Financial Crisis

After successfully subduing the future legendary winter bear, Ji An didn't stay in the base for long.

After leaving the breeding base with a manual on how to raise winter bears given by Li Ya, he was in a dilemma.

He had just casually flipped through a few pages of the manual that was quite thin.

It mainly recorded some of the winter bear's favorite food, the things to pay attention to when raising and breeding the winter bear, as well as the habits and basic racial information of the winter bear race.

Currently, what Ji An was worried about was none other than the food for the winter bear.

The cost of raising familiars was undoubtedly a huge expense.

The food the familiars needed were usually special ingredients that had mutated under the effect of Transcendent power.

For example, among the winter bear's favorite food as recorded in the manual, included ice shrimp, ice crow eggs, sweetgrass milk, and so on.

However, even the cheapest of these foods, the sweetgrass milk, wasn't something Ji An could afford with his current wealth.

Sweetgrass milk was the milk produced by a cow from a lower Extraordinary race.

The sweetgrass cow itself did not have much combat power.

It was named so because the milk it produced was sweet and tasted like an evolved plant called the sweetgrass.

The milk it produced was rich in nutrients and was the best food for all familiar cubs.

Even if ordinary humans drank it for a long time, the milk could strengthen their bodies and improve their immunity.

It was the best tonic, deeply loved by high officials and nobles.

However, the price was naturally as high as its effects, causing ordinary people to shrink back.

Ji An carefully calculated his savings.

Even if he used all of his savings to buy the sweetgrass milk, it would probably only be enough for a month's supply for the bear cub.

As for the ice shrimps and ice crow eggs, Ji An didn't even need to think about them.

Never mind the fact that these two things were not common in the market, but although the ice shrimp was not even a lower Extraordinary creature, it was still an evolved creature. One could imagine how expensive this ingredient was. On the other hand, the ice crow eggs were the eggs of another evolved creature, the ice crow fish.

Similarly, Ji An couldn't afford them either.

At this time, his familiar, the winter bear cub, was unable to share his burden.

The little fellow was already sleeping soundly in the soul domain without a worry.

Ji An first took the little fellow home, then took out more than half of his savings to go out and buy food for the winter bear cub.

Sweetgrass milk was sold in many large pharmacies in Encircle Town. It was usually sold as a high-end supplement.

However, Ji An didn't intend to buy them from these pharmacies.

Beastmasters had other ways of purchasing materials that could be used to raise their familiars.

Moreover, the price of the items bought through those channels was also lower than the pharmacies and supplement stores.

However, Ji An had to go to the Beastmaster Association to register his identity as a beastmaster first.

To be more precise, it was to register his identity as the most junior beastmaster.

Beastmasters were also divided into different levels.

A beastmaster's level was linked to their soul power.

The soul power usually corresponded to the levels of the familiars that the beastmaster had tamed.

Powerful beastmasters were able to subdue higher-level familiars and vice versa.

The level of the familiar in this criteria was not the race level that represented the potential of the familiar, but the evolution level that represented the familiar's strength.

As mentioned before, the race levels of familiars were divided into Extraordinary, Sovereign, Nirvana, Disaster...

The lowest race level was thus the Extraordinary level.

Creatures of a lower race level than the Extraordinary level had too weak a soul that they could not even sign a soul contract with humans.

As for the evolution level, it was the specific growth and evolution status of the familiar and was a more accurate standard to measure the overall strength of the familiar.

The classification of the evolution level was roughly the same as the race level, but before the Extraordinary level, there was an additional Morphing level.

Even the most powerful Transcendent creature would have been weak once during its childhood.

Some Sovereign familiars were not even the match for adult lower Extraordinary creatures in their infancy.

In the classification of the evolution level for Transcendent creatures, the stage where the familiar was in its infancy was collectively called the Morphing level.

Transcendent creatures at the Morphing level were going through the growth stage from infancy to maturity.

After a human awakens their soul power and successfully tames a Morphing-level familiar, they would be considered to be in the first, most basic level of the beastmaster system, an Entry-level beastmaster.

