Chapter 342 — Bing Dwen Dwen, Part Eleven

He had heard the training effects inside were excellent. Shi Cen did not expect to reach a level-seven beast-taming space in a short span of time; breaking through to level six alone would satisfy him utterly.

By then, with his physique improved, allocating points to super-tier skills ought to come easier; and he would also be able to contract Lin, whose attribute feedback, judging by what it had shown so far, ought to make him—the beast tamer—cleverer.

Then, with the Memory Droplet to help, Shi Jin thought, the knowledge he never had time to memorize could at last be squeezed into his spare moments.

"Are you ready?"

A day later, Eleven had recovered.

All of Shi Ying's pets had likewise been tuned to peak condition.

Shi Xu at last decided to allocate the points.

Inside the ruins' space, as Shi Jin was about to "hand out the prize," the pets gathered together, watching enviously as Eleven went up to collect it.

One of the prizes of the intra-team tournament: the champion pet won the right to be first in line for a super-tier skill allocation.

So now, naturally, Eleven was the first to learn a super-tier skill—a privilege that left Buggy beside it green with envy.

"Awoo!!!" Eleven, the Panda King, clad in the "Frost Purification Suit," had become a living Bing Dwen Dwen, his face dead serious. He was ready!!!

That Frost Purification Suit was something Susu had made by transforming herself into "Water of Purification" and then condensing it.

It was gear for "purifying negative emotions," and it could effectively raise Eleven's odds of successfully learning the super-tier skill.

Susu was the only one in Shi Jin's team who had been through a super-tier skill allocation, so she knew exactly what help a pet receiving super-tier skill experience required.

With Susu standing guard, this was precisely why Shi Jin dared to teach a super-tier skill to Eleven and the others, whose willpower was only middling.

"Crimson Eye, possession. Ginseng Baby, heal me. Buggy, set the field. Lin, record everything."

Because the last allocation had been so hard to endure, Shi Jin had made far more thorough preparations this time.

Crimson Eye still possessed Shi Jin, boosting Shi Ying's constitution and recovery a little.

Ginseng Baby stood behind Shi Jue, one hand braced against Shi Jin as though "transmitting inner power," ready at any moment to channel nourishing strength and lend Shi Shuo an arm.

Buggy instantly remodeled the ruins space here into a place where "earth and sunlight" coexisted, conjuring dense earth power and sunlight power for Ginseng Baby to root in and Shi Jin to recover from.

Lin the Rubik's Cube, face solemn, analyzed the machine states of Shi Jin and Eleven, keeping watch over the bottles and jars of "Life Droplets" on the ground, handling safety assurance, charged with calling a halt to the allocation at the critical moment.

This time, nothing would go wrong.

[Skill]: Undying Golden Body

[Status]: Teachable

[Teaching Success Rate]: Medium

[Teaching Risk]: Medium

"Just charge ahead and get it done." Shi Jin drew a deep breath and reached his big hand toward Eleven, golden radiance spilling across his palm.

Unlike lower-tier skills, when teaching a super-tier skill, the color of the radiance shifted with the skill's attribute.

When he had taught Susu Infinite Devouring, the radiance had been blue; now, teaching Eleven, it had turned gold.

"Eek! (Every bit of this strength of mine, I earned through my own hard work, Beast Tamer—allocate the points!!)" To steel his unbreakable spirit and bear the teaching successfully, Eleven kept hypnotizing himself.

Even banks handed out loans—so what if it drew an advance on the fruits of its own effort? It would make up the difference afterward; no one could strip it of its bear rights!

This time, the stat allocation was bound to succeed!

Buzz!!

The golden light of instruction settled onto Eleven's head.

In an instant, Eleven, clad in his Bing Dwen Dwen purification suit, felt as though his body were about to split apart. His pair of watery bear eyes went wide, brimming with crackling threads of electricity.

Unlike the teaching of low-level skills, which was incomparably comfortable and intoxicating, the learning of a super-tier skill was agony beyond words.

In that instant, Eleven felt as if Ginseng Baby had blown him to bits with a self-detonation, then pieced him back together, then blasted him to smithereens all over again.

His body was endlessly destroyed and reconstituted, destroyed and reconstituted, the pain repeating again and again at several times the intensity of all the self-mutilating training he had ever endured. Even Eleven—a mad bear who trained as if he had a death wish—felt an incomparable agony.

Meanwhile, at the side of Shi Jin, things were just as they had been the last time.

The instruction speed of a super-tier Observation skill was appallingly slow.

His body began to wither; his hair and eyebrows started to turn white. His life force drained away at a frantic rate, and he felt as though he were dying, weak to the absolute extreme. He had steeled himself for it, but this second time still made Shi Jin resolve that he would never again teach a super-tier skill before his next breakthrough.

……

Ten minutes.

A full ten minutes.

The last time he had taught Susu a super-tier skill, it had hardly taken any time at all.

But this time, teaching Eleven had taken a full ten minutes.

[Instruction Success Rate]: Medium

[Instruction Risk]: Medium

That "medium", Shi Jin suddenly understood, referred not only to the beast, but to him as well.

The lower the beast's willpower level, the slower it absorbed super-tier skill experience, and at the same time, the longer Shi Jin had to keep instructing—keep draining himself. The physical strength and life force he had to expend grew all the greater!

The cost of a super-tier skill was not fixed; it shifted with the circumstances of the instruction. This discovery had Shi Jin cursing and swearing.

Last time, teaching for just a short while had nearly been the death of him; this time, a full ten minutes—Shi Jin had no idea how he had even survived it.

If not for Ginseng Baby's constant life-sustaining support, if not for Red Pupil's possession, Shi Jin might well have croaked midway through.

It was the same on Eleven's end. He had weathered countless bouts of his body collapsing under the torment, his shrill screams echoing through the entire relic space and leaving Buggy, Ginseng Baby, Red Pupil, and Rin trembling.

If even Eleven, the toughest of the team, suffered so miserably, could they truly withstand the agony of a super-tier stat allocation?

For a moment, the little darlings all felt a hint of cowardice.

Through those ten minutes, every minute and every second, Shi Jin wanted to stop the instruction and just give up.

Wait until his own constitution improved, wait until Eleven's willpower broke through—then teach it. Perhaps then it would be like teaching Susu last time: still painful, but not unbearable.

But the thought that giving up now would render all their previous effort wasted made Shi Jin grit his teeth and hold on.

They had no idea how those ten minutes had passed. By the latter half, both Eleven and Shi Jin had nearly lost consciousness.

(This paragraph in the source is corrupted/garbled web-novel anti-piracy text and carries no translatable story content.)

Red Pupil had already been ejected because Shi Jin's condition was no longer sufficient to sustain the possession, and Susu, having spent all her power assisting Eleven, had collapsed to one side as a limp, jelly-like blob.

Only Ginseng Baby and Rin still had their big eyes open. Just as they too judged that Shi Jin and Eleven's condition truly could not continue and that the instruction had to be interrupted, a powerful aura suddenly erupted from Eleven!

The golden light of instruction slowly faded.

[Instruction Successful]