After imagining the future, Shi Yu was pulled back to reality. Besides feeding the pack of Snow Wolves, he had plenty of other tasks that kept him busy all morning.
He only had a moment to himself near noon, but his afternoon was just as thoroughly scheduled.
After lunch and a midday rest, the interns from Shi Yu's dormitory building were all assigned the same task that afternoon.
They had actually been doing this job for some time already.
It was the task listed on the earlier worksheet: observing and recording the behavior and growth of the Green Silkworms...
That afternoon.
Shi Yu kept a low profile as he followed the main group into the forest teeming with Green Silkworms.
The forest was thick with branches and leaves, letting little light through.
Green Silkworms were the most common pet beasts living here. The Icefield City pet beast base had only a little over fifty Snow Wolves, but it had more than a thousand Green Silkworms.
There were so many of them that they were practically a dime a dozen.
They were also pitifully weak. Compared to Snow Wolves, which were sure to awaken four racial skills as they grew, Green Silkworms had only one skill: Worm Silk.
What was more, Worm Silk was a substandard skill that, even when used to perfection, could only produce silk as strong as steel wire.
Beast Tamers divided the abilities mastered by transcendent creatures into different levels according to their power and effects. From lowest to highest, they were unranked, low-level skills, intermediate-level skills, high-level skills, and super-level skills...
Worm Silk, which Green Silkworms possessed, did not even qualify as a low-level skill. It had no rank at all.
Thus, classifying Green Silkworms' racial level as Low-Level Transcendent was practically an act of pity. After all, Green Silkworms could not even beat most ordinary animals. Their only advantage was that they had room to grow.
Even so, depending on how they were raised, Green Silkworms' Worm Silk could be put to quite a few uses.
But the pet beast breeding base did not raise Green Silkworms to produce Worm Silk.
The reason it raised such weak pet beasts was that Green Silkworms were among the few pet beasts in nature that could evolve once on their own.
After taking in enough nutrition, they could evolve into Wind Crystal Butterflies, with a chance of awakening a new racial skill, Wind Blade, increasing their combat power.
Although their racial level was still classified as Low-Level Transcendent after evolution because of their lifespan, Wind Crystal Butterflies were among the easiest insect-type pet beasts to raise, making them the best initial stopgap choice for the vast majority of ordinary Beast Tamers.
Shi Yu and the others' job was to observe and record the Green Silkworms' growth, then judge when they would be able to evolve successfully.
Compared to Snow Wolves, Green Silkworms were much more harmless. After all, they were only the size of a palm.
With their fuzzy green bodies, innocent eyes, and two yellow antennae on their heads, they looked very much like the larvae of citrus swallowtail butterflies on Earth.
After handling them himself, Shi Yu understood why they were hailed as the pet beast world's combat-power-of-five trash...
When these untrained Green Silkworms used their Worm Silk skill, he only had to give the silk a gentle tug with both hands to break it...
During his observations, Shi Yu ended up with a hand tangled in Worm Silk.
Compared to Snow Wolves, Green Silkworms were less intelligent, and Shi Yu was not proficient with his Telepathy talent either. As a result, the two sides did not communicate very well, prompting the Green Silkworm to resist.
But that resistance... was far too harmless.
Still, that was not what left him most speechless.
What left Shi Yu most at a loss for words was that the stone index in his mind showed that the high-level mental-type skill Intimidation could actually be taught to a Green Silkworm too?
A Green Silkworm with the qualifications of a king???
Were the standards for this so-called compatibility really that lax?
The way Shi Yu looked at the Green Silkworm changed.
It seemed the Skill Index really was no simple thing. After all, Green Silkworms were known as the bottom-rung pet beasts that could never learn any skill other than Worm Silk before evolving...
While Shi Yu was marveling, the Green Silkworm slipped out of his hand, and the index changed once again.
The stone index now opened to its second page.
This time, an image of a Green Silkworm had been added.
There was still a block of text beneath it.
[Skill]: Worm Silk [Skill Level]: None [Description]: An insect-type skill. It might be of some use if applied to its utmost. [Status]: No teaching target available
Shi Yu: ???
What's with that description? Why is it exactly what I was thinking!
Forget it, forget it... So I've copied and recorded the Worm Silk skill too?
It seemed he had met those three conditions.
The Skill Index had now successfully recorded a second utterly useless skill, Worm Silk... Yet he could not even feel happy about it. After all, the skill really did look useless.
Wait, no... A skill this weak might be useful for an experiment, to test how much stamina it consumes.
For the rest of the afternoon, everyone else observed and recorded the Green Silkworms. Shi Yu did the same, but he actually had one additional task: continuing to study the Skill Index in his mind.
The only worthwhile discovery was that he could actually teach Worm Silk again to a Green Silkworm that had already learned the skill!
Even though it had already mastered Worm Silk, it was still eligible to be taught!
Shi Yu investigated, and the information the Skill Index gave him was that teaching a skill again could increase proficiency in that skill!
He understood now, but unfortunately, he did not dare experiment here...
Not until evening.
After dinner, Shi Yu went straight back to his dorm room.
Once back, he picked up a handbook and began looking through it.
It was not an appraisal guide, but another book.
The handbook recorded the fifty-one species of pet beasts raised at the Icefield City Pet Beast Breeding Base, along with their racial skills.
Clearly, Shi Yu had begun choosing a target to secretly learn skills from.
He planned to see what skills would be suitable for his own Iron-Eating Beast to learn.
The Skill Index could not produce skills out of thin air. He had to find a way to record new skills himself.
But as long as he successfully recorded a rare skill, the Skill Index would be invincible.
What Beast Tamer had ever raised a Green Silkworm that knew Intimidation?
For the time being, Shi Yu regarded the Skill Index as his second Beast Taming talent. With this talent, his next goal was easy to predict.
He would find a way to copy relatively high-level skills and save them to raise his own pet beast once he became a Beast Tamer...
Unfortunately, after looking through the handbook's fifty-one species of pet beasts at the breeding base, Shi Yu did not find the perception-type skill he needed...
The skills that the pet beast young here might awaken were also mostly common, basic low-level skills, not worth copying.
Of course, the more skills he recorded, the better. It was always good to be prepared.
But after copying Worm Silk, Shi Yu suddenly thought of a question: was there a limit to the number of skills the Skill Index could record?
Until he figured out that limit, Shi Yu did not dare waste any more pages. For now, it would be better to focus on intermediate- and high-level skills.
"Looks like I'll have to change my target."
The place where Shi Yu currently stayed, the Icefield City Pet Beast Breeding Base, actually had not only a large number of wild pet beasts, but also quite a few Beast Tamers...
Their pet beasts' skills could also be targets for copying, just like the Intimidation he had copied from that Snow Wolf King.
A Beast Tamer's pet beast was much more likely to possess a rare skill than the pet beast young raised here...
At that thought, Shi Yu pondered for a moment and came up with a bold idea.