The winter bear cub was currently at the Morphing level, as such, according to the division, Ji An could be considered an Entry-level beastmaster.

Young Transcendent lifeforms at the Morphing level would undergo a total of ten growth transformations.

During the entire process of growth and transformation, the flesh and blood of Transcendent creatures would also slowly evolve into Transcendent bodies.

In the end, it would transform into a Transcendent lifeform with a Transcendent body.

An injury that could be considered fatal to ordinary creatures was no longer fatal to a Transcendent life form with a Transcendent body.

This was the second level of evolution after the Morphing level, the Extraordinary level!

An Extraordinary-level familiar wasn't something an Entry-level beastmaster could handle.

It required the beastmaster to raise one's soul force to the second level, becoming an Extraordinary-level beastmaster, before one could order one's familiar.

Otherwise, the soul domain wouldn't be strong enough to accommodate the familiar, and there might even be situations where the familiar would break free from the soul contract.

As for the Extraordinary-level beastmasters themselves, they would also start to show some Transcendent characteristics during their evolution.

Even though their bodies were far from being as strong as Transcendent creatures, they more or less had some Transcendent characteristics.

For example, they would be much stronger, more energetic, and more agile than ordinary people.

As a result, beastmasters at this level were also known as Transcendents!

As they continued to evolve, the Transcendent characteristics of a Transcendent would continue to increase, and in the end, even their lifespans would increase.

Ji An was now going to the Beastmaster Association to register as an Entry-level beastmaster.

With this identity, he would then be able to purchase the "cheap" materials only supplied to beastmasters.

The Beastmaster Association wasn't far from the Management Council's building that he had been to previously.

It was a grand building that occupied a larger area than the Management Council, but it only had six floors.

As a branch of a super organization established across regions, the Beastmaster Association in Encircle Town had the strength to have such a building.

The registration for Entry-level beastmasters was far easier than Ji An had imagined.

After showing his identity card as a resident of the town, he then summoned the winter bear cub from his soul domain.

With this, Ji An obtained the status of a registered Entry-level beastmaster in Encircle Town.

As for the goods that were only supplied to beastmasters, Ji An could now purchase them through the Beastmaster Association.

After placing the purchase order at the Beastmaster Association, Ji An only needed to go home and wait for the goods to be delivered.

When Ji An left the Beastmaster Association, apart from bringing back an Entry-level beastmaster certificate issued by the Beastmaster Association, he also rented a few books related to beastmasters from the Beastmaster Association's library, preparing to fill in his lack of general knowledge about beast taming.

Of course, the rental of these books was not free.

Ji An had rented these three books for seven days, which had cost him more than 1000 yuan.

This also made his finances, which were already facing a serious crisis, even worse.

These three thick books couldn't be delivered to his door, so Ji An had to bring them back himself.

The speed at which the Beastmaster Association distributed the goods was surprisingly fast.

Ji An had just reached home when the delivery man knocked on his door.

The 20 liters of sweetgrass milk worth 30000 yuan that he had just ordered from the Beastmaster Association were tightly sealed in 20 jars.

1500 yuan per liter was the selling price of sweetgrass milk.

If he wasn't a beastmaster, the sweetgrass milk would have been sold for 2000 yuan per liter price in pharmacies, which was even more unaffordable for Ji An.

The price difference was a quarter.

Unfortunately, the purchase records of these materials were strictly recorded and reviewed.

Once one's purchase records were found to be abnormal, not only would the right to purchase be revoked, but they would also face a penalty of paying a huge compensation.

This also put an end to Ji An's thoughts of making a fortune by reselling the goods and making a profit through the price difference.

Ji An took out one of the cans of sweetgrass milk, opened it, and prepared to feed it to the winter bear.

The remaining 19 cans were left sealed. This was the food for the winter bear cub for the next 20 days.

As for what he would do 20 days later, he could only take it one step at a time.

These 20 bottles of milk had already used up most of Ji An's savings. His financial crisis had arrived early.