Buying Supplements

At the Tianmang Mountain Training Base, bedraggled Beast Tamers stood across the enormous training field.

A hundred people had entered Tianmang Mountain at the start, but only seventy-three remained standing here at the end.

The missing twenty-seven had presumably dropped out along the way.

Perhaps they had been unable to endure the conditions in the wilderness, or perhaps they had been injured during the training and forced to end their assessment.

"The fact that you're still standing here shows you have some aptitude. Tianmang Mountain is only an artificial training environment. If you can't even handle this place, don't talk about exploring ruins, much less taking the professional assessment someday. Just go home and raise pets!"

Zhou Wanshan, the man in charge of the training, spoke bluntly from the raised platform.

Below him, the apprentice Beast Tamers remained silent. You're the boss here, so whatever you say goes.

But compared to this nonsense, the examinees were more interested in where their points placed them in the training assessment.

Although they had been able to roughly calculate their own points during the training, they had no idea how many anyone else had, so there was no way to know their exact rankings.

"All right, if you want to know your exact scores and rankings, you can go and look for yourselves. The results have been posted on that wall."

"The top twenty will qualify to explore the ruins. In one week, we'll take you into the ruins for the first time. Keep an eye out for a notice from the association for the details."

"That concludes this training assessment. You may leave after redeeming your points."

After the brief announcement, Zhou Wanshan turned and left, leaving the noisy crowd behind.

As expected, everyone rushed toward the wall beside the platform.

The training base had printed ten identical copies of the point rankings and posted them separately on the wall, so everyone could get a clear look.

Shi Yu followed the crowd over and scanned the list from the top.

The feeling... how should he put it? It was as if he had returned to high school, crowding around with his classmates to check their results after every monthly exam.

"First place, Shi Yu, 20,000 points? Who's Shi Yu?"

"Never heard of him... He's not from our school."

"He's not from ours either."

Most of the apprentice Beast Tamers present were students, since the average level wasn't high.

The older apprentice Beast Tamers whose pets averaged Level Ten had all been assigned to another training base.

The examinees began discussing the first-place Shi Yu among themselves.

Shi Yu himself turned and left the moment he saw his name, hiding his deeds and his name.

A mere first place in a training assessment was nothing much.

He'd better hurry up and exchange his points for cold, hard cash to recover some losses...

That said, after Shi Yu left, he was still stabbed in the back.

"Holy crap, Shi Yu."

In the crowd, Chen Kai, the top student, felt something peculiar as he looked at the name at the top of the rankings.

Although he knew Shi Yu was strong, seeing him take first place still left him feeling a little sad.

Twenty thousand points was the equivalent of five beasts at Awakening Level Ten...

He glanced at his own ranking. Why did it feel like, after a week of hard work, the gap between him and Shi Yu had only grown wider?

Had he not worked hard enough?

"You know him??"

After Chen Kai's outburst, his classmates all started asking.

"Who is he?"

"Uh, a Beast Tamer who came back from a key school in the city. I bought Mind-Clearing Capsules to train my pet because I took his advice. Sure enough, he really is impressive."

Chen Kai's classmates were taken aback. No wonder Chen Kai's Ice Armor Beast had broken through again and improved so quickly. It turned out he had received guidance from an expert.

Mind-Clearing Capsules? Were those what Chen Kai had often taken during the training?

They made a note of it and decided to look into them as soon as they got back.

Next, Shi Yu went to redeem his points.

And ran into someone he knew again.

Little Bear Yan Qi smiled at Shi Yu. "I'll help you redeem them again."

"Oh, right, I told Master Lin that your Iron-Eating Beast had mastered Thunder Palm."

"Oh? What did Master Lin say?"

Yan Qi chuckled inwardly. What else could he say...? He could already picture the look on Master Lin's face as he questioned everything he knew.

There's probably nothing more he can teach this apprentice!

"Master Lin wants you to visit the training hall when you have time. He has some specially prepared supplements and food there, and he plans to give you his insights on the Thunder Palm skill as well."

"All right." Shi Yu nodded.

Hall Master Lin Hongnian was that panda senior's father, right? Shi Yu wondered whether he had any other high-level skills besides Thunder Palm that he could fleece... As one of the strongest Beast Tamers in Ping City, he ought to have some skills to draw on.

After redeeming his points, Shi Yu went straight home.

He missed home terribly now. He missed his soft bed, hot baths, and normal food.

All in all, the wilderness really was no place for a person to live.

"When I have money someday, I have to contract a mechanical life-form and moonlight as a mechanic."

"I want one like a Transformer, that can turn into a Gundam to fight, a plane or car to carry people, and a house for people to live in."

That way, even if he went into the deserted wilderness again, it seemed he could still live a modern life?

After getting home, Shi Yu spent some time taking care of himself, then lay down.

He rolled over, picked up his phone, and logged into the website that person had given him.

She had said that if he wanted to buy resources, he could just buy them from this website. There seemed to be a discount, and they delivered to his door, which saved him a trip to buy them himself.

"If they're taking the people who passed the assessment to the ruins in a week... isn't that a little tight?"

Shi Yu really wanted to develop steadily for a while first... But his death-seeking soul seemed to be stirring again.

Damn... I can't control myself... I really want to go have a look.

"Forget it. Lu Qingyi said the ruins weren't very dangerous and that they were a trial-type ruin. I'll just look and won't court death, so it shouldn't be much of a problem."

"But no matter what, I should splurge on some resources first."

After all, he was rich now. As long as he didn't buy high-level evolution materials for the Green Silkworm, ten million could last him a long time and buy him plenty of things...

Sure enough, for the happiness of the whole family, it was better for the Green Silkworm to explore its own evolution path.

If things went well, maybe they could even find suitable evolution materials in the ruins?

It was all a reasonable investment.

Shi Yu wasn't searching for resources for his pets, but for Beast Tamers-supplements that could let a Beast Tamer fight for ten days and ten nights without weakening.

At the apprentice Beast Tamer stage, things were still fine. Some Beast Tamers with enhancement-type talents couldn't yet use their talents in actual combat and could only use them for training.

But once they left the apprentice level behind, the advantages of Beast Tamers with combat enhancement talents became apparent.

As a Beast Tamer with the special-type Telepathy talent and one with an enhancement-type talent advanced in level, the latter would only pull further and further ahead of the former in actual combat.

On the other hand, after a battle, a Beast Tamer with a combat enhancement Beast Taming Talent would certainly expend more as well.

These supplements were prepared for them.

"Hmm..."

Unlike drugs such as Mind-Clearing Capsules, which were synthesized from a particular component of low-level materials, most of the resources sold on the special website Shi Yu had logged into were all-natural.

Of course, they were also more expensive, but Shi Yu didn't mind paying more as long as they worked.

The roots of a Ginseng Baby, a plant-type transcendent creature?

Royal jelly from a Hundred Flowers Queen Bee?

Frog oil from a Heaven-Swallowing Dragon Frog of the sub-dragon race?

Divine Beans from the Divine Tree Secret Realm, which could restore an extremely exhausted Beast Tamer's physical strength and vigor in the shortest possible time and return their body to peak condition?

Why did they look so familiar? The number of strange yet incredibly familiar supplements had increased.

"This Divine Bean looks good, but even the lowest quality costs 100,000 per bean. That's a bit expensive... Still, I could buy one and see how well it works. With this, maybe I can try teaching a high-level skill: Size Alteration, Absolute Sleep, Intimidation... I can start with one of them."