"Do you understand the plan?" Gustav asked the white-haired girl in front of him.

"Hmm, I do," The girl nodded slightly in response.

​​

"But if I do this, will that ensure that you'd help me out in the future?" She proceeded to ask.

"Hmm, if this goes well, you'll definitely score more points with me and increase your chances of securing a future partnership. Just make sure you don't mess it up," Gustav stated.

This girl he was speaking to was none other than Maltida.

Gustav devised a plan where he needed the input of a prestigious and popular girl within the school.

Maltida was the only one that came to mind, so he decided to call her up.

"I won't mess up... I have good acting skills too, you know," She smiled wryly.

Gustav could sense a feeling of melancholy in her voice, but he didn't dwell on it.

"Alright, let's head back,"

*******

-Two hours later

Inside the room, Gustav opened his eyes and smiled.

"Finally, the fourth step," He said with a look of elation.

He could feel his body being nourished with energy the instant he achieved the fourth step.

The red pool within his body expanded and made contact with the four points barricades.

After that happened, they merged together, and Gustav couldn't sense the four points anymore.

Everything became one large red blob for a few seconds; red roots started growing out of it.

"Looks like achieving these roots have something to do with achieving serial rank," Gustav noted while observing it within his body.

After a few more seconds, he stood up and moved around the room, trying to feel the changes within his body.

'Hmm, I can feel a certain kind of energy oozing out of my body... It's very faint, but I can sense it,' Gustav said internally while throwing his arm out like he was fighting an invisible opponent.

After a few seconds of jumping from place to place across the room in a bid to test out his body improvement, Gustav decided to head out.

'I won't be able to get a handle on my current strength if I don't test it out one way or the other,' Gustav said internally while changing his clothes.

He was still in the organic suit at this time.

It wasn't hard to get out of it since it had a computerized function that made it dismantle independently.

After Gustav got out of it, he put on black pants and a hoodie before heading out of his room.

He wore the hoodie fully on his head and held his face down as he moved across the corridor.

After getting out of the room area, he headed towards the left.

'Time to check out the other floors,' Gustav said internally as he moved towards the exit area of the current floor.

Gustav was sure that the MBO tower didn't just have floors for sleeping and eating.

Obviously, the participants were only sent to these floors for accommodation.

Now that they were given access to the next five floors, he was intrigued about their functionality. He felt that the MBO wouldn't just make five floors next to each other just for the purpose of accommodation.

Gustav arrived at the end of the corridor in a few and stepped onto the circular glowing panel in front.

Immediately after he got on top, a bright glow appeared from above and covered him from head to toe.

Trrroooiinn!

His body was pulled up with intense speed.

Gustav was unable to make out his surroundings and could only see a white light flashing in his line of sight for a few about five seconds.

After the five seconds passed, his vision cleared up, and he found himself at the end of a corridor. He could tell that he had already arrived on the next floor.

He looked down and noticed that he was standing on a similar glowing panel to the one he used to get here.

Gustav started moving forward down the corridor.

"Map," He called out.

Troiiin!

The map of the floor was displayed, and Gustav instantly took notice of the change.

Upon arriving on this floor, the map had updated itself and changed the layout to that of this floor's own.

"Oh, a testing floor," Gustav noticed that this was the only word on the map.

There were different sections on the map, but they all had numbers representing them.

Gustav moved across the corridor and turned towards the second left turning he came across.

He even met some MBO officials while moving across the place, but they ignored him since they knew that no one would be able to get to this place without giving authorization first.

After moving for a few more minutes and taking several turns, Gustav finally arrived in front of a doorway and walked through it.

He arrived in a wide-open space.

This space had runways and different kinds of humongous humanoid machines that could be seen moving about in different spots.

Lots of officials in black could be seen moving about here.

Towards the east, Gustav could see a massive green one. It was so big that its head was only about a hundred feet away from making contact with the ceiling.

It would only need to raise its arms to make contact since it was more than a thousand feet tall.

It had a wide circular hole in its chest area with blade-like arms and a triangular-shaped head. There was also a purple glow at the tip of its head.

About four thousand feet ahead, there was a square-shaped structure placed opposite it.

It looked metallic, but it was expanding in size as seconds passed.

'Wow, this is the first time I've seen technology like this. How are mixedbloods supposed to fight against this if an enemy makes use of them?' Gustav wondered as he stood by the side and watched.

"TESLA OV #144783 AT 100% CAPACITY!"

"INITIATING CHARGE IN 5!"

A loud robotic voice reverberated across the vicinity.

"4!"

"3!"

"2!"

"1!"

The empty hollow space in the chest area of the large humanoid machine had already lit up with dangerous purple-looking energy.

"FIRE!"

The instant this command was given, a purple beam shot out with intensity from the chest area of the humanoid machine.

Zwwwoonnnn!