Astral Pet Store (WN)

“WHY YOU—!”

He’s so shameless!!

Su Lingyue was beginning to find her brother was becoming cockier in her view. Previously, this guy knew how to quit after getting pummeled. He was starting to confront her! Just because he had awakened?

“You have no idea which rank I’m at, huh?! I’m an intermediate third-rank battle pet warrior, while you—”

She channeled more astral power to give Su Ping a beating and show him who was boss. But she was stopped by Li Qingru, who just returned while holding a plate of apples.

“What are you doing?”

Su Ping smiled. “It’s nothing. I’m checking how good Lingyue’s hair looks.”

Checking my WHAT?? Su Lingyue had barely managed to swallow her rage down her throat, but she felt how it was dangerously returning.

Li Qingru quickly realized what was going on because this happened quite often in the family. “Stop it. I just told you to be good to each other a second ago!”

“Sorry, mom.” Su Ping lowered his head as he found his mother was truly angry.

Li Qingru shook her head and turned away to continue cooking.

“Don’t you think this is over!” Su Lingyue shouted while taking the apples all to herself.

“Um-hmm.”

“Heh.”

“Ha?”

“Humph!”

They totally understood what they were talking about.

Su Ping retreated to his room after dinner, while Su Lingyue didn’t say anything else. Su Lingyue had planned to ask his brother about what he did at the vice president’s office earlier, but she no longer felt like it, since it would make her look bad.

As usual, Su Ping stayed on his bed to cultivate his astral power. The “Chaos Star Chart” method was such a domineering technique that he could easily pull all the astral power existing in the environment his way. He might even stop Su Lingyue from cultivating if he wanted to.

It was less than a week since he started cultivating, yet his Combat Strength had been improved by 0.2, reaching 3.7, which made him an upper third-rank already. If he kept on, he’d become a fourth-rank in the next week. Combining his Solar Bulwark, he was at the moment strong enough to fight off most fifth-rank monsters. Or sixth-rank ones, if he cast augmentation skills on himself.

“I need to get my Solar Bulwark to the second rank so that eighth-rank and ninth ones can’t kill me easily. Only then I’ll be able to survive better…”

As someone who had witnessed the perilous threats in the barren areas, he couldn’t let his guard down even if his life in the city looked peaceful.

A night quickly passed.

The next morning, Su Ping and Su Lingyue had breakfast while having a staring contest, before they both went on their ways without any verbal mishaps.

Su Ping saw a slim-bodied lady in a long, coffee-colored overcoat looking here and there in front of his shop. Without minding her, Su Ping locked his bike to a tree using a chain to deter thieves, and went to unlock the shop.

It was then that the seemingly apathetic woman suddenly gave him a surprised look.

Next, the woman followed him into the shop.

“Something you need?” asked Su Ping, after he gave the woman a glimpse. He found her face to be a little familiar but couldn’t remember her name. He wondered if she was a customer who saw his .

“You’re the shopkeeper here?” Jiang Hanbing looked at Su Ping up and down and found this man too young to run a shop. Then she remembered seeing him the day before.

Su Ping nodded. “That’s right. Do you need your pet cared for, trained, or are you looking for pet food?”

“… You were at the academy yesterday, right? Did you train that powerful Lightning Rat?”

Su Ping was glad that the flyers he printed didn’t totally go to waste. “Yeah, that’ll be me.”

Jiang Hanbing sighed in relief. She and Su Yanying used to be clear of each other’s way, but ever since their classmates tended to compare them in various matters, they slowly became rivals. As Jiang Hanbing observed recently, Su Yanying had the talent, but was far from being a good trainer. Also, Su Yanying was not someone who knew how to bide her time. If she had that powerful rat all along, she would have used it way before.

Using the flyer she found from a classmate, Jiang Hanbing went to that shop to see whether the rumor was true. She was expecting to see some kind of grand, beautifully-decorated boutique managed by an experienced dealer, not this… boy who seemed two years younger than herself.

“How long does it take to train a pet? Are you the trainer?” she asked.

“I am. I don’t have a fixed duration for training a pet; it depends on how many sessions you buy. Once all sessions are complete, I’ll send word so you can pick up your pet.”

“Sessions?” Jiang Hanbing had never heard of such a training methodology before. Though it wasn’t strange for reclusive masters with amazing skills to have odd protocols.

“Four pets. Ten sessions each,” she offered.

Su Ping raised an eyebrow. “You must pay independently for each session, I’m afraid. Do you have enough money on you?”

Jiang Hanbing was ready to hear an insane price from the shop that trained the exceptional Lightning Rat. “How much for each session?”

“Ten thousand for low-rank pets. A hundred thousand for middle-rank. As for advanced… sorry, I’m not accepting them for the time being.”

Getting the Lightning Rat in shape only unlocked such a level of service. If Su Ping wished to train advanced pets, he had to successfully train a middle-rank pet in the same way.

“That’s… pretty cheap,” said Jiang Hanbing. Such pricing would look like a scam in ordinary pet shops, but not so much if they were talking about who trained that special rat.

Su Ping’s lips twitched. He was always frustrated about not being able to determine prices freely.

Thankfully, the Lightning Rat was a special case, because the system demanded him to boost it higher. From then on, he could simply take the customer’s pets to a cultivation plane and hang out for a bit to get the job done. He might have to die a few times while at it, but that wasn’t a problem.

“I have three fourth-rank pets and a third-rank one. Can you get them all to a level equal to the Lightning Rat’s?” Jiang Hanbing was already paying because she didn’t want Su Ping to suddenly change his mind.

“Of course not. The Lightning Rat was an exception. I provide ‘normal’ training most of the time.”

Jiang Hanbing knew that getting four Lightning Rat-like pets in one go could only be a dream, but it still felt bad when Su Ping pointed it out.

Also, she wondered if the Lightning Rat was a unique case used for attracting customers, while the true trainer had already left the shop. Or, it could be worse, all of it being a lie. Su Yanying might have been a paid shill who helped the shop with false .

Su Ping didn’t know what Jiang Hanbing was thinking but it couldn’t be anything good to his business.

“Normal training still has decent effects, you know. Do you want to buy it or not?”

Really? Jiang Hanbing shook her head. If there used to be something good here, Su Yanying already took it. Damn it.

“I’ll… entrust you with one pet for now.”

She didn’t want to leave empty-handed. Even if this “master trainer” was no longer there, this shop could still have some connection. Becoming a customer was a good choice.

As for Su Yanying being a scammer, Jiang Hanbing didn’t believe that to be possible. Su Yanying would have cooperated with a bigger shop if that were the case.

“One, huh?” Su Ping felt bad that the sale was suddenly reduced to a quarter, though he couldn’t force his customer. “Fine.”

Ping—Pong!

“Emergency mission!” the system suddenly announced in his head. “A customer has withdrawn her order due to mistrust, resulting in decreased revenue. On this special occasion, the host shall be allowed to initiate a specialized training session.”

“Price: a hundred times the usual price of a normal training session.”

“Time limit: 30 days.”

“Requirement: customer’s pet must reach an aptitude of above average.”

“Reward: one intermediate Force Pellet plus a mythical technique tutorial chosen at random.”

“Penalty for failure: host rating reduced by 10.”