After the other teachers left, their homeroom teacher, Teacher Zhang, introduced the students to their future study tasks and priorities.
The special class was centered entirely on the beast tamer path. Unlike them, other students had to study general subjects alongside beast taming, including the physics, chemistry, biology, and languages familiar to Jiang Ziliu.
Those subjects made up only a small portion of their curriculum!
The special class had a small number of general education and beast-taming-related lessons in the morning, but the afternoons consisted entirely of beast taming classes.
Their exotic beast classes focused on how many exotic beasts humanity currently knew of, their strengths and weaknesses, what resources their bodies yielded, and what uses those resources had.
Beast taming classes focused on how to raise exotic beasts of the major attribute categories and what to watch out for during the process.
Besides these, they also had to study tamed beast medicine, tamed beast enhancement and evolution, tamed beast habits, basic beast tamer tactics, beast tamer survival and defense, and more.
These were the beast-taming-related courses.
There were also additional electives, including other races, dungeon space resources, other races' languages, beast tamer team composition, and more.
These subjects could be said to be material that only higher academies or beast taming universities focused on.
Yet their special class had to begin studying them ahead of time.
The focus of their first academic year was not on how to raise their own tamed beasts or adventure in dungeon spaces, but on learning this advanced knowledge that was so important to beast tamers.
Jiang Ziliu also discovered that much of this knowledge was completely inaccessible to ordinary people, available only to university-level students and special class students like them.
Only by mastering this foundational knowledge could they clearly grasp how to follow their beast tamer paths better and more steadily.
Jiang Ziliu vaguely felt that perhaps the question he needed answered-whether he could continue awakening Soul Stars beyond nine stars to strengthen his foundation-could also be resolved in this special class!
There were no real lessons on the first day. They were mainly shown around the various facilities so they would not go to the wrong places later.
In the network information room, Jiang Ziliu discovered that this world had a network too.
But ordinary citizens had almost no access to it, and only after careful observation did he realize that this network simply could not achieve high speeds.
That was because this network used radio waves to connect its nodes.
This method consumed a great deal of electricity and transmitted little data, so it could only be used to convey important information.
The high-speed networks of his previous life relied on underground cables, but in this world, all sorts of exotic beasts lived underground in the wilderness.
Even a single stomp from a giant exotic beast could leave a crater several meters deep.
Under such conditions, cable-based network communications were simply impossible, and naturally, it was difficult to make the internet widely available to ordinary citizens.
Still, this information network infrastructure was very helpful for passing on news.
Certain special information was also transmitted quickly through this network. For example, if a base came under siege by exotic beasts, or certain locations needed support from key personnel, the information was rapidly conveyed through the network.
For this same reason, beast-taming-related information on the network was relatively comprehensive, which was why the school had spent so much to establish this network information room.
But using it cost money: 100 yuan per person per hour!
There was absolutely no possibility of using this place for free, except during the corresponding classes.
Besides this, the school's special class also had a gravity chamber specifically for training tamed beasts, which could improve their combat training.
Training their attacks and defenses in a high-gravity environment made it easier to improve tamed beasts' training levels and could also help them absorb potions.
Likewise, activating the gravity chamber cost money: 10,000 yuan per hour!
Special class students also received a perk: one hour of free use each week.
Yet even at such an expensive price, the whole class was overjoyed, because beast tamers outside had no opportunity to use equipment this advanced.
Next came the exotic beast specimen room.
Inside were specimens of various common or extremely dangerous exotic beasts for special class students to observe and study.
They could even learn to dissect certain special exotic beasts here and gain the relevant knowledge.
The last, and most important, facility was the illusion simulation training room!
Activating it required assistance from someone with a Bronze Rank illusion-type tamed beast. It allowed everyone to enter illusions and experience all manner of sudden situations that only occurred in the wilderness or dungeon spaces, improving their ability to respond to the unexpected.
This was highly effective at improving the combat abilities of all special class students, even somewhat better than directly venturing into the wilderness for survival adventures.
That was because these illusions contained all kinds of unexpected incidents, including reenactments of some relatively famous incidents in which beast tamers had fallen.
In the wilderness, however, they would only experience those few kinds.
After experiencing enough in the illusions, they would gain some wariness, responding faster and more correctly when they encountered similar situations.
This illusion simulation training room could be called the special class's most useful facility.
All students could use this place once a month for free.
Any additional use cost at least 20,000 yuan per one-hour session.
Many things in the special class could be called excellent, but they still required money to use.
