Chapter 24: First Battle at the Beast Tower (Seeking Investment and Followers)_2

The Beast Tower has a total of nine levels. Each Beast Tamer who enters can start from the first level and challenge their way up. Successfully overcoming one level allows them to proceed to the next.

There is no strength requirement to enter. As long as you are a member of the Beast Taming Union, you may enter, but each entry requires a certain fee to be paid in advance.

This fee is not small at all—approximately equivalent to the cost of ten bottles of high-grade energy liquid.

However, after learning about the benefits of clearing the Beast Tower, Lin Su paid the fee without hesitation.

The Beast Tower was built by a combination of Immortal-rank pet beasts that have mastered the Illusion and Reality Rules and the Beast Tamers. Such rank creatures have broken free from the shackles of species and Talent Skills, able to directly control the rules and wield the power of supernatural rules to solidify the Illusion and Reality Rules onto the Beast Tower itself.

There isn't a single Legend-rank Beast Tamer in the entire Great Yan Kingdom who can contract with an Immortal-rank mystical creature, so naturally, they cannot build a Beast Tower. These Beast Towers were acquired at great cost from the sovereign state of the Great Yan Kingdom, the Yun Hao Empire, with only one tower in each city, making them extremely precious.

Once inside the Beast Tower, a Beast Tamer can only send out one pet beast to take on the challenge. The Beast Tower will automatically generate opponents with the same strength, species, and rank as the competing pet beast and provide the corresponding battleground. After a Beast Tamer directs their pet beast to defeat the opponent generated by the Beast Tower, they can clear the level and proceed to the next.

Clearing any level of the Beast Tower comes with rewards, which is why Beast Tamers are willing to pay a high fee to enter.

Clearing any level allows the pet beast to choose one skill and increase its proficiency accordingly.

This reward of increased proficiency is related to the dream rules solidified within the Beast Tower. Pet beasts can continue training a particular skill in a special dream and synchronize the trained proficiency to the real world.

Clearing the first level allows a pet beast to train a specific skill ten times, while the second level allows for fifty times. The reward for each subsequent level will double directly.

The third level is one hundred times, the fourth level is two hundred times, and so on.

Every time they re-enter the Beast Tower, both the Beast Tamer and the pet beast must start from the first level again. The rewards for clearing the levels of the Beast Tower are reset and can be obtained repeatedly.

The skills that pet beasts can choose from include not only Talent Skills but also those acquired through teaching.

The ability to increase a pet beast's skill training counts out of thin air, thereby enhancing its proficiency, is a feature that has not yet appeared on Blue Star, but it has almost become widespread in Shenwu.

Originally, Lin Su's goal for Qiuqiu was to quickly advance Frost Storm to Rank II while finding time to practice combat skills.

But within the Beast Tower, both can be achieved simultaneously.

Thinking of this, Lin Su, having paid the entry fee, couldn't help but glance at the giant screen beside him.

This screen displayed the progress of every Beast Tamer who entered the Beast Tower.

At the moment, the screen showed the number of people attempting the tower was over twenty, and the one who had cleared the highest level had only just cleared the fourth level.

Is it that difficult?

Lin Su couldn't help but be astonished. There are nine levels, and there's only one who has cleared the fourth level?

Since the Beast Tower simulates opponents of the same strength, species, and rank as the pet beast, the number of levels one can clear should not depend on the pet beast's own strength. Instead, it is related to the pet beast's skill proficiency and battle experience among other factors.

With a rough guess in mind, a faint yellow glow intertwined beneath Lin Su's feet, and Qiuqiu, who had rested for several hours in the Beast Taming Space and had its state fully restored, appeared.

Just appearing, Qiuqiu looked around bewilderedly for a while before lightly leaping onto Lin Su's shoulder and lazily settling down.

"Meow?" (Where is this?)

"This is the Beast Tower," Lin Su said with a slight smile. "Qiuqiu, here you can both gain combat experience and rapidly improve your skill proficiency."

"Meow?! (｡✪ω✪｡)" (Really?!)

"Of course." Lin Su began to explain the rules of the Beast Tower to Qiuqiu.

After listening to the rules of the Beast Tower, Qiuqiu's eyes lit up immediately.

"Meow!" (Let's try it now!)

"Let's go, together," Lin Su said, petting Qiuqiu's smooth fur, and walked quickly towards the interior of the Beast Tower.

