A spatial rift opened and Liam appeared in the room.

He reached out to remove the transparent crystal diadem from his head, massaged his temples, and carefully stowed the diadem in his spatial ring.

It was a specialized auxiliary device for stabilizing the mind and reducing mental stress.

Not long ago, he was still more or less a normal human, and even with his current strength, it was better not to take risks.

It was easy for young divine beings to become megalomaniacal or struggle with the difference in time flow between Earth and the Void.

When the human federation had just discovered the demi-plane seeds, it wasn't strange to learn that someone was affected by their divine nature and the divine power, twisting their personality to the extreme.

Fortunately, after hundreds of thousands of years of exploration and development, humanity had already created stable aids to connect to the divine realm.

Human civilization had also established a foothold in chaotic space. Billions of gods had invaded many worlds in the universe. They had occupied countless planes, solar systems, and galaxies.

Before a demi-plane transformed into a plane, it remained stuck in the interstices of the Void and was almost undetectable.

This was partly why the new divine realms were generally perfectly hidden and impossible to find without precise coordinates.

This was also why Earth had not yet discovered other races before the aura's recovery.

The entire solar system was trapped in a spatial distortion. This in itself was strange, but not uncommon.

Some gods had even encountered an entire dwarf galaxy, devoid of spiritual energy, stuck in a spatial rift.

Like a glass cage, they could see the outside but couldn't escape.

It was only with the fall of a meteorite that Earth's latent energy awakened, and the solar system was thrust into the main Void.

Since then, Earth had continued to expand and had reached several hundred times the size of the sun before the recovery.

The sun itself had experienced exponential growth, so the ratio between their sizes hadn't changed too much.

As for the other planets in the solar system, although they had also increased their size by several hundred times, they had ended up becoming moons of Earth due to its gravitational attraction.

Now, the Erath had eight moons.

As for Liam's place in all this, he could be considered a third-generation minor noble. One of his ancestors had successfully lit the divine flame and had become a true god, protecting the family for nearly two thousand years.

Leaving his room, he washed his face and lay down on the living room couch as a sound emitted from his watch. He pressed a few buttons and a holographic panel appeared in front of him:

[Student Account]

[Student: Liam Adler]

[High School: Merflow High School, Second Year, Class 12]

[Ranking: 39/82 || 498/1085 (class/second year)]

[Semester Grade: 64/100]

[Teacher's Comment: Good personal combat power, but believers are weak and few]

Well, that was rather formal, but Liam barely glanced at it and shrugged. He already knew. The race he had chosen was indeed a bit poor.

When he had first opened his divine realm a month ago, it was a huge block of rock and ice that gradually transformed into a disc. Three-quarters were shallow seas, with depths of barely thirty meters at most while the rest was rocky and desolate land.

He had no choice but to choose an amphibious race if he wanted his belivers to survive and adapt, but the price of good races was exorbitant.

Unfortunately, a force had tried to attack the family's system those days, and he hadn't been able to borrow money from them.

Thus, he could only afford to buy a hundred Novarians with his means.

Fortunately, his parents, both demigods, had kept a few small assets for him just in case, allowing him to create an ecosystem that was roughly suitable for his race.

Nevertheless, he had fallen behind compared to other students from good backgrounds.

It was even worse for students from normal parents. If their divine realm deviated slightly from the norm, they would never have enough money to effectively start their realm.

When he obtained the coordinates, his divine realm was almost completely empty, with barely a few microorganisms.

There was no plant or animal life, and he had to add a whole bunch of plants and fish to allow the creation of a rather stable ecosystem sufficient to support his people's survival.

When he installed them in the divine realm, there were only a hundred Novarians. Now, nearly an earthly month after, which was about 82 years in the divine realm (time ratio of about 1/1000), had passed, and there were now 117 Novarians. Nearly a hundred years, and the growth rate was less than 20%.

Unfortunately, this could only be attributed to the weakness of the Novarians. Although the initial races of all students were very weak, the Novarians were still at the lower end.

A Novarian was already very weak; even an untrained adult could easily handle three or four of its level.

Added to their short lifespan of at most twenty-five years and the school's weekly challenge, which brought monsters to attack divine realms every Monday, every time their number increase, a lot of them get killed.

However, what prevented him from complaining was that his performance in class was still at the intermediate level.

He ranked 39th in his class of 82 students, and there were 1085 students in the same year spread across 13 classes. Even with such poor performance, he could still rank above average.

