Chapter 673 — The Cat Returns

Shi Jin drew a deep breath. Fine, transmigration it was—but in a dangerous other world like this, wouldn't it obviously be more comfortable to transmigrate as a second-generation beast tamer?

Best of all would be to have a dragon maiden guarding him from childhood and sprites for company—only that would make the crossing worthwhile.

Unfortunately, transmigration, like reincarnation, seemed to be a skilled trade.

He was still called Shi Jin, but his identity was no longer that of the mythologist Shi Jin of Earth—he was now an unremarkable intern beast keeper at the Icefield City pet beast breeding base.

Not a Beast Tamer... more like a gofer for Beast Tamers.

This was a place dedicated to raising pet beasts... and he was currently here learning the experience of raising pet beasts.

His daily tasks were to feed some pet beast cubs, shovel their dung, and clean up the sanitation.

A proper bottom-rung working stiff.

But that made sense of the contents of those few books—so he had been studying...

The reason the original body worked so hard was, in truth, the hope of successfully becoming a Beast Tamer—but reality? An orphan who could not even feed himself, what was he talking about breeding pet beasts for?

With the Shi family's circumstances, becoming a Beast Tamer was far too difficult.

But Shi Cen was lucky: a little talent plus a little effort had at least tied his current profession to Beast Tamers, and the future held no small chance that he might yet become one.

He had even made a great many preparations, resolving to take out a loan if need be to purchase a prime cub and become a beast tamer.

At such a young age, he had already decided to shoulder a beast-taming loan.

Shi Jin's composure shattered. As expected—truly miserable.

Burdened with a mountain of mortgage and car payments, he actually felt a hundred million points of sympathy—never imagining that even after transmigrating, he would still be carrying loans.

He was getting ahead of himself. For now, Shi Yu was nothing but a lowly wage slave.

And before long, a task would be waiting for him—the 666 work schedule, and Shi Yun was strict.

To be honest, apart from his high school years, it had been a long time since he had risen at six in the morning...

Shi Jin rubbed his aching head and walked over to a wall plastered with a work schedule.

This was the weekly task list handed out just yesterday. As an intern at the breeding base, his daily tasks were all arranged for him.

Today's task was... Shi Qi looked toward what lay beneath Monday.

Morning: feed the snow wolf pack (solo task)... haul feed (group task)...

Afternoon: record growth data for the green fluff worms (group task)...

Mm...

If his memory served... weren't snow wolves pack-dwelling, exceedingly fierce and savage carnivorous pets?

Such a dangerous-looking task... and it was solo? Seriously?

Shi Jin sank into thought.

He had been bitten by a dog as a child, and was naturally a bit cowardly around canines. This task was a little poisonous to him.

"But it shouldn't be a problem..."

It suddenly occurred to Shi Jin that he possessed the "telepathy" talent, which allowed him to communicate normally with any living being—so surely nothing would go wrong...

The reason he had been able to come here for his internship was, apart from his excellent marks in the school's theoretical courses, that he possessed a special beast-taming talent called "telepathy."

When a human successfully opens a beast-taming space through meditation, this is accompanied by the awakening of a beast-taming talent.

Apart from not yet having contracted an initial pet, Shi Jin had already successfully opened his beast-taming space and smoothly awakened his talent.

This was thanks to the state's incorporation of the meditation method for opening a beast-taming space into Zhaoye education in the modern era, in order to cultivate talent with beast-taming aptitude. Shi Jin had been detected as having beast-taming talent during that very stage.

Beast-taming talents came in many varieties, but were chiefly divided into two major types—enhancement type and special type—with an awakening ratio of roughly 9:1.

An enhancement-type talent was something like flame enhancement. A beast tamer possessing such a talent would do best to seek out pets with flame abilities to cultivate.

Because in battle, the tamer could then use their own beast-taming talent to amplify the power of their pet's flame-type skills.

Compared with enhancement-type talents, special-type talents were exceedingly complex and followed no pattern; the forms in which different talents manifested their abilities varied enormously.

For example, the special-type talent "sharing" allowed a tamer to share one skill of a contracted pet, gaining an extraordinary ability for themselves.

Generally, tamers possessing talents like sharing were far stronger than ordinary tamers in both self-preservation and combat prowess.

There was also the special talent "fusion," which let a tamer briefly fuse with their pet into a new form—perhaps beast-eared girls really did exist?

As for Jue's telepathy talent, though it too was special-type, it was rather common—one of the most widespread special-type talents at present.

A tamer with the telepathy talent, once adept at the ability, could communicate with any sapient being without language barriers.

Normally, a tamer could only understand the thoughts of a pet with which they had signed a contract; but a tamer with the telepathy talent could communicate somewhat even with others' pets or wild creatures.

In the development history of the tamer profession, the telepathy talent could not directly form combat power, yet its standing was unshakable—it was indispensable.

After all, if one could communicate with other species, a great and unnecessary battle might well be avoided outright.

In fields such as medical workers, teachers, researchers, and keepers within the tamer profession, it was basically tamers with the telepathy talent who held core posts. It was a jack-of-all-trades talent.

With such a practical beast-taming talent, by rights he should get along rather easily with wild creatures...

At this thought, Shi Jin breathed a sigh of relief.

As for his use of "telepathy," though he could hardly call himself adept, he should not be too bad either.

Instinctively he tried to use his beast-taming talent, listening in all directions, intending to familiarize himself with the steps in advance lest he fail later.

But just at that moment, an anomaly suddenly arose...

As the beast-taming space Shi Jin had opened in his mind trembled, his vision suddenly blurred, and then, in his mind, a black stone codex unexpectedly surfaced.

It seemed... he had awakened a second beast-taming talent!