Chapter 21: Quality amplification

Shane and Umbra ate until their bellies were filled to the brim and looking outside the window the primarine-luminous crystal street lamps brightened up their surrounding, while they were weekly supplied with mana.

When Shane used the primarine-luminous crystals, he overclocked them with a mana over-injection, causing a much brighter light to dazzle the shadow-snakes and mountain boars.

Unfortunately overclocking the prismarine-luminous crystal would slowly destroy the inner structure and cause them to crumble, as it happened with his small one.

Nevertheless, the investment was definitely worth the costs, as such Shane was pleased as he took out one of the fist-sized mana stones at the [Mortal-(Uncommon)] rank.

Mana could still faintly enter houses and other buildings through marginal holes, but exerting the mana gathering techniques, Shane noticed that compared to the surrounding, inside his room there were at most 10% mana particles.

Nevertheless, Shane wanted to absorb and purify his mana for a few hours before sleeping and even Umbra looked at the mana stone with greed.

Umbra curled himself on top of the mana stone, while Shane held it in his hands, after sitting in the meditation stance to increase the efficiency of the mana gathering and purifying technique.

Exerting the mana gathering technique, before purifying the gathered mana, three hours passed and the mana stone's light slowly dissipated, as it crumbled in his hands.

There were still many mana particles floating around the room due to his weak graded mana gathering technique.

Once mana was released from mana stones, they wouldn't stop releasing it anymore and if the output was larger than Shane's input, the excess mana particles would float through the air.

Shane could still absorb more mana, but rather than that, he looked at his mana purity.

It already reached [0.23%] which was not satisfying for Shane, but he hadn't slept for the last 40 hours and experienced more tension than he had accumulated in his whole new life together.

As such he could barely remember taking a glance at Umbra who looked at him pleading and taking out the last fist-sized uncommon quality mana stone from his spatial ring when darkness enveloped him, pushing him into his deserved sleep.

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Hours passed and when Shane opened his eyes, it seemed as if morning had almost passed.

Looking at the time, with his dreamy eyes it was 10 am and Shane's eyes widened as his back straightened after he sat up in an exaggerated manner.

`Argh!! I didn't want to waste time and now I've slept so long?` he lamented when he noticed a shattered stone next to him.

Looking around confused, Shane thought that he already cleared the mana stone remains but when he remembered that he took out his last mana stone for Umbra, he searched for the small fella.

Not much time passed until he found the `small` culprit but rather than being enraged, Shane's brows furrowed seeing an 18centimeter long snake with deep-black shining scales instead of the small 12 centimeters Umbra with slightly dirty scales…

He was about to ask who that was, as he sensed a connection between himself and the snake, and Shane's eyes widened

That was Umbra?? How is this small boy growing so fast?

Looking at its stats, Shane was even more confused.

_______________

Name: [Umbra♂]

Race:[Shadow-snake]

Rank: [Low 2nd-Wild stage(Low-Wild)]

Quality: [Uncommon](+)

<Locked> |Evolution|(+)

Affinity: Lowest Basic-Darkness(Shadow)

Ability: [One with the Darkness(Trash)]

Loyalty: [21%]

_______________

It was obvious that Umbra's strength increased and him reaching the 2nd-Wild stage was the proof for that, while the increase of its loyalty to 21% was already pleasing to see.

What confused Shane however was something else.

Behind Umbra's quality, there was a (+), which wasn't there before, and clicking on it another message appeared below

[Quality enhancement] Increases the quality by a minuscule degree

Shane never saw this before and looking through his notification log, he noticed something important

[Taming|Trash|] Upgrade-Mission |★★| → Tame a beast and increase its strength by 20%, accomplished! Reward: [Growth boost] Boost's the growing speed of tamed beasts by a small margin]

[ Upgrade-Mission |★★★| <Unlocked> Possess a tamed beast with [Common] quality!]

[Taming|Trash|] Upgrade-Mission |★★★|→ Possess a tamed beast with [Common] quality, accomplished! Reward: [Quality enhancement] Increases the quality by a minuscule degree]

[Upgrade-Mission |★★★★ |<Unlocked>→ Let your tamed beast fight against a stronger beast without the host's support!]

Looking at the mass of messages, Shane couldn't help but smile widely as he let out a light laugher, which caused Umbra to look at him weirdly.

It took him some time to get back to his senses when he looked at his status

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Title: [Berserk-Hunter(F)]

Occupation: [None]

Name: Shane Suro (Orus)

Race:[Human 100%]

Cultivation Level: Mortal-1st [Purity 0.23%]

Body Refinement: [Mortal-4th]

Cultivation Manual:

→Mana purifying [Mortal-(Silver)]

→Mana gathering [Mortal-(Silver)]

<Skills/Techniques>

![Artemis' Blessing]+

[Innate Skill]: Taming |Trash-★★★(+)|

-[Growth boost]

-[Quality enhancement]

Finances: 70 silver

_______________

Even though Shane tried to, he couldn't cover his smile anymore.

Umbra coiled itself around Shane's hand as it sensed his happiness and due to their deepened connection, it felt also joyous, even though it didn't even know what was going on.

Some time passed and Shane was still left in thoughts, looking at his completely changed status, when he noticed that his finances were a lot more than they should have been.

There could only be one answer to this and it was exactly as Shane predicted.

When he entered his store once again, there was nothing inside anymore.

The whole store was completely cleaned out and Shane smiled lightly, thinking that he should have increased the price for the boars.

Eight adolescent boars were sold for one silver each, the 24 adult boars he hunted worth two silver coins per corpse and the five younglings were also worth two silver respectively.

The price for the younglings was as expensive as their parents, because the meat was more tender and delicious, even though they didn't have anything else worthy, the meat and organs could definitely be described as delicious.

Glancing at the store log, he noticed that it was once again a single individual that bough up his stock but this time it was a human and probably someone from a butcher shop, that gained some profits due to him.

Looking once again at the time, Shane calculated that there were still slightly above 3 days left until the Soul-Onyx-Jungle would enter another long night.

As such within the next three days, he should increase his capabilities as good as possible

Thinking about different paths he could choose to increase his strength to the most perfect way within three days, Shane noticed that he could at most increase his cultivation by one rank, if he focused solely on it, while his physique couldn't be increased without a suitable body refining technique.

His combat prowess was already decent and gaining funds to play around with prismarine-luminous crystals could be a small approach to enter the shadow-snake valley, even if it was rather crude.

Furthermore, he was unsure if he would damage the Nightshade flowers with too much light or even decrease their magical effect, causing the already stated price list to lose its validity.

As such, Umbra and solving more upgrade missions seemed to be the easiest way to increase his strength!

Looking at Umbra, Shane noticed that he was once again hungry and the same applied to Umbra.

Taking out a bunch of dishes, he had to remember to purchase more food from now on.

This note was even more important after he saw Umbra gobbling down the dishes as if they were snacks.

Looking at Umbra, he could only sigh deeply and take out a few more dishes and lament having tamed an insatiable fella.