After a sudden change of environment, which was no longer surprising for Su Ping, he reopened his eyes and saw the familiar pet room of his shop. Though there was someone else accompanying him this time.
“Is this… the Archean Divinity?” Joanna looked around the room. Su Ping tried putting up a “bossy” look as he said, “No, this is the pet shop in which you’ll be spending a lot of time working. The Archean Divinity can wait until you earn the chance.”
Joanna didn’t look happy about his attitude. “Kindly tell me when it’s going to happen, will you?”
She felt bad as soon as she asked that question; it was as if she was already accepting her new role willingly.
“An evaluation will happen at each end of season. It’s possible to do it earlier if you excel at your job, though,” Su Ping recited what he had just learned from the system. “For now, you should listen to my arrangement and treat our customers with good manners. This is basic.”
“You’re not going to boss me around like that just yet!”
“Oh really? Try that again and I’ll add the first negative review on your paper.”
Joanna was silenced by a sudden image that popped up in her mind, which showed her a basic profile of her current employment status. The profile contained some details such as her combat strength, her rank, and many skills she had learned.
Also, she saw an “employee rating” which was currently set at 100. By directing her attention to a question mark beside the number, she saw another message explaining how this rating worked.
She could become an “outstanding employee” by improving the rating to 200. On the other hand, her basic benefits would be revoked should it fall below 80. If it kept worsening to the extent of reaching 60, she would lose the job and be forced to become an asset of the pet shop instead. Meaning, she would turn into an expendable pet.
WHAT?? A pet?? Me?? There’s nothing like that in the agreement!
She felt the urge of unloading a bunch of dirty curses despite her royal upbringing. This place is a freaking prison!
She was already regretting her decision. Revealing all of her privacy was enough reason for her to not accept the job, if she had known it earlier. Not only did the profile contain almost everything about her, it even mentioned a lot of things even herself couldn’t remember clearly, like several skills she had not used in a long time.
Such a detailed investigation also suggested that something she couldn’t disobey was taking care of this pet shop.
At least there was something comforting; she noticed that Su Ping was not the one to judge her rating. Otherwise, he would have already made it zero and turned her into a pet.
“See those?” Su Ping pointed to several empty nursing pens nearby. “Get in there and don’t come out unless I say so.”
Of course Joanna didn’t want to listen. She knew Su Ping couldn’t control her rating, but she did not want to find out what would happen if she openly opposed him either.
Frustrated, she followed his hint and saw several magic runes drawn on the floor. These are… Nursing runes?
She checked several occupied nursing pens in which some pets were resting. It was clear that they had been forced to become smaller to fit in.
She checked the rune and soon learned how to copy them. They were a bit difficult to draw, but she could manage as long as she had the right materials.
“I must say it’s rare to find such efficient nursing runes these days…” she muttered as she stepped inside a nursing pen.
She felt the power of the rune taking control of her surroundings. Everything including Su Ping grew bigger in her view as her own body was readjusted to a more convenient size that allowed her to better sit inside the nursing pen.
Meanwhile, she also felt an enriching stream of energy entering her form.
Such pure nourishment…
Even in specialized training grounds created by gods, it wasn’t easy to find such “clean” energy to be used. Demigod Burial used to be an ancient battlefield. The passage of time didn’t fully cleanse all the taint and traces of malevolence left behind, which was why all gods found it difficult to improve their strength by natural means.
Even after many millennia, only a few Superior Gods had managed to reach their level, which granted them immortality, which allowed them to hold everlasting dominance over their world, unless they sought death for some reason.
The pure, unadulterated energy didn’t seem to be as potent as divine energy, yet it was generally helpful to all manners of creatures, judging from all the different pets peacefully resting in their spots.
Amused, Joanna closed her eyes and began channeling her own special training technique to improve her strength. The energy was mostly useless to her “true self,” but this avatar was only at the “Beast King” rank, which still had room for improvement.
Su Ping was glad that this goddess had agreed to sit quietly instead of causing a ruckus, in which case it would be rather difficult to explain where she came from to his family. A man and a pretty girl who had spent a few hours in a private room would only lead to terrible misinterpretations.
Speaking of his family… He noticed that the shop was awfully quiet. He had a bad feeling about it so he quickly went outside, only to see that her mother had fallen asleep on the only chair available at the shop, whereas Su Lingyue was playing with her phone on the floor. Telling from the movement of her finger, she was probably playing a cheap puzzle game popular among youngsters.
Su Ping sighed in relief. For a moment, he thought something bad had happened while he was away.
Spending seven days inside Demigod Burial meant that only a few hours had passed in reality. He was surprised, since whoever was trying to find him had yet to show up. If someone was powerful enough to govern the Mysterious Realm, to find out everything about him would only take a few minutes.
Could it be that something was obstructing this person?
Nevertheless, he had to expand the safe ground as fast as possible.
Su Lingyue heard him coming and looked up from her cellphone. “You sure took your time in there, eh? You didn’t answer my calls no matter how many times I tried.” “You called me? What for?”
