Chapter 140 — Everyone's Strength Skyrockets

But at present, the most noteworthy thing was this: beating Buggy was no longer easy for Eleven. It would take real effort, and Eleven would have to play every card it held—and even then, there was still a risk of the whole thing going sideways.

[Name]: Iron-Eater

[Growth Rank]: Transcendent

[Skills]: Hardening (Technique Approaching the Dao), Thunder Palm (Peerless Mastery), Rapid Healing (Proficiency), Super Vision (Perfect), Intimidation (Proficiency), Absolute Sleep (Proficiency), Multiplicity (Proficiency)

This was mainly because Eleven, comparatively speaking, had improved fewer skills; there had only been time to raise the proficiency of Hardening and Thunder Palm.

Before, it had been Buggy eyeing Eleven's pile of skills with envy; now it was Eleven eyeing Buggy's pile of skills with envy.

Once Thunder Palm reached the peerless mastery grade, Eleven gained far stronger control over lightning; it could even convert Thunder Palm into a Wave Palm, condensing lightning into an energy body and releasing it outward as a Thunder Palm, or reshape Thunder Palm into all manner of forms.

This counted as a small surprise, giving Eleven a few more ranged attack options.

Yet after teaching Eleven's Thunder Palm up to the peerless mastery grade, Shi Jin discovered a major problem.

That is, once Thunder Palm was taught to the peerless mastery grade, the skill codex displayed "Cannot Teach" for it.

At the same time, a delete symbol appeared on the Thunder Palm page, which meant Shi Jin could delete Thunder Palm at any time.

This left Shi Jin somewhat silent, because it seemed the skill codex could only push a beast's species skills up to the grade of Technique Approaching the Dao.

For non-species skills, peerless mastery was the cap.

Shi Zhao's feelings were complicated.

The good news was that, with this, the conditions for deleting certain skills had dropped considerably, and he could copy more rare skills.

The bad news was that some extremely useful non-species skills could not be pushed to the highest grade and would have to be trained by hand from then on.

So for now, although Earth Link had been copied over, Hardening and Thunder Palm had, in Shi Tan's hands, once again become skills that could be deleted at any time, freeing up two new skill slots whenever needed.

As for max-level Hardening.

Compared with peerless mastery-grade Hardening, max-level Hardening, beyond a rise in hardness, gained one additional property.

Growth.

The reason the Hardening skill had been rated low-tier was that no matter what an Iron-Eater ate, the nature of the hardened substance stayed the same—aside from getting a tiny bit harder and having decent resistance to physical attacks, it had no special traits and little growth potential.

But at max level, Hardening became like peerless mastery-grade Bug Silk: depending on what food was eaten, it could directly alter the nature and attributes of the hardened substance.

For example, if Eleven ate large quantities of electric ore, the nature of its hardened substance would lean toward lodestone; in its hardened state, its control over lightning-type skills and its lightning-type aptitude would rise dramatically.

If it then ate large quantities of light-and-heavy rock, it could freely control its own weight in the hardened state—now light as a feather, now heavy as a mountain.

This growth property of max-level Hardening was also part of why Eleven was finding Buggy a bit hard to beat at the moment.

Because it still hasn't grown up yet.

On top of that, Eleven still hadn't managed to coordinate the ultimate combo move, the railgun—max-level Hardening fused with the secret art of a transcendent-grade Lightning Palm.

As a result, Buggy—now armed with three spatial skills and one high-tier skill at the perfect grade—had become a match for Eleven, with the odds four to six in Buggy's favor. If Buggy's species rank were a bit higher, its stamina a bit greater, and it weren't such a fragile little green fluffworm, Eleven might well have been in real trouble.

Shi Jin stared at the data card. The ginseng baby still lacked a wood-type attack skill, so he'd have to pick out something suitable. Buggy's skills were about sufficient; once maxed out, he just needed to wait for its evolution to awaken new species skills. Points should still go into species skills—their ceiling was higher, after all. As for Eleven, its attack skills were a little thin, but there was no rush. Like Buggy, it would be able to evolve not long after school started.

"Why do I get the feeling that if my beast-taming space levels up smoothly, and Eleven and Buggy evolve on top of that, I'll be able to sweep seniors like that beast-eared upperclassman by my freshman year?" Shi Jin's expression turned strange.

Small thinking. Too small. The Battle Department at the Ancient Capital University wasn't even that impressive. Set a small goal, then—sweep the Battle Department of the Imperial Capital University before sophomore year.

When that time comes, he'd go ask the principal for money. Pay the salary, and a legend will grind to dust!

This ginseng baby really was his lucky star.

"Hello!!!"

"Delivery for you!!!"

Just as Shi Jin was lost in his fantasies, a familiar voice drifted in from outside.

Shi Jin hurried out at a jog. As he passed the courtyard, the ginseng baby, which had been tending the flowers and plants around the villa, poked its head out and curiously followed after him.

"We meet again, huh."

"Been a while since I delivered anything to you."

Outside the training villa.

After the young courier—an old acquaintance of Shi Ying's who rode a Sky-Rending Wing to make deliveries all over—dropped off a metal heap of mineral resources, he looked at Shi Jin with a grin.

He was a little puzzled, too. Why wasn't Shi Jin buying supplements this time...

Then he spotted the ginseng baby by Shi Jin's pant leg...

Courier: "..."

"Yeah, long time no see." Shi Yan chuckled as he stowed the goods, while wondering—did the other man not know about his new identity? It seemed the title of genius archaeologist still wasn't enough...

The two once again completed a transaction with an unspoken understanding.

What Shi Jin had bought this time was a grade-four lightning-type metallic mineral resource: Thunder-Calming Stone.

It had cost roughly five million; not much, just one box.

After all, he only had a few tens of millions on hand now.

That left Shi Jin a little gloomy. He'd saved money on supplements for stat points, but other resources were damn well not cheap either.

The reason he'd bought this was to test the so-called growth potential of max-level Hardening.

"Eeh~~" At that moment, the ginseng baby stared at the big box before it, endlessly curious.

What's this?

Shi Zhuo smiled faintly and opened the box, revealing a pile of sealed deep-blue lightning stones.

"This is food for Eleven."

Ginseng Baby: !!!

"Eeh!!" In the ginseng baby's eyes, Eleven and Buggy were both so weird.

One eats iron rocks—fine, whatever. One eats plants—despicable.

It was different. The ginseng baby liked nothing more than eating soil and drinking all kinds of nutritional beverages.

The ginseng baby considered itself perfectly normal.

"Let's go, we're heading back."

Shi Yan chuckled and, hefting the big box full of metallic minerals in one hand, led the ginseng baby back inside.

This Thunder-Calming Stone had a stable nature.

The stone exerted extraordinary control over the lightning energy within it.

Many lightning-type beasts used this kind of resource to strengthen their command over lightning energy.

When choosing resources, Shi Jin had locked onto the Thunder-Calming Stone at first glance.

Eleven wasn't a lightning-type beast, after all. Even though its Lightning Palm had reached the transcendent grade and its Hardening was maxed out, it was still, as expected, a bit short of pulling off the railgun Shi Jin had imagined.