Chapter 26: System, the generous Fraudster

Almost two days passed without any incidents and Shane felt alive, hunting beasts to increase his wealth while sleeping outside, leaning at a tree close to the shelter in order to save money.

Fortunately, it was summer inside the Deep Mountain-river Dimension and a calming draft could be sensed on one's skin during the night.

It was neither hot nor cold and Shane was cultivating. As such, he found it unreasonable to waste a single bronze coin of his already scarce fortune.

During the last two days, many things changed and the most apparent news was that he reached a purity of [1.09%] which was already enough to break into the 2nd Mortal stage but there was something even more important that happened a few hours ago.

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Name: [Umbra♂]

Race:[Shadow-snake]

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

Quality: [Uncommon](+)

<Locked> |Evolution|(+)

Affinity: Lowest Basic-Darkness(Shadow)(+)

Ability: [One with the Darkness(Trash)]

Loyalty: [31%]

_______________

Umbra's strength almost reached the 3rd Wild stage, while his size increased to 33 centimeters, allowing him to coil around Shane's neck which made it extremely happy.

Furthermore, Umbra's loyalty broke through the 30%, and with this a pair of notifications appeared in Shane's mind.

[Taming|Trash|] Upgrade mission |★★★★★|→ Increase the loyalty of one of your tamed beasts to 30%, accomplished. Reward: Function [Quality upgrading] <Unlocked>]

This was the message Shane had waited for the last two days and he hoped to receive something useful for his trip to the Soul-Onyx-Jungle Dimension.

In the beginning, Shane hoped it was similar to the Quality-enhancement he already received, but seeing the word `function` a question mark appeared in his mind.

Looking through the description, Shane ignored the second notification inside his mind.

[Quality upgrading]-Allows host to upgrade the quality of his tamed beasts.

There was not much written but the content was clear and a smile blossomed on Shane's face, even though it was most likely useless for his journey to the shadow-snake valley.

Not only was it difficult for normal tamers to accumulate enough funds to enhance the quality of their tamed beasts, but even more difficult was it for them to figure out what ingredients were required to improve their beast's quality.

With his new function, Shane could purchase the exact amount of required ingredients and upgrade Umbra's quality without making years of effort to research about the shadow-snake race and its evolution path which included what kind of items were required to increase its quality.

But even so, Umbra would most likely need a bunch of expensive materials to increase its rank from [Uncommon] to [Rare] and it would take a while for Shane to save for it.

Noticing the next message, Shane wasn't sure what to think about it, but it was definitely a bad sign for his future progress and a silent "S**T" could faintly be heard.

[Upgrade-mission] [Innate-Skill upgrade (Trash |★★★★★|→Common |★|)] <Unlocked>: Enhance the quality of one tamed beast]

Umbra was happily coiled around Shane but right now, he only wanted to curse out loud and he didn't even want to look at the Upgrade-function with Umbra as his choice.

But there was nothing he could change and thinking about that, Shane calmed down and opened his Innate Skills new function [Quality-upgrading]

Selecting the only possible tamed beast, Umbra, a panel popped up in front of him.

[To upgrade the quality of selected beast [Shadow-snake(Umbra)] from its initial quality (Uncommon) to (Rare) following materials are required.

→Darkness Orchid[Rare](0/1)

→Blood of an [Elite] Snake beast (0/100ml)

→Tier-1 Mana stone [Darkness] (0/1)

[Commence quality upgrade?] [Y/N]]

`Why?` Shane questioned in his mind and an expression between being taken aback and happy appeared on his face.

"Why is it so cheap?" he mumbled without anyone listening to him.

But then once again, it was not that illogical, after Shane realized that Umbra was only a beast at the Wild stage.

Once he would evolve, his quality would be reduced and Shane would have to increase it once again.

Previously Shane only thought about beasts at higher stages with their immense costs to enhance them but even then, the stated materials stated were not considered rare, only slightly pricey and Shane wondered why everyone despised the prices one had to pay to enhance the quality of a beast.

He knew that if Umbra followed the shadow snake's [Common] evolution path into a Shadow-python, it would have its quality reduced by one rank.

Normal shadow snakes with a [common] quality would have their quality reduced to [trash] after they evolved into a Shadow-python, destroying their path to undergo another evolution without increasing their quality by digesting magical treasures or being bound by someone who can increase their quality.

For Shane to increase Umbra's potential as soon as possible was important for his cultivation path, because he wanted his tamed beasts to have a high quality to evolve into terrifying beings, and seeing the required items, Shane could only smile.

Right now, after two days of hunting, Shane had only 2 gold coins and 23 silver coins.

Unfortunately, he hadn't found another group of sparky-horned goats, increasing his wealth.

This was the wealth he had accumulated, but innately there was slightly more but due to his desire to purchase a second dagger, he had overcome his own stinginess and purchased a

[Spark Dagger [Mortal-(Uncommon)]] dagger grinded out of the horn of a sparky-horned goat after tempering it.

The dagger itself was nothing special compared to his shiolite dagger which was a Tier-1 dagger with rare quality but once he injected mana into the spark dagger, he could electrocute beasts at and below the mid-Wild stage for a short amount of time.

This effect could be said to be extremely useful and having two weapons was better than having one.

As such he paid 60 silver coins for it, even though it hurt his heart deeply.

With 2 gold coins and 23 silver coins, Shane wouldn't be able to purchase all required Items to increase Umbra's quality by one rank, but it was extremely likely that he had more than enough funds once he finished his mission within the Soul-Onyx-Jungle Dimension.

Estimating Umbra's quality upgrade to cost around 10 gold coins, maybe a little bit more if he was impatient, Shane was more than happy.

Previously he researched a little bit about increasing the quality of wild-ranked beasts and there were many threads about them on the PrimWeb inside the human sector.

Most threads were from unknown tamer and other occupations which had nothing to do with Taming beasts but almost all of them said it would be extremely useless to tame beasts below the unblemished stage as it was a waste of time and wealth.

Saying it cost at least 50 gold coins up to a few hundred to increase the quality of wild-ranked beasts.

Even some well-known tamers explained that nurturing a wild beast would result in having an extremely strong foundation but in the end, it would cost a fortune.

These well-known figures also said that it would cost approximately 50 gold coins or more to increase a beast's quality, even at a low quality, while researching and finding the correct ingredients to upgrade the quality perfectly was even more difficult.

As such most tamers tamed a beast until it was overshadowed by another one, which they would exchange it with.

This would cause other tamed beasts who noticed their companions getting thrown away to have a low loyalty, fleeing as soon as the tamer was in a tight spot and not able to focus on them.

To conclude the information Shane read online, it was said to be expensive to upgrade a beast's quality as the required amount was unknown, and figuring out the demanded items was even more difficult.

But not for Shane, who could perfectly see what kind of materials he needed and the exact amount.

Furthermore, the price was more than acceptable, causing Shane to like the system more and more.

The only disadvantage Shane saw was, that he couldn't share his knowledge with others.

Either they wouldn't believe him and play keyboard warriors or someone would test it out and see that it worked, sharing it online which would most likely increase Shane's reputation.

But what was the use of that, if Shane could only tell others about his own tamed beasts' required materials and items needed to enhance their quality?

There were no variations and it would only be worth sharing if Shane could use this function for all beasts, even if they weren't tamed by himself.

But that wasn't possible and as such Shane changed his set of thoughts, looking at his mana purity with a smile on his face.