“Oh, nothing serious. We kinda needed to order something to eat. But we need to, you know, ask whether we can do such a thing.”
“You can’t. Eating something brought by the wrong man can be dangerous right now, and you know it.”
“Fine, I can go without a meal or two. But what about mom? We can’t let her starve.”
Su Ping frowned. That was indeed a problem.
The system suddenly interrupted his thoughts with an alert.
“Congratulations, host. You have successfully completed the special training task. Reward: one intermediate Force Pellet, plus a random mythical technique tutorial.”
Following the message, Su Ping saw a roulette wheel appearing in front of him, while his sister didn’t react.
Nice. I just reached the fifth rank. With this Force Pallet, I may directly get to the next rank right away. And with the help of the Star Prism, I can briefly unleash eighth-ranked astral power in a fight!
The roulette was pretty much self-explanatory since the tutorial book was supposed to be randomly chosen.
In order not to look too silly by staring at empty air, he went back inside the pet room and closed the door.
“Again?? How much longer do you need?” Su Lingyue protested out loud.
“Won’t be long!” Su Lingyue humphed and picked up her phone to continue playing. “Oh fu—I forgot to pause the game!”
“Okay, start it up,” Su Ping muttered at the virtual wheel in his view.
As the wheel came to a full stop, a book appeared at its center and flew toward his face. The title read “Fist of Exorcist.”
Fist? Some kind of martial art? Su Ping wondered.
Abiding his will, the book melted and became a beam of light that entered his forehead, delivering a giant flood of wisdom directly to his mind, along with several images that showed him a desolate, battered world that seemed to have been victim of a brutal war.
Swarms of ghosts and goblins rampaged around the already infested land.
An abrupt golden beam of light penetrated the darkness and slammed on the ground. It was a giant, golden fist that came down like a comet, crushing a good number of monsters to pieces in the blink of an eye.
Su Ping watched in awe as he saw the impressive attack destroying evil creatures despite their resistance.
Following the display, he saw a shadow coming up while explaining the origin of this technique, who claimed to be an ancient Beast Master that ruled over a primitive yet bountiful world.
“Punches that deliver impeccable justice, absolute might, peerless power…” Su Ping read the introduction out loud as he fully focused on his studies.
He woke up and found that everything about the new technique had been printed deep inside his mind.
It appeared that he could improve this skill all the way to the fifth rank, by which time he would be able to unleash that almighty attack that could destroy heaven and earth alike.
That skill was a remnant left behind by an ancient warrior, who didn’t wish to fully vanish from this world even after death.
“Man. I sure hope I can become such a hero someday…” Su Ping muttered.
Next, he tried to execute several basic moves as instructed, only to find that he could do none of them at the moment.
Ugh. Let me see, so my spirit, body and soul must be aligned, following a certain flow of energy…
He closed his eyes to carefully remember the very first step of the instruction, before moving a fist in an outward motion.
Whoosh!
His hand caused a sharp, audible noise in the air. That punch was clearly more powerful than what he could normally muster. Still, he was far from achieving the first rank of the skill.
According to what he had learned, the first rank would be achieved when his fist became fast enough to create a small sonic boom; by then he would be able to punch ninth-rank monsters to death without using any tools.
Training the skill would take a lot of time. For the moment, he decided to tend to the shop’s business first. There was no reason to make haste when such an ancient skill clearly required decades or even a lifetime to fully master. At least for common warriors.
He summoned his inventory space and took out the Force Pellet he had just gained.
Unable to resist the tempting energy radiating from it, he quickly swallowed it in one go.
For a moment, he felt how his body was filled by pure energy, an amount that would have taken him months to gather. His astral power capacity was instantly boosted to the lower sixth rank, when he had just reached the fifth rank earlier that day.
He really hoped to gather more of those pellets to be able to rise up in rank straight away, which he sorely lacked. Although he wouldn’t get too greedy. After all, he had just become a battle pet warrior around two months back. He was progressing fast enough. After quenching his excitement, he left the pet room again and found his sister, who was still playing the same mobile game.
“Did anyone come to talk about our shop expansion plan?”
Su Lingyue threw him an impatient glance. “Yeah, and there was nothing I could do since you know, you wouldn’t come out. I had to tell them to come back later.”
“I see. Huh, they’re pretty fast.”
He went to his computer so he could call the helpers he had hired to see him sooner.
Since there was nothing to do while waiting, he simply went inside the pet room again to practice his new art.
About half an hour later, several representatives from a few different housing companies arrived.
Su Ping opened the shutter and finished up some necessary follow-up payments without letting anyone inside. He received close to 50 new deeds in total which cost him 200 million astral coins to fulfill. As he promised, he purchased the houses nearby by paying triple their original plot prices.
He did a quick evaluation and realized that all the new properties would give him an area of about 4 or 5 square kilometers, even though he might need to tear several places down.
One of the system’s requirements for raising the pet shop to level 3 was owning a land bigger than 3 square Km. He had more than enough at the moment. There were still a few places to buy before he could own the entire street. But that would be a concern for another time.
It was finally time to pay some energy points to commence the shop upgrade.