It was very likely that the divine realms of the lowest-ranked students were still bare rock.

After checking his results, Liam closed the panel and clicked on another message.

It was from his homeroom teacher, addressed to the entire class.

"Next Monday will be the selection test. The school will assign you according to your results. The better your ranking, the more resources you'll receive. This is your one and only chance to prove yourself, so prepare seriously."

Such a test was conducted once a week. Typically, teachers would go to a world and capture a few weak monsters, which they would then send directly into the divine realms of the students.

The test was very dangerous and could easily result in heavy losses among the believers, which would ultimately severely slow down the development of the divine realm.

Nevertheless, the risk came with opportunity.

It was the right time to improve one's ranking and obtain more resources from the school while enhancing the vitality of one's believers.

The human federal high school relied on a hierarchical system based on meritocracy.

The first month of high school was still normal, but in the second year of high school, students would simultaneously open their divine realms, and each would be reclassified based on their examination results into elite, upper, or ordinary classes.

There was no doubt that the elite and upper classes would benefit from far more resources and better training than the ordinary class.

In other words, the ordinary class was synonymous with failure, and even becoming a superior existence would be a miracle for those students.

Even though Liam was the heir of a good family, he still paid close attention to this division and did not wish to be placed in the ordinary class. If the family elders considered him a waste, he would hardly receive anything from his family, regardless of his parents' support.

He had to pass this test, and with flying colors.

His consciousness delved into his own spiritual sea, where a crystal sphere with a faint glow floated calmly at the center, like a starry sky, slowly rotating. The golden glow covered almost the entire sphere, but some parts remained completely dark.

Liam sighed as he looked at the sphere, nearly 99% of its surface shining with a warm light.

"I hope I can charge it before the test!"

He used his consciousness to direct the faith energy he had accumulated for several days into the sphere.

If he still had his diadem, he would realize that his faith points were decreasing at a crazy speed as the light gradually covered the rest of the sphere's surface.

Finally, after a considerable amount of time, the entire sphere lit up and shone with a radiant brilliance. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't add any more faith energy.

"Finally!!!"

Liam nearly burst into tears.

After waiting for seventeen years, this thing was finally ready to be used.

Since his birth, he had known he had this thing in his spiritual sea, but before opening the divine realm, it acted like an inert object.

It was only after he impulsively sent faith energy onto it that it activated.

However, it seemed like a bottomless pit. The more it lit up, the harder it became to light up the rest of the sphere. It almost consumed as much to light up the last percent as it did for the other ninety-nine.

Well, he didn't really know the name of this thing, but he decided to simply call it the Seed of Origin.

He extended a strand of his consciousness and placed his mark on the Seed of Origin, refining it like his own linked artifact.

Instantly, a searing pain shot through his brain, as if thousands of steel needles were piercing his head. His vision blurred, and he eventually blacked out.

When he regained consciousness, the sun had already set.

In his still groggy head were hundreds of pieces of information on how to use the Seed of Origin.

In short, this sphere was akin to a decomposer and assembler. It could break down everything in the universe, and similarly, as long as there was a clear plan in mind, it could create and improve everything.

Of course, this was based on the principle that he had enough energy to do so. If he tried to decompose a true god, the god could simply use a bit of divine power to reduce him to dust.

However, there was a big difference between theory and practice.

"Well, just have to test it."

He couldn't wait and headed towards a chest hidden behind a painting in his room. After a long series of codes, the armored door opened, and he retrieved four small pearls.

Although they weren't very beautiful, just one of them was already worth more than his entire apartment.

These pearls were a condensation of the wisdom accumulated by humans for hundreds of thousands of years.

When a human reached the rank of demigod, the federal government would give them the divine pearl fabrication technique for free.

Once they became demigods, their divine power became powerful enough to temporarily create an independent space, frozen both in time and space.

Of course, such measures were not absolute; demigods could create spaces of only a few cubic kilometers at most.

Furthermore, the divine spell would eventually lose all energy, causing the space to collapse. At that time, even if the outside world was not affected, everything contained in the pearl would be reduced to nothingness.

But again, the expiration period of the pearls was in the thousands of years, and it was very rare for them to expire.

Regarding their classification, the pearls were divided into quality and level.

The level directly represented the maximum level of the divine realm that could accept the pearl.

