Chapter 18: Tendou’s Highlight Moment

Chapter 18: Tendou’s Highlight Moment

The real world. Crustyroll.

As Tendou finally found the last member for his three-person team, everyone watching knew that the final assessment, which had been foreshadowed for nearly three episodes, was finally about to begin.

And on paper, there was no doubt that Tendou’s team was the strongest of them all.

After all, his team was ridiculously stacked—It had the student ranked first, the one ranked third, and the one ranked fourth.

A lineup so luxurious it almost felt unfair.

Naturally, with such an overpowered formation, Tendou’s team was chosen as the very first to challenge the Terravaran.

But what made the audience burst out laughing was that, the moment Tendou mentioned that this Terravaran might be on the verge of breaking through, the ever-cowardly, salted-fish-like Jing Liuli immediately tried to bail.

“Te-Tendou, I just remembered—I have something to do. I’ll be going first!”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Tendou grabbed her by the collar.

Hugging her precious pillow tight, Liuli clasped her hands together in pleading. 

“Tendou, please, just let me sit this one out, okay?”

Tendou rolled his eyes. 

“Keep dreaming. You’re already here—so let’s go!” 

“Noooo!”

Dragged onto the battlefield like a duck shoved onto a chopping block, Jing Liuli’s pitiful struggle had the live chat rolling in laughter.

“Tendou: Want to clock out? Overtime for you!”

“You came all this way, and now you think you can run?!”

“Help! Why does this feel exactly like working for a black company?!”

“Ah, capitalism strikes again…”

Amidst the sea of sarcastic bullet comments, the fight between Tendou’s team and the Terravaran officially began.

And right from the opening clash, Tendou’s team displayed incredible combat discipline.

Caroline, the Machina Type Starbearer, immediately positioned herself at the very back. She spread out her Star Energy Data Chain, linking Tendou and Jing Liuli together, acting as the perfect tactical brain of the team.

Jing Liuli, a Trait Type Starbearer, took the middle ground—her role was clear: disrupt, restrain, and support.

And at the front, standing against the overwhelming might of the Terravaran, was the strongest of the three—Tendou himself.

His task was simple yet brutal: hold the beast head-on and protect his teammates at all costs.

Yet, even with such a flawless formation, Tendou’s team was crushed from the very start.

Even though Tendou used the immense ocular power of his Star-Eclipse Eye to predict the Terravaran’s movements again and again…

All he could do was dodge.

No matter how he tried, he couldn’t find a single chance to counterattack.

Jing Liuli wanted to rush in and help several times, but every opportunity slipped past.

All she could do was circle around the monster, throwing out distractions, doing her best to lighten Tendou’s burden.

At this rate, it was only a matter of time before their defeat.

“Wait, even Tendou’s team—this broken of a lineup—can’t land a single hit? Then how is anyone else supposed to fight this thing?”

“Seriously, what is the production team thinking? They’re really using such a monster just so Chen Kong can shine later? That’s straight-up power scaling collapse! Chen Kong’s team can’t compare at all!”

“Tendou: Met a level-99 boss in the newbie village. Fought with everything, still can’t win.”

Watching Tendou’s team getting pressed down without a single breath of relief, the audience could only feel the battle was utterly pointless.

From beginning to end, the two sides weren’t even on the same playing field.

There was no suspense—no possibility of victory.

Everyone thought the production team’s goal was obvious: let Tendou and the others suffer a crushing defeat, then make the protagonist, Chen Kong, look brilliant when he turned things around later.

But then—

A fiery, heart-pounding BGM suddenly exploded across the screen.

On the arena stage, Tendou suddenly heard Caroline’s voice from behind.

In an instant, his fighting style shifted—instead of clashing head-on, he deliberately widened the distance between himself and the Terravaran.

At the same time, Jing Liuli, who had only been darting around to harass until now, suddenly stepped forward.

She boldly took on the job of frontline distraction, buying Tendou the precious opening he needed.

The screen slowed down.

The entire anime sequence froze into cinematic focus, the camera zooming in for a close-up—

Silver-white, tousled hair.

Cold, azure-blue eyes.

Facial features so flawless they looked sculpted by an artist.

At this moment, Tendou wasn’t just a character—He looked like someone who had stepped straight out of the pages of a shoujo manga.

It was obvious the production team had polished this shot to perfection.

The level of detail was insane—You could even see the reflection of the ceiling lights in the glossy tiles of the arena floor far behind him.

