Linus was now standing in front of 10 peak iron rank dark rose beasts and pets. Nine were captured in the wild and one was voluntarily handed over by their pet trainer to try and help it evolve no matter the slim chance of success.

Since Linus arrived at the association and Mr Wellington's lab, he has started to do his part as an assistant while using his free time to observe and learn. His tasks consist of noting down all the experimental data and growth of the 10 dark roses while preparing their evening meals for them.

This only took half of Linus's intended work hours so the other half, he spent either observing Mr Wellington's work or acquainting himself with some professional equipment needed for pet cultivation and potion concocting.

In only a single day, he learned many things he hadn't understood or had puzzled him since he started reading the higher quality textbooks recommended by the association. The reason for this was that he didn't know the crucial difference between apprentice pet cultivators and professional pet cultivators of even the lowest rank.

An apprentice pet cultivator is already qualified to cultivate iron rank beasts or pets but the reasoning for this isn't the limited knowledge they possess, but the requirement for concocting potions which use materials above the iron rank. Iron rank potions are concocted using only lab equipment and iron rank materials which are known to be weak and malleable.

The same can't be said for bronze potions and above, the ingredients at the bronze rank and higher can easily conflict with each other and explode with the power of the same rank as the potion's rank. Humans have solved this issue by incorporating soul energy into the concoction process that diffuses the conflict of materials and allows for the mixing of the materials into a successful potion.

There are, however, some restrictions on learning how to use soul energy. The first is that this energy only becomes available to those whose contract space has reached the professional bronze rank. Aside from that, the amount and recovery of the soul energy rely on the strength and amount of pets in the contract space.

This is also the reason why pet cultivators are looked so highly upon. Aside from spending their time studying all the necessary knowledge their strength also has to keep up. Maybe not combat experience but certainly grade and level of all the pets if a person wants to make it as a pet cultivator.

Aside from learning about the difference between him and Mr Wellington, he also learned about dark rose beasts specifically together with the intricacies of the darkness element. Depending on the amount and quality of darkness energy they absorb, their petals will either be lighter or darker black.

This will affect both the power, quality and training speed of the dark petal skill. Elemental energies can also be divided into different qualities which are low quality, high quality, pristine quality and sources. Aside from the quality, there is also a difference in purity in each order of quality which is mixed, low purity, high purity, pristine purity and perfect purity. Mixed means below 50% purity, low means between 50% and 70%, high means between 70% and 90%, pristine above 90% and perfect purity means 100% purity.

Mr Wellington has decided to nurture those dark roses with high purity high-quality darkness energy which is an entire magnitude above their common absorption of high purity low quality darkness energy which is also the minimum standard for them to absorb.

Linus then compared them with his Nyx and discovered that her leaves are pure black which means that her absorption of darkness energy is of the highest quality possible for her. Aside from that after testing some of the dark shadow energy from his contract space, he found out that its quality is pristine while its purity is perfect. This means that his contract space produces the highest quality darkness and shadow elemental energy below the source quality which is incredibly rare and valuable and only used by grandmaster pet trainers and above.

After his first day of being an assistant. Linus and Nyx returned home where Nyx continued absorbing dark shadow energy and Linus started meditating. This time, however, Nyx also tried to convert some of the energy into life force but she only succeeded in converting a wisp over the entire night.

The time over the weekend was spent being an assistant for Mr Wellington and training Nyx. Linus also asked for some of his work pay to be paid in advance to repay his loan while also providing him with the money necessary for him to buy enough food to eat over the weekends.

Nyx had also started training the skills of charming petals and sharp blossoming together with trying to covert dark shadow energy into life force during her absorption sessions. No progress has been made on the skill of charming petals, but she has already grasped the basics for sharp blossoming resulting in the successful sharpening of petals if she is given time to prepare.

Unfortunately for Nyx, her shadow avatar has also learned sharp blossoming and enhanced dark cells from the moment she successfully sharpened her petals and tempered her physique with some life force. Both skills were also immediately learned to the stage of expert mastery.

