Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
“Gao Peng, the issue with them is simply that they don’t practice enough. Although they share the same birth mother, it’s still essential for them to have battled together since they were young in order to acquire tacit understanding between each other.” Fatty Big Sea shook its head and proceeded to dive right into the pile of snow and swim to its heart’s content.
“The only way to build tacit understanding between them is to frequently train them in battle together,” Fatty Big Sea emphasized once again in a serious tone.
Gao Peng spent a moment in deep thought and concluded that Fatty Big Sea did have a point. And so, for every single battle in the following period of time, Gao Peng formed a battle team with seven individual Dragon Ants, assigning each a variety of opponents, all of which were acquired from countless terrains and environments, ranging from great snowy mountains to volcano colonies, swamps, hills, plains, and many more.
Of course, as this all happened, the other familiars weren’t left idle; Flowing Light, Desolion, or Da Zi, were all occupied with hunting monsters.
Every night, Dark Child would be kept busy, as heaps after heaps of monster bodies were brought in, awaiting their decomposition into various rare resources. For Gao Peng’s familiars to raise their tiers so quickly, Dark Child most certainly played a role of utmost importance.
During this time, it seemed as though Gao Peng hadn’t gotten any rest at all, because every monster had its own territory, and especially those of higher tiers possessed an evidently stronger sense of territory. Because of this, the search for different monsters of high tiers was a rather time-consuming task.
But of course, that was all there was to it. It was merely time-consuming since the procedure wasn’t too complicated. It was exactly because of their strong sense of territory that, when approached by monsters of similar or slightly lower tiers, they would be extremely infuriated!
Subsequently, monsters in their territories would show themselves to protect their territorial rights. If the invading monster had a lower tier than them, they would appear aggressive and incomparably arrogant, putting these bold trespassers in their place as the owners. By eating all of them.
In the case that they came to the realization that the trespassing monster was at a tier much too high to compete against… they would resort to fleeing in secret. And as for the territory, well, they would simply have to find more land to take over.
Gao Peng would always send a little Dragon Ant as bait—this way, not only would he not scare the smaller monsters away with a high tier, but he would also be able to lure them out.
Under so much training, their tiers, as well as the tacit understanding between the seven little ones, shot up at amazing rates.
…
The bark on the surface of the Magic Willow grew wrinkled, its trunk shriveled and dry. Like an extract seeping into its body, its scarlets roots were encased in a steady stream of scarlet light that was gradually being absorbed into Xiao Cao’s body.
The roots overflowed with color, scarlet liquid flowing through them. Their slow squirms made them seem as though they were full of life.
Xiao Cao had since then become incredibly huge, like a humongous tree that grew robustly, towering over everything else in the middle of the valley. The aura encircling Xiao Cao began to grow dangerous. On its left, a vile Dark Power had spread across the place, while on its right, clean, white streaks of Light Power bloomed from its surroundings. Light and darkness perfectly divided the valley into two halves.
Under the blanket of Light Power, the plants growing on the right half of the valley became radiant and stood tall with confidence. Even their petals seemed to have grown a tad bit prouder.
Meanwhile, on the left portion of the valley, the plants gradually fell gloomy under the darkness. A number of them even looked extremely displeased, as if they would turn violent any second—they just didn’t seem easy to get along with.
The amounts of elemental power consumed by Saint-tier and Overlord-tier monsters were completely different, just like how trains and cars consumed different amounts of fuel and electricity.
Xiao Cao was not only absorbing the power of life of the Magic Willow; it was also absorbing the Elemental Power of the heavens and earth with the help of the Magic Willow’s body. By adding the two together, Xiao Cao’s tier and growth rate continued to skyrocket at an alarming rate.
Flamy stopped at the entrance of the valley and lay back on the grass watching Xiao Cao’s evolution. From time to time, it picked up a couple of slices of dried fish from the plate next to it and put them in its mouth.
To monsters with tiers like Flamy’s, the flesh of regular monsters wasn’t sufficient for any sort of upgrade. There was hardly any difference in consuming Emperor-tier flesh or Normal-tier flesh, because both filled its stomach anyway. Because of that, Flamy would normally opt for marinated spicy dried fish.
“Why hasn’t Goldie come back yet?” Flamy squinted and let out a satisfying burp. Goldie had been sneaking out to play a lot recently. Under normal circumstances, Flamy would have been pissed, just because. But well…since Goldie had previously bought dried fish snacks for Flamy, it decided to just let the little Baldie go this time around.
On the other side, somewhere in the middle of the Land of 1,000 Streams, Goldie strode across the creek in an exaggerated manner while holding a fishnet that was dotted with vibrant colors. The light reflected off the many Fish-type monsters trapped inside.
“Ha!” Goldie grunted, slamming its right foot into the river. The several-hundred-foot-wide creek began to shake, and a 230-foot-high wave exploded from the surface of the water. A few moments later, a big fish with its eyes rolled backward into its brain slowly rose to the top, revealing itself on the surface of the river…
A very excited Goldie hauled the fish by its tail and flung it into the net, and proceeded to count carefully, “One, two, three, four… twenty-one.”
“I’ve done it!” Goldie exclaimed, its voice carrying evident excitement as it tilted its head back in laughter. It leaped into the air at least a couple hundred feet high, jumping around like a happy little duckling.
Boom! The ground beneath began to rumble violently, and within a few seconds, Goldie had swiftly disappeared on the horizon, nowhere to be found.
A few monster trainers who were hunting on-site had the privilege to witness everything unveil before their very own eyes. They wiped off the beads of sweat forming on their foreheads, their minds in sync: The Black Fog World is indeed a dangerous place.
As time silently slipped past, the number of monsters roaming Earth Star had noticeably decreased; the mutated Tree Demon monsters had also stopped spawning endlessly—it was safe to say that the situation on Earth Star was gradually growing stable. Apart from the Tree Demon monsters, there were no unwelcome invasions by any new monsters or mutant monster trainers in sight.
The experienced tribal monster hunters snuck in through the passageways and to their surprise, found no planned ambush on the other end, as though there was no one for miles. It was as if the mutants hadn’t heard the news of their arrival.
Not more than three miles away laid some sort of huge monster gathering spot. The groups of monsters inside had flourished in terms of intelligence. They seemed to have a clear division of labor and were even observed supporting other monsters, with a Quasi God-tier monster as their leader.
“Ze Hai, you’ve exceeded my expectations of being a monster trainer at such a young age. The future growth of our Poison Marsh Tribe depends on you now,” Ze Yuan showered Ze Hai with praise.
“It’s all thanks to Grandfather’s excellent teaching,” Ze Hai replied calmly in a humble tone.
Behind Ze Hai laid his familiar, looking so incredibly strong that it was impossible to tell what it had originally looked like; the difference was like the one between ice and fire.
Spanning a height of over 160 feet with its tail at a length of over 650 feet, it had blood-red scales the size of tabletops and emerald eyes that sparkled with a mysterious glow. The rich smell of blood laced with frightening poisonous fog spread around its body like haze, creating a blurry effect.
This kind of hegemonic body size was unique and uncommon, especially for the Poison-type familiars of the Poison Marsh Tribe. Poison-type familiars were usually considered petite compared to other familiars of the same tier, but Ze Hai’s Venomous Lizard King of the Blood Sea was undoubtedly a striking rule breaker.