“Stellar Technique—Azure!”

His calm voice dropped.

An orb of star energy spun from his fingertips, tracing a perfect arc through the air—and landed precisely on the Terravaran’s weakened left knee, the one that had been carrying an old injury.

Boom!

The beast crashed down on one knee, blood seeping from the wound.

The entire world, both inside the screen and outside, fell into dead silence.

The overwhelming pressure the dragon had radiated before… That made this single strike all the more shocking.

To emphasize just how earth-shattering this moment was, the production team deliberately cut the shot to the protagonist, Chen Kong.

His pupils shrank. His lips parted.

His expression said it all: he couldn’t believe what Tendou had just done.

And just like him, the audience outside their screens was equally stunned.

“Legendary scene unlocked!”

“That strike pierced the stars themselves!”

“My mom asked me why I’m kneeling while watching anime!”

As the chat exploded in awe, the camera drifted away from Chen Kong and zoomed back onto the arena.

The Terravaran, freshly wounded by Tendou’s stellar technique, slowly rose again.

Its aura erupted, surging so fiercely it made viewers shiver in their beds.

Clearly, Tendou had completely enraged it.

It roared to the heavens, the sound so deafening that many watching on their phones dropped their devices in fright.

And yet, in sharp contrast to the raging beast, Tendou had already retreated from the arena with Caroline and Jing Liuli.

He slipped his small sunglasses back on, smirking with that familiar, shameless grin.

His voice oozed with mockery as he taunted the furious dragon from afar:

“Yo, big guy. Still sulking? Don’t you get it? The exam’s over.”

The dragon inside the screen immediately launched into a frenzy of impotent rage.

Meanwhile, the audience outside?

They were laughing themselves breathless.

“Pfft! Now THAT’S how the real protagonist acts! Who’s that guy in the audience again—some extra?”

“I’ve figured it out. As long as you put yourself in Tendou’s shoes, this show is just a straight-up power fantasy anime!”

“Title suggestion: The Truth About the Real Protagonist Being Just a Background Character”

“Fake protagonist: trembling in fear.”

“Real protagonist: facing down monsters with style.”

While the bullet comments sang praises of Tendou’s highlight moment, the camera quietly shifted.

Back in the dormitory, Tendou lay sprawled lazily across his king-sized bed.

His eyes weren’t on the anime.

They were fixed on the half-transparent system screen floating in the air before him—something only he could see.

[Popularity Point +1]

[Popularity Point +1]

[Popularity Point +1]

“Perfect~”

Tendou took a satisfied bite of the strawberry shortcake in his hand, thoroughly pleased with the “production team’s” work on this week’s episode.

After all, this time he had dominated nearly eighty percent of the entire screen time.

And the plot itself? A flawless showcase of his overwhelming strength as the pinnacle of the Children of the Stars.

Thanks to the production team’s meticulous polish, his highlight moment had exploded with far greater impact than he had ever imagined.

When he’d first drafted the scene himself, there was no way he could’ve added all those flashy visual effects.

But while the audience reaction was everything he’d hoped for, Tendou knew well that his leisurely days were almost at an end.

Once the final assessment arc concluded, every participant would receive a Star Origin tailored to them.

And when that happened, the gap between him and the others would shrink rapidly.

Because with Star Origins, the battlefield wouldn’t just be about raw numbers anymore. It would be about mechanics.

And some of the production team’s pre-selected popular characters would be granted broken-tier combos of Star Cores and Origins.

If he wanted to maintain his current invincible status, he had no choice but to make use of this short-lived window of advantage.

After all, once the assessment ended, the story would immediately transition into something far bloodier—the large-scale arc of Stellaris: Embers.

In that arc, the Ember Organization would suffer massive destruction.

And all the Children of the Stars would scatter across the New Federation, laying the foundation for the anime Season 2—Stellaris: Glimmer.

Thinking about that incoming storm… and his own grand ambition waiting beyond it—Tendou suddenly flipped upright from his bed and opened up his Popularity System.

“Even though I’m still sitting on a debt of a million popularity points… if I want to keep stealing the spotlight in the upcoming arcs, I’ll have to take a gamble.”

His gaze swept over the shimmering catalog of the Popularity Shop and finally locked onto one particular item.

[Name: Substitute Death Bracelet]

[Effect: Negates one fatal attack. Triggers a state of false death, reviving the wearer after one natural day.]

[Purchase Price: 100,000 Popularity Points]

[Limit: 2/2 Available]

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