For example, a one-star pearl could be integrated into any divine realm, while a two-star pearl generally required the divine realm to have evolved into a full plane.

The quality directly represented the power stored in the pearl, and it was undoubtedly the most abstract, as it depended on the number of things stored, their strength, their potential, and many other factors, but the federation had developed very strict standards over the millennia.

To give an example, if two one-star pearls contained rank 0 kobolds, a white pearl would contain about ten, while a Red pearl could contain fifty.

(Quality: White, Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Gold,...)

He placed the pearls on the watch, and they levitated as four virtual panels appeared in front of him:

Resource Pearl (1 Red star) - Fertile soil: contains 8000 cubic meters of magical fertile soil capable of doubling plant growth speed (it is recommended to use a thickness of about two meters of soil for good efficiency).

Skill Pearl (1 Yellow star) - Double Strike: grants a species the special ability of the double strike: condenses the body's power to perform two consecutive attacks, causing considerable damage over a short period of time but leading to a loss of strength shortly after (a skill that allows you to kill the enemy but leaves you vulnerable afterward).

Weapon Pearl (1 Yellow star) - Steel stakes: contains 500 steel stakes of KX250 standard (effective standard weapons in low-level combat, but with low durability and almost no power against intermediate existences).

Animal Pearl (1 White star) - Fish school: contains a herd of 300 sardines (a school of normal sardines).

The resource pearl had been given to him by his family as a gift after the fact, as a kind of apology for not being there at the right time.

The two yellow quality pearls had been given to him by his parents, while the white quality pearl had been rewarded by the school due to his ranking.

Although it was of yellow quality, the fertile soil pearl was almost useless to him. Not to mention the difficulties in finding seeds suitable for his divine realm, the Novarians already had enormous difficulties in building simple huts, let alone agriculture.

To use a divine pearl, he had to bring it above the divine realm, then unfold the compacted space of the pearl and slowly merge it into the realm before the realm marked what was in the pearl as originating from it.

In other words, he had to fully assimilate the contents of the pearl into the divine realm and wait for it to be fully assimilated before adding more.

It was similar to constructing a building. If one wanted to build a tall building, they needed solid foundations. Otherwise, not to mention constructing a higher structure, even maintaining the existing structure could be problematic.

For new divine realms, which were often lower demi-planes, they could only merge one 1-star pearl every 80 years, or about once a month on Earth. This was the ratio established by the sacrifice of millions and millions of humans.

When his realm evolved into an intermediate demi-plane, this would increase to two, and so on.

But then you might ask, what was the difference between divine pearls and monsters attacking every week?

Well, to be frank, just about everything. The monsters came from a spatial channel formed by the school.

It was up to Liam to then drive this channel to his divine realm to connect to it.

In reality, the teachers only saw what happened through sensors placed on the monsters. The channel didn't break the spatial barrier but deformed it and found faults.

Moreover, the monsters were present to be killed, not assimilated. The presence of a few corpses of weak monsters had almost no influence on the stability of the divine realm.

Conversely, pearls were meant to truly merge with the divine realm.

This not only required merging with the existing spatial barrier to start the marking process but also some time for the objects or living beings from the pearls to acclimate to the realm.

Of course, Liam could also open spatial channels to plunder other planes, but the problem remained fundamentally the same: it would take time for the plundered items or population to assimilate into the realm.

The only exception was when they opened their divine realm for the first time. Since the demi-plane had existed for an unknown amount of time between the fissures of the void, they could merge four to nine pearls depending on their luck.

Liam considered himself rather lucky, as he had acquired six fusion slots right from the start, totaling seven.

He had already used five himself: two to create a somewhat stable underwater ecosystem: microorganisms, underwater plants, corals..., two to add two large schools of fish, and one to bring the Novarians.

He was about to experiment with his new artifact when he suddenly felt a vibration from his watch.

He wanted to hang up, but when he saw the number, he immediately calmed down and answered.

The watch shone for a brief moment, and the hologram of a young woman dressed in a white shirt and green skirt appeared before him, looking exactly like him.

She looked gentle and graceful and gazed at Liam with a face filled with love:

"Liam, how did today's test go?"

Liam smiled as he sent her the report of his test.

"It was okay, I think I can aim for the upper class next week."

It was of course Liam's mother, Julia Adler, a confirmed demigod whose priesthood was harvest and spring, contacting him from the Andromeda galaxy, where the Adler family's solar system was currently located.