After the experiment, Shi Yu was hungry, tired, and sleepy.
He had originally planned to clean the courtyard and the rooms first, but given his current state, he would definitely do it tomorrow. He would make do for tonight.
"It's getting late. I'll go make dinner now."
"Eleven, get some rest on your own. Wait for me to call you when dinner's ready."
Shi Yu turned to Eleven as he spoke.
The Iron-Eating Beast behind the tree: ｜д•´)!!
Rest?
It shook its head vigorously.
How could it do that?
It had finally awakened its Hardening ability. How could it rest?
It had already fallen far behind the Iron-Eating Beasts of its generation.
It had to hurry up and train.
If it didn't train for two hours, it wouldn't be able to eat dinner with peace of mind.
Shi Yu, who had Telepathy: ???
Shi Yu was shocked. Keeper Lin Xiuzhu had been right: there really was something a little off about this Iron-Eating Beast.
It clearly wanted to eat good food, yet because it hadn't trained, it felt it couldn't eat dinner with peace of mind???
You're a little too disciplined, aren't you?
"There's no need to rush. Today was unusual, so it's fine to get some rest," Shi Yu said, trying to persuade it.
The Iron-Eating Beast shook its head vigorously.
"Forget it..."
"Then practice your Hardening ability in the courtyard on your own first," Shi Yu said.
"Roar-" Eleven nodded, having completely forgotten that Shi Yu was going to eat its bamboo shoots too. Its expression gradually grew serious.
It meant to start training right away... It looked at the surrounding walls.
That look gave Shi Yu a fright.
"Wait. First, practice maintaining your Hardening ability and turning it on and off."
"Try to harden a specific part of your body as quickly as possible."
"Leave the rest for now."
Practicing the Hardening ability was actually quite simple.
Training methods for low-level skills like this were generally very basic.
They were clearly documented in the raising manual Lin Xiuzhu had given him.
There were four aspects to Hardening proficiency.
Duration, area of coverage, activation and deactivation speed, and Hardening strength!
From the look the Iron-Eating Beast had just given the walls, it clearly wanted to practice Hardening strength.
Eleven had learned the basic method for training Hardening strength at the breeding base: tempering its body, both in its normal state and when hardened, with a thousand hammer blows, like steel.
In other words, it simply had to keep taking hits or use its body to break things.
It had been fine before Eleven learned Hardening, but now that it had mastered the skill, if Shi Yu let it train Hardening strength here, his home wouldn't stand a chance!
So Shi Yu hurriedly stopped the Iron-Eating Beast, which was itching to get started, and had it practice maintaining, activating, and deactivating Hardening first. Those techniques didn't require much commotion; it only needed to keep using them on the spot.
"We'll talk about training Hardening strength later."
After Shi Yu persuaded it, Eleven scratched its cheek and nodded. All right, then.
Meanwhile, Shi Yu breathed a sigh of relief.
Still, he felt a little mentally exhausted.
A self-disciplined pet was clearly a good thing, so why did he feel mentally exhausted? How strange...
"Phew."
After settling the Iron-Eating Beast, Shi Yu thought no more about it. He glanced at the Green Silkworm in the corner, dug a bundle of iron wire out of the house, and used some tools to make a simple birdcage to keep it in.
After experimenting on the Green Silkworm and seeing how its Worm Silk skill proficiency had increased, Shi Yu had thought of a way to make money.
Depending on how it was raised, a Green Silkworm's silk had a wide range of uses.
Green Silkworm silk was used in textiles, medicine, and industry.
As a result, both Ping City and Icefield City had breeding bases dedicated to raising Green Silkworms for silk production.
The silk produced on those assembly lines, however, was of decent quality but never particularly high.
The highest-quality silk was generally produced by Beast Tamers who specialized in raising Green Silkworms.
Quite a few buyers were willing to pay high prices for the silk produced by those Beast Tamers' pets.
The higher the quality of the silk, the higher the purchase price!
This sort of thing was actually very common. Silk wasn't the only example; parts of many pets' bodies had a wide range of uses, and plenty of Beast Tamers treated raising pets as a business.
Beast Tamers with wood-type pets helped spirit plants mature faster, while those with healing-type pets helped treat the sick. Both were ways for Beast Tamers to earn extra money.
So Shi Yu thought that, since raising the Green Silkworm's skill proficiency took him almost no effort, and buying silk was one of the most common businesses on the market, why couldn't he use this method to make his first pot of gold?
While raising the Iron-Eating Beast... he could spare some time to raise this Green Silkworm too. For now, the little guy only needed to eat ordinary plant leaves, and those were everywhere, just like Green Silkworms.
Once he piled its Worm Silk proficiency up to the perfect level, the silk's quality was bound to be high.
Then, selling a bundle of silk would instantly ease the household's financial pressure.
"Chirp-" The Green Silkworm in the cage lay down glumly.
Shi Yu looked at it with a smile. Sorry, but making a living leaves me no choice.
Unfortunately, Green Silkworms weren't very intelligent. Otherwise, if another pet encountered such a great opportunity to rapidly increase its skill proficiency, it would surely scramble to seize it.
Night fell.
After dinner, both Shi Yu and the Iron-Eating Beast were exhausted.
Eleven had used its Hardening ability frequently and repeatedly during training, consuming a great deal of stamina.
As soon as it finished eating, it collapsed and fell asleep, its round body spreading into a heap.
Although it had come to an unfamiliar place, it slept soundly and peacefully, with a smile on its face that hadn't been there when it was awake.
Shi Yu smiled as he watched the Iron-Eating Beast smacking its lips even in its sleep.
Talent was one factor in its developing this kind of personality. Perhaps the different experiences it had gone through because of individual differences had indeed weighed heavily on it too.
It clearly loved eating, but wouldn't eat until it had finished training. Was it worried that if it didn't appear to be working hard, it would be abandoned again?
As the Iron-Eating Beast's Beast Tamer, Shi Yu could vaguely sense what it was thinking. In Eleven's eyes, the reason Beast Tamers hadn't chosen or acknowledged it before was that it had performed too poorly.
"Don't worry. No matter what happens, I'll never abandon you."
It was common for Beast Tamers to replace their pets. In particular, some Beast Tamers, once they had grown stronger, chose to replace the lower-race pets they had previously contracted with higher-race ones. Shi Yu didn't know what level of Beast Tamer he could become, but he was determined never to abandon any pet he contracted.
Even if a contracted pet's race level was low, it didn't matter. At worst, he would risk being drained dry to secretly learn a couple of divine skills!
Come to think of it... did Iron-Eating Beasts have an evolution path? Shi Yu really didn't know.
Next, Shi Yu recalled Eleven into the Beast Taming Space. Resting there would let it recover and rest better than it could outside, and sleep more comfortably too.
Afterward, Shi Yu lay down on his own bed and fell into deep thought.
"Maybe I shouldn't have recalled it. I still haven't tried sleeping with a giant panda as a pillow..."