Fortunately, they were all official beast tamers now and could earn money themselves.
The others in the special class did not think much of the next place.
But Jiang Ziliu attached particular importance to it.
It was the library!
The special class's library was certainly no ordinary place. It was filled with advanced beast-taming knowledge and contained many biographies issued by the Human Alliance detailing beast tamers' journeys of growth.
The life experiences within were all real, and many were unsuitable for public disclosure.
Besides these, there was also information on advanced materials, high-level exotic beasts, high-level other races, and special types of dungeon spaces.
It could be said that seventy percent of the beast-taming books here were inaccessible to ordinary citizens and low-level beast tamers outside.
At present, less than roughly forty percent of humanity's extraordinary knowledge circulated among the public and could be accessed by ordinary people under sixteen and common citizens.
But most secret knowledge and information was not publicly available.
And the school's library had many of those books that were not publicly available.
Jiang Ziliu was most satisfied with this place. It could be said to satisfy his thirst for beast-taming knowledge.
Originally, Jiang Ziliu had planned to live at home, but now he moved straight into the school, paying for a single dorm room himself.
A teacher at the school surnamed Sun was a friend of his father, Jiang Yuan. That was why he had attended No. 9 Middle School and had been able to obtain a single dorm room.
The special class had begun, but the first two months involved only pure theoretical knowledge.
Only in the third month would they begin covering practical beast combat.
With this arrangement, Jiang Ziliu had time to accomplish his goal.
Every day after class, he would run to the school library to read its various precious, advanced works on beast taming, staying until the library closed.
Once again, he became the least sociable person in the entire special class.
Everyone else used the special class's facilities to constantly train themselves and their tamed beasts, rushing between places like the gravity chamber and illusion simulation training room, or finding ways to obtain various precious resources and potions to carefully nurture their beasts.
Only Jiang Ziliu spent almost all his time in the library, hungrily devouring its knowledge, all the knowledge he had previously had no access to whatsoever.
He became the sole, solitary figure in the entire library.
During this process, Jiang Ziliu happened to make an astonishing discovery.
Returning home one holiday, Jiang Ziliu dug out his mysterious metal disc to examine it.
Jiang Ziliu had never been able to uncover this object's secrets.
His intuition told him it was a great treasure, but he had never figured out what made it precious or what use it had.
Dripping blood on it, injecting dark energy, drawing it with his soul's presence...
He had tried all sorts of methods, but none had any effect on it.
He had also consulted many books on treasures, but found no trace of this object's existence.
Even now, after leafing through the school library's more advanced books on dungeon spaces and other races' treasures, he had found no useful information.
That day, after trying it out, he forgot to put it away.
Then Jiang Ziliu took out a new book he had bought at the bookstore to read.
But just then, his hand accidentally pressed down on the leaf metal disc.
In that instant, his thoughts became incredibly clear, and his memory improved who knew how many times over!
It was as though his entire being had been fitted with an additional high-performance engine.
With just one glance at the new content in the book, he firmly committed that knowledge to memory.
Enhanced Wisdom and memory! Could this function be what this treasure is actually for?
Jiang Ziliu immediately came back to his senses, and after silently considering it, reached a judgment.
Having made this discovery, he began experimenting and quickly figured out how to use the leaf metal disc.
He tied the mysterious leaf-shaped metal disc with a sturdy exotic beast hide cord, wore it against his skin, then went back to reading.
After doing so, his Wisdom and memory received an enormous boost.
However, after this intense learning and memorization of vast amounts of material, he became hungry very easily.
The leaf metal disc enhanced his Wisdom and memory, but also increased his body's consumption. His body needed more nutrients, and his appetite grew enormous.
Yet Jiang Ziliu was still wild with joy. This effect was wonderful, and he became even more crazily obsessed with books.
From then on, he wore the metal disc every day and began frantically memorizing the contents of the entire library!
Gradually, Jiang Ziliu's image as a bookworm became firmly established in everyone's eyes.
He even gained a nickname: Book Maniac!
The gulf between him and his classmates grew ever wider. Only Li Wanqiu was willing to greet him, while his shy deskmate's attitude was neither good nor bad.
Day after day passed, until one day two months later, he finally committed the contents of every book to memory.
At this point, his store of knowledge was probably the most formidable in the entire school.
Jiang Ziliu understood that this effort would lay an incomparably solid foundation for his future growth.
At the same time, he had also found what he wanted: a method for awakening the tenth, eleventh, and even twelfth Soul Stars at Gray Rock Grade!