Chapter 42: Heirloom

Shane wrote Uncle Max another message and thanked him for his help, before he clicked on the profile within their chat, leading him to the private account of his father.

Pondering what to write, he just decided to send him the same photo he already showed Uncle Max with a small message attached to it.

<Hey Dad, it's me. I'm doing fine.

Don't search for me, I won't come back before we clear our problem.

But I want to clarify some facts… I'm not your puppet and won't listen to your orders like a dog anymore! You can't force me to do things I don't wanna do!! Accept it or not, It's your decision…

I won't pressure you with a time limit because I know that you're busy, but think carefully before you decide what to do! My temper is as bad as yours and you should know your own temper, right?!>

Shane wasn't sure if he should send this message exactly like that, but his temper was not to joke with, as such he just sent it before he closed the system's messenger.

He and his dad were always at war but until now Shane couldn't do anything against it.

This message was the second time he did what he wanted in front of his dad, even though the message was rude.

Only when he turned 16, he was able to flee from his dad's firm grip and if possible, he would rather suffer a little bit but reclaim his freedom instead of being spoiled and locked up.

Shane didn't expect to receive an answer soon and thanks to Uncle Max he would receive a drop of wyvern-blood, which had a low purity of dragon blood within.

As such he solved his main problem to upgrade Umbra's quality much easier than expected, which made him happy.

Furthermore messaging Max released his hidden guiltiness that came from his escape without saying anything to anyone and now Shane felt completely free.

What he had to do now, was gathering around 200 more gold coins, in order to upgrade Umbra completely.

In Shane's opinion, his own strength and Umbra's evolution should both receive a large boost with this.

With Umbra's current quality, Shane thought it would be able to reach the mid-Wild stage but that was it.

It was said that beasts could evolve, once they reached maturity, which means for a normal Shadow-snake the peak of the 3rd-Wild stage.

Shane asked himself if the evolution section of Umbra would be unlocked then and not only the evolution paths.

As of now, Shane would have to purchase a few things and he went inside the shelter once again.

There were multiple items he needed for his cultivation and body refining to work out.

For his body refining, Shane required nutrition solutions, while for both body refining and cultivation, mana stones would help his progress extremely.

Shane wanted to increase his combat prowess as high as possible in order to venture deeper into the mountain range, three weeks from now.

With his 51 gold coins, there were more than enough funds to elevate his strength to an acceptable degree.

Considering that four weeks from now the academies would accept or decline students, Shane would have to show some progress because the requirements these academies had, were the bare minimum.

While stronger descendants wouldn't enter these academies except for socializing, Shane knew that they wouldn't use dimensional-spheres because they won't bother wasting time to learn skills and techniques slowly.

Rather than that, they received enough funds from their families in order to purchase their skills directly and have all information directly implanted into their minds.

As such, Shane's only opponents for the dimension-spheres were mostly youths from average households in addition to irregulars that entered the school due to special circumstances like he did.

Another pair of irregulars were children from poor families with special body traits, innate skills, or blessings while awakening any of these special features with the system's awakening indicated that they wouldn't stay at the bottom of the food chain and soar heaven's.

At least within the human race and as long as they won't die early before were nurtured.

From Shane's point of view, the children from average families could only be considered as the smaller problem, while similar youths to him in addition to poor youths with any special feature were the bigger obstacle.

He had special features and went through an arduous childhood with years of knowledge imprinted into his mind in addition to, etiquette, combat techniques, tactics, and so on.

One could say Shane was the ultimate irregular and he knew that. As long as he worked hard enough, it shouldn't be a problem for him to gain a spot for the Tier-1 dimension-sphere for the beginning.

Learning a skill or martial art technique at the mortal grade was ridiculous because one would at most stay at the mortal stage for one or two months with a little bit of effort.

Reaching a purity of 10% couldn't be considered a problem and even Tier-1 skills were not that useful for a longer progression.

Nevertheless, it was important to learn Tier-1 skills as they build upon one's foundation and enhance it with the addition of a higher requirement for mana circulation.

Walking through the market, Shane noticed many stalls selling cultivation and body refining resources, but finding valuable items for a cheap price wasn't easy and Shane tested out his merchant skills, pushing down the cost for the things he bought by a lot.

This was mainly because Shane bought mana stones and nutrition solutions in bulk and his handsome face bewitched the young female attendant.

Nevertheless, he received a huge discount, which was what he wanted.

In the end, Shane used 31 gold coins to purchase [10xnutrition solution (Common), 7xnutrition solution(Uncommon), 30x fist-sized mana stones (Common), 10xfist sized mana stones(Uncommon]

While the uncommon materials were all priced at 1 gold each, the common nutrition solution cost 50 silver coins and the fist-sized mana stones 30 silver coins.

Average households would never make such a purchase but Shane had to increase his strength fast and couldn't waste much time gathering mana over a long time.

Furthermore, body refining techniques demanded a lot of nutrition and the nutrition baths could only last 12 hours at most. During the first four hours, the effects were the most effective, while the nutrition effect would slowly decrease over time.

Even using one nutrition solution each day, Shane only bought enough for 17 days, while he wasn't exactly sure how long the mana stone stock would hold out with both him and Umbra using them.

Only increasing one's cultivation and physical strength was also wrong, as such Shane wanted to go out every day in order to train for a few hours, while he decided to sleep only for the shortest required period for a cultivator at his stage.

Suddenly, when he was about to search an Inn to use his first nutrition solution in, Shane received another message from Uncle Max.

His package arrived but Shane noticed that it said two items sent to him, which was confusing.

Accepting the package, a bottle with a single gleaming red drop of blood appeared within one of his spatial rings, while a familiar ring appeared in his empty hand.

Looking at the ring, Shane immediately knew it was a spatial ring because it was impossible for mortal graded spatial rings to store other spatial rings.

Gazing at the pure-white spatial ring, Shane could see a black dragon head with golden pupils gazing at him and a shocked expression could be seen on his face.

'Isn't that mom's?' Shane thought, as his legs almost gave in.