Worldwide Class Change: Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward!

"Immortal guardian?" Lin Yi said.

"You know what an immortal guardian is?" she asked.

"Yes," Lin Yi said.

"Most hunters in this expanse don’t," she said. "The term is historic, mostly. Even the awakening bureau’s official record on the Seven Star Immortal Conversion Halo is not so detailed." She studied him with the direct attention of someone deciding how to calibrate to a new piece of information. "Where did you come across it?"

"Heavenly Phoenix Academy," Lin Yi said. "Their archive."

She stared at him. Lin Yi watched the recalibration happening without her having decided to perform it.

"Heavenly Phoenix Academy," she said.

"Yes," Lin Yi said.

"You’re a student," she said.

"Indeed." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

She looked at him for a long moment. "A student," she said again. More slowly this time. "Currently present in the Allheaven Expanse. The minimum entry threshold for this event is level 100!"

"I know."

"Students at Heavenly Phoenix Academy, which is the highest-ranked regional academy in the celestial city, have a maximum recorded level of approximately 66 for their senior students." She said. "Their strongest instructor roster operates in the low 80s." She paused. "A student cannot be level 100."

She looked at him with an expression that was working through several things simultaneously. He could see the sequence. The clearing of thirty thousand level 145 fire loins in under ten minutes. The Greater Qilin’s Heaven Step. The mount position he occupied with the ease of someone who had been doing it for days. The fact that he was here at all. The fact that he was still in the conversation rather than having resolved it by taking the halo, which someone without meaningful capability would not have the luxury of declining to do.

"A student," she said, one more time, in the tone of someone testing whether the word still meant what they thought it meant.

"A first year student," Lin Yi said.

She closed her eyes briefly. In the specific expression of someone encountering a situation that requires a moment to fully absorb. Then she opened them again. "First year," she said.

She looked at the Greater Qilin beneath him. Then at his face, which had maintained the same expression throughout the conversation, calm and unhurried and giving nothing away about what was happening internally.

"How," she said.

She then looked at him for a moment. Then she laughed, and this time the laugh was different from the one over the basin rim, less triumphant, more responsive, the laugh of someone who genuinely does not know what to do with a situation and finds that refreshing rather than frustrating.

Then she stopped laughing.

Something changed in her expression. It was the specific shift of someone who has been treating a conversation as an exchange between peers and has decided to reclassify it. The mischief consolidated into something more deliberate. The warmth, such as it was, pulled back. What replaced it was the particular quality of someone who had decided that a power differential existed and was going to use it.

She straightened on her flying sword. The casual posture she had maintained through the conversation resolved into something more formal and more imposing, the shift that happens when someone who operates from a position of strength decides to remind the other party of what that position is.

"You said you know about immortal guardians," she said. "Then you know what the Seven Star Immortal Conversion Halo’s conversion sequence actually does."

"Converts guardian-tier entities," Lin Yi said.

"Permanently," she said. "Bound. Loyal. Not by contract or skill or duration." She looked at him with the new quality fully settled in her expression now. "And here you are. With a Greater Qilin that can Heaven Step. Mounted on its back in an environment that you cleared of thirty thousand fire lions." She tilted her head slightly.

Lin Yi looked at her, as the halo turned once in her hand, the seven-spectrum pulse cycling through its surface.

"I’m not going to negotiate for something I can take," she said. Her tone was pleasant. That was the part that carried the most weight. She was not angry or threatened. She was simply reclassifying the situation into one where negotiation was no longer the relevant framework. "And I think you would be a significantly more interesting guardian than anything else I’ve encountered in this expanse so far."

The Greater Qilin shifted slightly beneath him. A small adjustment, barely perceptible, but present. It had registered the change in her posture and her tone before Lin Yi’s expression had moved at all.

"Consider it an honor," she said. "Most hunters in this expanse would find the offer flattering."

"Your outnumbered by the situation," she said. "I have the halo. You are in a location you cannot easily leave because I’m blocking your exit path. And I am." She let the end of the sentence carry its own weight rather than finishing it.

"You were blocking the exit," Lin Yi said. "You moved when you came to a conclusion about this conversation. Which means you’ve already committed to the approach."

Something flickered in her expression. Not quite acknowledgment. Not quite respect. Something between the two that she wasn’t ready to name.

Then she moved.

The attack was a full commitment, the flying sword converting from traversal mode to combat mode in a single motion, the spiritual energy around her condensing into the dense focused form of someone whose class put substantial output behind close-range engagement. She crossed the distance between them in a single burst, the speed genuine and serious, the kind of speed that came from years of building it rather than from a class that granted it at awakening.

She was fast.

She was also not prepared for what was at the end of that approach.

Strength 5,624. Constitution 5,242. Sixty-four mythical-grade skills integrated into a combat framework that had been developed across a year of encounters that started with a level 6 Stoneback Bear outside Jianghe City and had progressed to the point where thirty thousand level 145 fire lions in a volcanic basin was less than ten minutes of moderate effort.

He looked at her as she closed the distance. His expression was the same as it had been since the beginning of the conversation. Calm. Unhurried. Present.

"You strike first," Lin Yi said.

She reached him.

"Don’t blame me for striking back."