The next morning arrived and it was the day of the first mock survival test at school. After Linus had agreed to become Mr Wellington's assistant while also promising to nurture Nyx as good as he could before the National examination. They immediately started designing an initial cultivation plan for the dark roses.

The most crucial part of the experiment aside from using an appropriate evolution environment and potions is enhancing the dark rose beasts dark petal skill. This will require them to learn some external skills that enhance their petals.

After some communication with a pet teacher, Mr Wellington knows. They settled upon the following three skills: 'charming petals, sharp blossoming and enhanced dark cells.'

The first skill will attach a scent produced by the dark rose onto the released petals capable of charming, disorienting and distracting opponents. The second skill increased the sharpness of unleashed petals by sharpening them on the dark rose's thorns. The third and last skill enhances the dark rose's plant physique by absorbing high-quality darkness energy and storing and converting it into life energy that slowly strengthens the vitality and endurance of the rose's body.

The second skill is the easiest and fastest to learn while the third is the most difficult as it requires a dark rose to absorb high-quality darkness energy over a longer period while actively converting it. The first also takes some time but can be learned by absorbing some materials or living and interacting with other plant beasts or pets with the skill.

This pet teacher would also participate in the evolution research and would teach the peak iron rank dark rose beasts and pets the three skills, Linus on the other had to teach Nyx the skills himself. The pet teacher had, however, provided Linus with a teaching plan that would guarantee that Nyx learned the skills if it practised the following exercises only the learning speed can't be guaranteed.

The plan asked Nyx to surround itself with different flowers and their scents and by interacting with them try and learn how to produce those scents herself. After this first step is achieved she has to mix those scents until she has created her scent that charms, disorients and distracts those who smell it. The last step is adding the scent to her petals before releasing them in any direction while making sure the scent stays and doesn't diminish.

The first step tested Nyx's comprehension and talent while the second and third her diligence. The second skill only required Nyx to learn how to sharpen her petals by using her thorns. This requires trial and error with the end goal being that the petals will sharpen upon release by gliding over the thorns.

The last and third skill would take the longest time but was the simplest for Nyx who was already used to the high-quality dark shadow energy. Every evening when she would focus on absorbing the energy, she would try and convert it into life energy and use that to enhance her physique and cells until it has reached the threshold of the skills.

The pet teacher also revealed to Mr Wellington and Linus that external skills can only help a pet evolve if they reach the expert level in skill mastery. Skills are divided into five stages of mastery. the first stage is a novice, the second is proficient, the third is expert, the fourth is perfection and the fifth is transcendence.

This was knowledge mostly known by gold rank pet trainers and professional pet teachers as only then does it becomes relative as most evolutions at the gold rank require either racial skills or external skills to be at a certain stage of mastery.

Linus learned from the pet teacher the following. Most beasts and pets will become proficient in a skill after sufficient practice but only a few will reach expert mastery in a skill they learned within the same rank without the guidance of a pet teacher. Perfected skills require a beast or pet to have a complete comprehension of all its aspects and uses while being capable of using it perfectly. Transcendent skills are skills that have evolved from their base due to the beast or pet comprehending a certain concept compatible with the skill. Diamond rank pets are also required to have comprehended a transcendent rank racial skill if they want to break through to the king rank.

From that description, Linus speculates that the shadow avatars should all have inherently mastered their skills to the expert stage of mastery. As Nyx's shadow avatar can use its dark petals as a practised veteran, which corresponds with the level of expert proficiency.

What Linus is now curious about is if the avatar will further master its skills to perfection and transcendence when his pets improve their skill mastery. Aside from that, he is also curious if the external skills learned by his pets will also be learned by the shadow avatars.

This would have to wait though for after this day of school and the first survival test. Linus had already arrived at school and eaten breakfast at the canteen. He was now waiting in the classroom for Ms Winter to arrive.

Linus didn't have to wait much longer before the classroom was filled and Ms Winter arrived. She didn't bring any teaching materials as the whole day was reserved for the survival test to take place.

She gathered the entire class and led them to the virtual room where they would have to connect with the school's private domain connected to the digital world. After entering the school's private domain, Linus and Nyx appeared together with their classmates and their pets in front of Ms Winter together. Their pets could also enter the digital world due to the school using an exclusive piece of tech that is only available to schools, universities, the three main organisations and the top 10 corporations and dojos.

This is one of the trump cards of humanity used in training pet trainers and their pets in preparation for the wild and combat. After everyone had entered Ms Winter started speaking:

"The survival test will soon begin and teleport you and your pet to a simulated wilderness where only you and your pet will be found together with wild iron and bronze rank beasts. You will be scored according to the time you spent inside surviving while extra points can be earned if you kill beasts at the same or above your pet's level and rank. 10 points for those at the same level, 20 for a level higher, 40 for two levels higher and so on. Defeating a beast in a higher rank will reward you a thousand points plus the level difference from before added for level one and two thousand for level two and so on.

