Worldwide Class Change: Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward!-Chapter 143, First Immortal Guardian (4)
She was visibly damaged now. The vitality that the conversion had built into her was still present, still substantial, but it was no longer untouchable.
It had limits.
Two full island clearances without any attempt at defense had worn it down, until a significant portion of it had been stripped away. And still, she kept moving. The behavioral directive did not recognize damage thresholds. It did not recognize inefficiency, or risk, or sustainability. It recognized only its single instruction, and it executed it without deviation.
She reached the third island.
Lin Yi watched from the Greater Qilin’s back, his posture relaxed but his attention absolute. He made no move to intervene. Interference would alter the data he wished to collect. A test that ended too early was worse than no test at all. He let it continue, watched her cross the narrow entry bridge and step into engagement range of the four monsters waiting on the far side.
The pattern did not change.
No adaptation. No technique layered on top of her movements. No attempt to mitigate incoming damage. Just raw vitality, raw force, and forward momentum. Each exchange followed the same structure as before, and each one added another increment of damage to a total that was never reduced.
She was winning.
But she was paying for every victory in full.
[Starborn Predator Defeated — Guardian Kill]
[EXP Gained: +31,200]
[Amplification: +31,200,000]
[Celestial Dreadhorn Defeated — Guardian Kill — Rare Elite Bonus]
[EXP Gained: +54,800]
[Amplification: +54,800,000]
[Level Up! — Level 192 → Level 193]
Three levels. Gained entirely through guardian combat.
Lin Yi did not look away from the battlefield, but the numbers settled cleanly into place in his mind.
Slower than direct engagement. Expected.
She is operating as a brute-force unit with no optimization layer. No efficiency routing. No targeting logic beyond proximity and aggression.
And yet...
His gaze sharpened slightly.
The EXP being generated is enormous, making it an effective way nonetheless.
He let that sit for a moment, turning it over from multiple angles, examining not the surface implication, but the structural one beneath it.
Which means scaling is no longer linear.
Which means the limiting factor is not my personal combat throughput anymore...
A brief pause.
It is slot utilization.
His attention returned fully to her as she reached the edge of the third island.
And then—
She stopped.
Not by choice. Not by hesitation. Not by any change in directive.
Her vitality ran out.
It happened with a kind of quiet finality that almost felt out of place against the violence that had come before. She was mid-engagement with a level 142 Astral Serpent, her movements still carrying the same blunt persistence, when the sustaining function simply... ended.
No collapse. No stagger.
Just absence.
One moment she was there, existing through the artificial extension of converted vitality.
The next, she wasn’t.
The Astral Serpent lingered for half a second, as if recalibrating reality, then disengaged.
On the Qilin’s back, Lin Yi’s fingers tightened slightly around the halo as it pulsed once in his hand.
---
[Immortal Guardian — Slot 1 — Depleted]
[Guardian lifespan concluded]
[Slot 1 now available for new conversion]
[Remaining slots: 6]
---
Six slots.
Unchanged.
The first had completed its cycle, and the system had reset the allocation cleanly.
Lin Yi’s gaze moved once more across the island where she had vanished, then back to the halo resting in his hand, and finally outward, into the vast expanse stretching beyond.
The test had given him what he needed.
He did not rush the conclusion. He let it form properly.
From what he had observed, a level 80 to 90 hunter produces a guardian at that tier. Enhanced durability. Sustained presence. But fundamentally bounded by the original framework.
Useful. Reliable. Replaceable.
A brief pause.
Not decisive.
And then, naturally, his thoughts shifted.
To a different baseline.
To a different kind of input.
Long Tianyu.
The name settled with weight.
Long Tianyu.
Level 189. S-Rank. Dragon God Tamer. National Guardian of Jianghe City.
Lin Yi stood in the silent expanse of the Allheaven, his mind tracing the silhouette of the man who had once offered him a hand in friendship.
In this world, Level 189 was not merely a statistic; it was three decades of accumulated combat instinct, a peak refinement of class specialization, and a soul synchronized with the devastating power of dragons.
He looked down at the halo in his hand, his grip tightening as the system’s cold logic overlaid itself onto the memory of the man.
The conversion process was absolute. If he were to commit a Level 189 National Guardian into one of his six slots, the output would be unlike anything the Allheaven Expanse had ever witnessed. It wouldn’t be a brute-force unit trading damage until depletion; it would be a dense, sustained entity of pure vitality mass—a battlefield dominator that carried the ingrained combat efficiency of a master into a tireless, amplified frame.
The internal calculation was relentless:
Six slots.
Six independent units.
Six parallel EXP streams.
Six potential Level 189 conversions.
The thought circled back, heavier each time. Long Tianyu was an ally, a friend, and a pillar of the city. He was also, undeniably, the most optimal input available.
Conversion was irreversible. A Guardian’s lifespan was finite, and while the resulting output would be astronomical, it would be a temporary flame of immense power. Lin Yi stared into the shimmering void of the expanse, his expression shifting into a mask of quiet, grounded certainty.
Is the trade acceptable?
The silence in his mind was the only answer. To leave the slots underutilized was a failure of efficiency. To fill them with suboptimal inputs was to accept a lower ceiling of power when a higher one was within reach. Lin Yi did not operate inefficiently. He never had.
Yet, a final question remained unresolved, lingering like a shadow at the edge of his vision. It wasn’t about whether the conversion was optimal—the math already proved it was. It was about whether it was necessary.
He closed his hand fully around the halo, the faint, golden glow slipping between his fingers like sand. He looked out across the empty islands of the Allheaven, the blueprint of his future beginning to take shape in the darkness.
Six slots. Six decisions. One inevitable path to the top.