Upon stepping into the first level of the Beast Tower, Lin Su felt as if he was in a different space altogether.

The space inside felt much broader than it appeared from the outside, with the edges almost impossible to see, giving him a sense of void and vagueness beyond the ground beneath his feet.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a light emerged, casting its way toward Qiuqiu like a scanning beam.

"Mew?!" (What's that?!)

"Don't be scared, Qiuqiu, this is normal," Lin Su quickly soothed the little one on his shoulder, having a vague guess in his mind.

This must be the power of the Beast Taming Tower scanning the race and strength of the pets.

Just as Lin Su had predicted, as the light swept over Qiuqiu from head to toe, the scenery around them instantly shifted.

In the blink of an eye, the area where he stood was covered in snow and ice, the thick snow reaching up past Lin Su's waist.

Feeling the icy wind and the chill from the snow, a look of surprise spread across Lin Su's face.

Is this an icy battlefield?

This was Xue Henqing's home court, after all. The opponent had scanned Qiuqiu and chosen this terrain, indicating that during the first level of the challenge, pets had home court advantage.

This was a good thing, as in such thick snow, Qiuqiu's Level II Snow Trace provided unparalleled territorial advantage. They almost had this first level in the bag.

It was uncertain who Qiuqiu's opponent would be. In such terrain, non-ice beast's fighting ability would be much weaker, almost like giving away points for free, so the opponent should likely be an ice type beast similar to Qiuqiu. It was just unknown which one it would be...

Seeing the slowly emerging figure of another Xue Henqing that looked incredibly similar to Qiuqiu, both Lin Su and Qiuqiu fell silent.

So, the first level was a battle against the same species?

Almost as soon as its form fully solidified, ice flowers blossomed beneath the opponent Xue Henqing's feet, its body moving swiftly and gracefully, quickly closing in on the direction of Lin Su and Qiuqiu.

"Snow Trace, approach to a ten-meter range and release Frost Storm in a focused burst," Lin Su snapped out of the silence and quickly issued commands through telepathy.

Coupled with blooming ice flowers on the underside of Qiuqiu's feet, almost identical white snow masses formed, the distance between the two fluffy snow masses closing rapidly.

A closer look would reveal that Qiuqiu was significantly faster than its opponent; each step the opposing Xue Henqing took left little plum blossom footprints in the snow, the depth of the prints suggesting its proficiency with Snow Trace was not low, but it had not broken through to Level II.

Shortly, as the distance between the two pets narrowed to about ten meters, Qiuqiu paused slightly, the Frost Storm it had been secretly charging in its mouth was suddenly released. Like an energy cannon, the heavily concentrated storm carried a multitude of ice-shard-like sharp snowflakes hurtling toward the Xue Henqing in front of it.

"Mew!" The opposing Xue Henqing halted swiftly, facing the Frost Storm from Qiuqiu. Its reaction was extremely fast. It attempted to sidestep to avoid the blast while simultaneously expelling its Frost Storm in defense.

The same Frost Storm, but from the opposing Xue Henqing's mouth, was noticeably smaller than what Qiuqiu produced. Still, the clashing storms weakened the force of Qiuqiu's attack.

A continuous fine scraping noise merged into one, the sound of countless frost flowers from within the two storms colliding and shattering. The originally concentrated Frost Storms dispersed rapidly upon collision, the released energy transforming into a gale, whipping the loose snow from the ground into the air.

"Get closer, wide-area Frost Storm!" Seeing the opposing Xue Henqing temporarily obscured by the snowstorm, Lin Su decisively ordered.

Strike while the iron is hot!

He had seen clearly just moments ago that the other Xue Henqing must have been injured from the collision.

Its Snow Trace wasn't fast enough to completely dodge the Frost Storm.

So this strike, it definitely couldn't avoid.

With a flash to close the distance by several meters, another Frost Storm burst forth from Qiuqiu's mouth.

Unlike the previous Frost Storm, this one had a shorter range of attack, nearly half that of the first, but the area it covered almost filled the entire visible field.

A tempest whipped up the frost flowers, carving intersecting furrows in the snowy field like chiseled grooves.

The next instant, the snowy battlefield rapidly dissolved, vanishing like a mirage.

Beast Taming Tower first level, passed!