigger things to worry about now.


    ***


    Over the next week, Alex had attended all sorts of sses, as stipted by the university''s new rules.


    His days now consisted of 12 hours training, whether at home or in sses, 8 hours of allotted sleep time, and 4 hours for other misceneous tasks like eating, breaks etc.


    Overall, it wasn''t actually that much different to his normal schedule…


    But he could imagine how the other,zier students were feeling right now.


    They probably only did a tenth of the intensity of this training before the rules were changed, and he could only look on with schadenfreude each time he stepped into a ss and saw them struggling to keep up.


    ''They brought it upon themselves.''


    Alex didn''t like people like that, the ones who had high talent and potential, but took it for granted.


    But moving on, Alex had actually gotten lucky with a few of his sses, specifically his strategy sses, and hisbat sses.


    This was because Mira had actually been assigned to the same ss as him!


    Considering the size of this year''s freshmen group, and the fact that each ss was only at maximum 200 students, the likelihood of them even making it in one ss together was low.


    He suspected that some strings were pulled by someone higher up to make it happen for them, but there was no conclusive evidence of any such thing taking ce.


    Besides, he wouldn''t know who would do such a thing for them either, as he didn''t really know any of the Professors that well, other than Professor Will. .


    But Professor Will didn''t have any pull in what sses he or Mira could be in, so it couldn''t have been him.


    He had made some solid progress over thest week, even nearingpletion of the first stage of his Heart of the Phoenix technique.


    By focusing his concentration on only one finger at a time, he was able to make much more progress than before, and he was nearly there now.


    He had already moved the energy from his arms, legs and abdomen to his chest area, specifically in his heart.


    Now, all he had left was to direct the energy in his head towards his heart.


    He had left this section forst as the scroll said it would by far be the hardest section toplete.


    The head was a very delicate area because of the brain, and if he messed even one tiny little thing up, it could cause a snowball effect of bad things that could happen, and he could either end up as a vegetable, or even dead.


    He sat down in a meditative position in his dorm''s training area, giving a nod to Mira to say he was ready.


    Alex had called Mira along for this session.


    Considering the danger, he wanted her to be there to pull him back before any life threatening damages took ce, should anything go wrong.


    Speaking of Mira, Alex had decided to give her some of the Mutant ss D tier beast cores he had lying there in his storage artifact.


    The reason was simple, it was so that she could reach D tier.


    This gracious gift from Alex was only a one time thing though, as Mira said that she wanted to work hard and earn her own beast cores from then on.


    She didn''t like taking hand outs, but she was tired of falling behind others, specifically the D tier students.


    She may be second on the overall freshman rankings, but she wasn''t second ranked in strength.


    Especially now that she had to use her Call of the Void sparingly, after finding out that there were many hidden dangers involved with using it.


    By using these beast cores, she was only catching up with everyone else.


    Besides, she couldn''t really rely on these hand outs from D tier onwards anyway, as she would have to meet requirements to rank up just like every other awakened when they reached that rank.


    "Are you sure you want to do this now?" Mira asked, concerned for Alex''s safety.


    She was still sceptical of Alex''s decision to only have her supervising him while he attempted the breakthrough to stage one of his Heart of the Phoenix technique.


    Mira felt that having someone like a professor who was much more experienced in the subject would be a much better option.


    But Alex had insisted on her being the one watching him.