Soul Skills: Let's Build a Beast Pen Together!

Luo Mo's pupils shrank. He felt the immense pressure of Daming's enormous body, and his heart began to pound. He couldn't help feeling nervous.

Ah!

In the next instant, the mist dispersed.

It turned out Daming had withdrawn his soul power. His face was still frighteningly grim, though, and he let out a low, ominous growl.

"Are you all right, Master?" Tang San asked urgently, catching the stench of blood in the air.

He couldn't help worrying about the two great kings of the forest.

Before absorbing his Soul Ring, he had been confident that his powerful offensive-type martial soul would surely be able to absorb the Soul Ring of a defensive-type Soul Beast. He'd even thought that combining the two would give him a way to break through defensive soul skills. But now, he'd nearly ended up a mangled mess.

Soul skills were one thing. Showing them off was another.

And he had only been refining his Soul Ring. He'd nearly ruined himself in the process.

Tang San didn't know how many times he'd regretted his decision. If not for his master's repeated warnings, he would have wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.

"Daming, did you get burned by the sun?" Xiao Wu asked, concerned.

"Maybe you've got heatstroke."

Luo Mo rubbed his nose and quietly withdrew his control over the plants.

From beginning to end, the principal had watched Daming use his soul skill without saying a word. He had already suspected something when Daming had struggled so hard earlier.

Wasn't the soul skill a plant-type martial soul's greatest strength?

Why had Daming's soul skill also been plant-based?

Now, even after absorbing his third Soul Ring, he was still the same.

No way...

The plant-type martial soul was Daming's greatest strength.

So had Daming been infected by Tang San's soul skill?

If the secondary effect of the Blue Silver Grass martial soul could spread through contact, and martial souls could affect one another, then wouldn't the powerful effect have infected Daming? Could it also be called a kind of soul skill infection?

After a while, Tang San woke the master.

Recalling the scene from earlier, he felt his heart sink. He wished he could find a place to hide.

To help Daming recover, the principal got down to business.

"Since Luo Mo and Xiao Wu haven't obtained their Soul Rings yet, I'm afraid we'll have to go back into the forest one more time."

Daming spoke in a strained voice, quickly refusing. "No! Yesterday, the men we ran into said the Star Dou Great Forest had already been sealed off. They demanded that we leave immediately. Are you going to risk the students' lives just to get a Soul Ring?"

Ha! How are you going to get a thousand-year Soul Ring now?

In any case, Xiao Wu and I already have our Soul Rings, so we can leave whenever we want. You'll probably have to wait until the forest opens again before you can get one.

"Uh..." The principal hesitated.

The reason he'd suggested going deeper into the forest to help Luo Mo and Xiao Wu find their Soul Rings wasn't that he didn't care about the students' safety. He was actually worried about the powerful man who had confronted Daming.

But since Daming clearly didn't want to stay, it wasn't easy to press him.

At that moment, Luo Mo spoke up. "We've already obtained our Soul Rings."

"Oh?" The principal was startled.

"What did you say? You've already gotten your Soul Rings? How did you manage that?"

Luo Mo shrugged. "When I was running, I happened to come across a pair of Soul Beasts fighting. One of them was severely injured, so I killed it."

"Impressive." The principal clicked his tongue in amazement. With Daming's strength, it seemed he'd underestimated his friend after all.

As for how it had happened, Luo Mo and Xiao Wu had clearly encountered a rare stroke of luck.

As for Xiao Wu's Soul Ring, she had condensed it herself.

The principal was even more curious now. "How many years old was the Soul Ring you absorbed? Was it a thousand years?"

Luo Mo and Xiao Wu exchanged a look. Since their soul powers were equal, they lifted their hands together, and a purple Soul Ring rose beneath their feet.

Everyone said, "!!"

The principal, Daming, and Tang San were all too stunned to speak.

Purple!

A thousand-year Soul Ring!

And it was their first Soul Ring, no less!

"Good heavens! This is the first time I've ever seen such a thing. It's never even come up in anything I've read," the principal exclaimed, his eyes blazing with excitement.

Daming felt a burning pain in his chest.

He'd never imagined that the great peril he'd faced earlier would turn out to be real.

And to think, he'd been so thoroughly outmatched that he'd failed to stop Luo Mo and the others from entering the forest, making himself look like a fool. He didn't need a Soul Ring.

What annoyed him most was Tang San.

The two kids had both obtained thousand-year first Soul Rings, while he had only a hundred-year first Soul Ring.

Alas, he'd realized it too late...

Still, the master was the one who had suggested this in the first place.

If he hadn't tried to stop the master from absorbing the Man-Faced Demon Spider's Soul Ring, the master would have absorbed one long ago.

He was rather disappointed in the master, too. The man was supposed to be a fake master with half a lifetime's worth of knowledge. Surely he knew some theory about this, even if it wasn't all that reliable. Martial soul theory was, after all, useless nine times out of ten.

The plant-type martial soul supposedly couldn't absorb the Soul Rings of animal-type Soul Beasts. By that reasoning, the master should have been so useless that he'd ended up with a pathetic soul skill.

That wasn't quite right, though.

It would have been better to have a martial soul that evolved naturally.

If not for his father telling him not to attach any Soul Rings to his hidden weapons, he would have wanted to awaken his martial soul again.

Huh?

Tang San's eyes widened.

Since I already have a hidden-weapon martial soul, can't I attach a Soul Ring to my second martial soul?

But Tang San quickly gave up on the idea.

The main reason was that the Blue Silver Grass had an annoying ability.

He hadn't expected that even after his master changed his martial soul, he'd still be unable to escape the fate of having useless soul skills.

The principal was curious about their soul skills, but then remembered something and added, "If it isn't inconvenient, could you tell me?"

"There's nothing I can't tell you."

Luo Mo seemed to have been hiding his abilities, but soul skills couldn't be kept secret forever. Sooner or later, they'd be revealed. Still, he'd held something back; he'd only revealed the first version to the principal.

"My soul skill lets me control plants. I'm not very familiar with it yet, so I won't demonstrate it."

The main thing was that he'd only just gained it.

"My soul skill is teleportation." Xiao Wu demonstrated it briefly.

The principal's eyes widened as he examined the two of them.

Daming felt a little sour.

At least Tang San had made him look a little better. This was a normal soul skill, after all.

"Since everyone's obtained their Soul Rings, let's head back," the principal said, beckoning for everyone to return to the academy. The others readily agreed.

Outside the Star Dou Great Forest.

At that moment, Daming and Erming were pacing back and forth anxiously in the night, waiting to see if the humans would return to their territory.

The two beasts glanced back now and then. They could just make out a few figures far away, but before they could tell who they were, the figures stopped in midair above the forest. They didn't know what had happened. In the end, they were still chased away.

"Hah, that was close. We almost didn't make it back."

Erming sighed in relief, then followed Daming back toward the lake.

Daming returned to his bull-headed, serpent-bodied form and couldn't help lamenting, "Humans really are troublesome. They're so much weaker than us, yet they've managed to slaughter so many of our kind... Where does that leave the Soul Beasts I've hunted? What future do we have?"

Erming: "..."

Soul Skills: Let's Build a Beast Pen Together!

You actually stole my hidden scroll. You really do have a lot of nerve!

Ah!

Waaah...

The surrounding trees suddenly began to sway. Their leaves rustled as they scattered in every direction.

It seemed the Azure Bull Python had sensed Daming and Erming's return and was startled. The two Soul Beasts didn't dare linger, and hurried toward the Lake of Life.