Chapter 64

To Zhang Che’s knowledge, beastmasters mostly rely on their subdued beasts to fight.

Even though Second Lieutenant Qi was able to fight on equal grounds against a three-starred Five-Colored Poison Spider that day in the Southern Suburb Woods, that was because he had a decent weapon-type beast card in his hand.

Although a beastmaster’s body would grow stronger with the increase of their Tier, it wouldn’t grow to a ridiculous degree.

That was especially true in the later ranks. Against those powerful exotic beasts with astonishing destructive capabilities, so what if your physical body was strong?

Therefore, when he saw that muscular middle-aged man demonstrating the swordplay routine in the video, Zhang Che didn’t put it to heart. He directly closed it and went up the stairs.

“I’ll take another look at it when I have some time in the future. Huang Tielan specially sent it over, after all. Perhaps it’s a little exceptional?”

Before this, Zhang Che was planning to prepare a birthday gift for himself as well.

No matter what, he was turning eighteen in another two days, officially becoming an adult!

Back at home, Zhang Che realized that his mother’s gaze toward him was a little strange.

“Xiaoche, your classmate went home?”

“Yeah, I sent her to the taxi,” Zhang Che replied, confused. He didn’t know what his mother meant by that.

Sun Lan looked at Zhang Che, saying with a very stern expression, “Although I don’t know what’s the exact relationship between you two, Mommy still wants to point out that Miss Huang is a very nice person.”

Ah, the depression Zhang Che felt! It seemed like Huang Tielan’s indirect strategy had progressed to a certain degree?

He smiled awkwardly, “Hehe, Tienan (Iron Man), no, Huang Tielan’s character is indeed not bad.”

“Tienan?” Sun Lan was shocked, feeling that such a nickname didn’t fit Huang Tielan at all. She could only shake her head helplessly, “Why did you people make up such a nickname for her? You kids, really…”

——

It was still early; Zhang Che told his mother that he had something to do and left home once more.

Before this, he transferred two million dollars to his personal terminal, to use for his own birthday present.

That purple crystal card he got from Zhang Yujie was awesome, indeed. All he needed to do was swipe it on his personal terminal and he could quickly transfer the money without any worries about leaking any information.

After leaving home, Zhang Che didn’t choose to use the Myriad Transformation Lizard card to alter his appearance, either, and directly headed to the most concentrated area in the Qian Wei City beast card trading hub.

The Fusion skill’s experience value was barely at thirty points. Now that he had a large sum of money in his hands, Zhang Che thought to purchase a bunch of trash-tier beast cards to increase his experience and level up the Fusion skill to level 2.

Zhang Che was very much looking forward to see whether there will be any surprising changes when the Fusion skill reached level 2.

Over seventy experience points were needed; he needed to buy around a hundred and fifty beast cards. Even if the required cards were only at the lowest one-star black iron-quality to be usable, in order to avoid drawing others’ attention, he bought the cards in over ten different shops, spending over a million dollars and over an hour in the end before he was done.

When he got back home, Zhang Che immediately shut himself in his room and opened the bag in his hand, pouring a huge pile of beast cards on the desk.

Over a hundred beast cards! Despite being only one-star black iron-quality, piling them together still gave a strong visual impact.

Fortunately, the beast cards Zhang Che needed had trash attributes. That was why he was able to find at least two cards of the same species, level, and quality. Otherwise, the Fusion skill wouldn’t work.

Zhang Che picked out two identical beast cards and held them between his palms, activating the Fusion skill. Following a glow of light, they turned into a brand new beast card. Its quality remained unchanged, but its level had miraculously increased by a rank.

“Very good, I gained an experience point!” A hint of excitement shone in Zhang Che’s eyes. He threw the combined beast card aside, and picked out another two identical cards, mechanically activating the Fusion skill.

This process was much faster than purchasing the beast cards. In just over ten minutes, there were only two beast cards left on the table, and Fusion’s experience was at 99/100.

“Now, here comes the time to witness a miracle!” Forcefully suppressing his excitement, Zhang Che picked up the last two cards with trembling hands and activated Fusion.

==[Fusion: Level 2 (Experience 0/100), Combines two beast cards of same species and level into a beast card of 1 level higher. Limited to beast cards under 4 stars. (Unable to gain experience from combining beast cards under 3 stars.)]==

Following the experience value being maxed out, the Fusion skill rose to level 2 as expected. Now he could combine three-star beast cards into a four-star beast card.

Even so, the bracketed notes at the end of the skill description still left Zhang Che slightly dejected.

“I knew it; I estimated that after leveling up, perhaps combining one-star cards wouldn’t yield experience points anymore. It turned out to be true, after all.”

As such, wanting to level up the Fusion skill in the future would be a huge problem. It was impossible to replicate the method of bulk purchasing beast cards any more.

If Zhang Che really did that, he would surely be noticed by others with unknown intentions. Even if he changed identities, it wouldn’t guarantee his safety.

“So, I can only hunt exotic beasts honestly from now on to level it up?”

Zhang Che wasn’t worried, however. When his beastmaster tier rose up to Tier Four in the future, he could employ the dark gold-quality Scarlet Flame Drake. It really wasn’t difficult to hunt low-quality exotic beasts.

The only problem was, for higher-levelled exotic beasts, situations of them gathering in packs would be greatly reduced. There was still a certain difficulty in obtaining at least two similar beast cards. He could only depend on luck.

At that moment, Sun Lan was done preparing dinner and called out to Zhang Che from the living room to eat. “It’s time to eat, Xiaoche.”

“Alright, Mom!” Zhang Che replied. He gathered all of the beast cards into a bag and stuffed it into his closet, then opened the door and walked out.

After eating dinner, Zhang Che took on the duty of washing the dishes without any prompting, leaving Sun Lan feeling gratified. -It seems like my son has really grown up.-

——

“Mmm? I almost forgot to get a closer look at the video Tienan (Iron man) sent me.” As he prepared to go to bed, Zhang Che remembered about the video Huang Tielan sent him. He opened up his personal terminal and keyed in the password once more, watching the video.

Zhang Che’s face couldn’t help, but gradually turn serious as he viewed the video.

He knew that his assessment towards a beastmaster’s personal combat ability might be a little off.

According to the extraordinariness of the swordplay the instructor showed in the video, as long as he trained in it and attained minor accomplishments, along with a certain amount of actual combat experience, his combat ability would definitely rise by quite a large margin.

Also, if he could obtain a powerful weapon-type beast card, it would be akin to adding wings to a tiger.

“It seems that Huang Tielan is indeed very generous! If I could attain minor accomplishment in this art, with the sharpness of the Mutated Puffersword, I could totally go solo against three-star exotic beasts without long-distance elemental attacks!”