Dying before surviving for one hour will half your earned points while each survived hour will earn double your points and everyone will start with a hundred points which will be deducted after the test ends. The test will only last for eight hours total and those who survive for the total of eight hours will be eligible to enter any taming university they want to if successfully done at the National examination.

My advice is to be cautious avoid battle and use the environment to your advantage, I wish you all good luck."

After she said those last words, Linus felt his surroundings change before they had changed into the forest in which he was alone with Nyx and nature. Linus detected an abundance of wood elemental energy together with life elemental energy with the occasional hint of poison elemental energy.

Nyx was happy to be surrounded by nature but could feel from Linus's thoughts that they were in a dangerous place and she was thus vigilant and ready to release her dark petals. After fighting and training for four consecutive days, even though she is still young and weak she has already formed a tenacious will and a sense of danger. Her dark petals have also improved and Linus guessed that it had already reached the peak of the novice stage only a small step away from proficiency.

Her rapid rise in skill mastery comes from the long periods of training, but also because she based her skill usage upon that of her avatar who is already at the stage of peak expert mastery.

While the trainer and pet checked their surroundings, Linus discovered many things which allowed him to determine that the place they were transported to was a simulated forest swamp in which mainly carnivorous plant beasts and poisonous beasts like snakes, frogs and insects resided.

The greatest dangers here wouldn't be the beasts but the environment thus his main priority should be collecting plants which could be used to detoxify him and Nyx from poisoning. Aside from that, he determined that he had spawned in the habitat of a bronze rank venomous python which had currently left its nest to hunt.

All this knowledge prompted Linus to leave this place and to speed up his travel speed, he lifted Nyx into his arms as her travel speed using her four vines is only a quarter of Linus's travelling speed inside the forest.

Five minutes after they left, a six-meter long and half a meter tick python passed through Linus's previous location. This was the bronze rank venomous python which Linus had deduced.

Linus and Nyx had escaped to another part of the forest within those five minutes and he deduced this part to be relatively safe. He only found tracks of iron rank beasts of which none were poisonous to his knowledge. This should be an intersection between two powerful bronze beasts in which the iron rank beasts survive.

Unfortunately, this safe place was still extremely dangerous for Linus and the LVL 1 iron rank dark rose Nyx who has only recently risen in strength slightly above her trainer who is a weak human.

The two slowly travelled through the forest dodging beast nests and habitats through the tracks and markings they left behind. In this way, Linus and Nyx managed to survive for half an hour, before they were finally discovered by a beast. It was an LVL 3 iron rank mud frog with the racial skill mud shot.

After discovering Linus and Nyx, it immediately attacked using its mud shot. Nyx immediately reacted by summoning her dark petals which managed to slow down the mud shot for long enough for Linus to dodge.

The mud frog started firing mud shot after mud shot, while Nyx slowed them down with her dark petals allowing her and Linus to dodge them all. This lasted for two minutes before the mud frog slowed down slightly. Linus then commanded Nyx to attack and bombard it with her dark petals. This resulted in the mud frog panicking and losing much of its vision.

It started randomly firing mud shots unknown to the fact that Linus and Nyx had sneaked up on it, before attacking. Linus attacked with a tree branch he had found lying around while Nyx used her dark petals. This attack caught the mud frog off guard and they managed to knock it unconscious before finishing it by earning 40 points.

Unfortunately right when they relaxed their vigilance a group of mud frogs appeared attacked by the noise from the previous fight and bombarded Linus and Nyx to death ending their first survival test at 33 minutes and minus 30 points.

When Linus and Nyx died, they reappeared inside their previous spawn location where he found half of his classmates disqualified before him looking at a series of screens together with Ms Winter.

After she saw Linus appear, she told him the following: "Linus for surviving 33 minutes and defeating one beast two levels above your pet together with the correction you will receive at the National examination for awakening quite late, your score of -30 is a score of 160 points as your required survival time would become halved while your earned points by killing equal or stronger beasts will be multiplied by half a factor."

Linus nodded at her explanation and was a bit satisfied as he was already capable of earning 160 points after training Nyx for a week what will happen after she had been trained for three whole months.

Linus and the other classmates then watched the other classmates survive and fight inside the same forest swamp as they had been sent to. Linus discovered that all had been sent to the same location which was the habitat of the bronze rank venomous python which was responsible for killing the majority of people before Linus was killed.

The people who had left its habitat managed to survive much longer than Linus had due to all having pets at or above LVL 4 iron rank while their skills are much more powerful than the dark petal skill. The only battles Nyx has fought are against a support type green silk bug whose skill is equally as weak as dark petal while the mud frog also belongs to the bottom of the food chain in terms of skills and strength.

Time slowly passed and after three hours, all Linus's classmates had died and they were allowed to leave the digital world to go home or use the school's facilities. Linus went to the canteen to eat before heading to the training ground where he trained his body and Nyx trained her dark petal skill before fighting against her avatar 15 times while also recovering and training again.

Their attention was again fully focused on their training that they didn't notice the same figure as the previous Monday observing for a short amount of time before leaving. This person activated her bracelet and used it to note down the name Linus Black together with his information credentials and send it towards a certain number.