Every fight of Nyx against her avatar has now become even harder with her becoming more wounded and faster beaten. A good thing, however, is that the recovery in the energy pool helps Nyx with the learning of enhanced dark cells together with her growth.

When they went back to school nothing changed in their training schedule except for Linus going to the association for his job every evening. As time slowly passed changes in both Nyx and Linus could be seen from their intense and almost hellish training. Nyx had managed to push her dark petal skill to proficient mastery after a sparring match with the green silk bug who had managed to reach LVL 4 during the second weak of Linus's return.

Nyx also managed to learn sharp blossoming to novice mastery during the same week while she became LVL 2 on Thursday evening. During the third week, she improved sharp blossoming to proficient mastery which allowed her to sharpen her petals before dark petals were used every time at the cost of half a second of needed preparation.

She also advanced to LVL 3 on Thursday evening again confirming that she will grow a level after training intensely for a week. When using other pets as a comparison most would only advance once per month or every three weeks, while the hardworking ones advanced one's every two weeks like Lana's green silk bug.

During the fourth week, Nyx learned the charming petals skill but not yet to novice mastery. Her physique had also grown a lot stronger and she was about to reach novice mastery in the skill dark enhanced cells which only requires time and at least high-quality darkness energy. She also reached LVL 4 iron rank.

Nyx had become a lot stronger while also learning three external skills. During the practical combat classes, Ms Winter also started putting them against other students than Lana as the green silk bug wasn't an opponent against Nyx anymore. Nyx managed to beat some of the other pets of the weakest from the Elite group who had also awakened quite late. This didn't last long though when Ms Winter started pitting them against the top 10 strongest students of the school.

They were the students who had trained their pet to LVL 8 or 9 of the iron rank while also having pets whose race's limit wasn't the iron rank. Nyx could only try to defend and defend against them, but she always lost with no clear improvement to be seen as they never went all out. This resulted in her starting to train with even more drive and intensity while increasing her daily spars against her avatar from 15 to 20 times.

This resulted in Linus increasing his daily intake from being 4 times as much as an ordinary person to six times. That coupled with his daily training started increasing his fitness and physique rapidly enough that his former weakness had disappeared while his endurance and body became even stronger than most students. Some muscles could even be found now on the blond-haired black-eyed boy.

His facial features also grew sharper to the amazement of the girls from his class but Linus didn't take notice as all his attention was spent on training, learning and helping the research. Linus's contract space had also grown a lot with the increase in Nyx's strength and his nightly meditations. Its development is equal to Nyx's growth and he wouldn't hinder her advancement if she managed to evolve on time.

Her shadow avatar had also become a lot stronger with her growth and increase in strength allowing Linus to confirm that the avatar's mastery of skills would also increase with the pet's progress. When Nyx's dark petal reached proficient mastery, the avatar's mastery increased from expert mastery to perfect mastery.

This resulted in Nyx not having an easier time, but a harder one. Contrarily to what would be expected, she wasn't downhearted by this but instead happy as she felt her training speed again increase. Aside from increasing her skill mastery, the training against her avatar was much more enjoyable than the pummeling of the pets during the practical combat class every day.

The research with Mr Wellington had also seen improvement with all 10 dark roses learning the three external skills to proficient mastery with the teachings of a professional pet teacher. Mr Wellington also successfully developed two different potions that he would test to evolve the dark roses.

The first potion was based on Linus's idea of using a dark lotus potion and was called the dark rose potion by Mr Wellington. The second potion is his idea and also a more radical approach as it uses a type of violent darkness energy of high purity and pristine quality called abyss energy. This energy can only be found in this world's ninth-ranked danger zone called the Abyss pit which is the nest of a mythological beast known as the Abyss dragon. This energy was collected from its outskirts and wasn't that rare but when beasts ingest it most aren't capable of absorbing it.

Dark rose beasts and pets are, however, an exception due to their specific need and desire for darkness energy of certain qualities and purity. Mr Wellington named the potion after the energy and called it the abyssal rose potion.

When the dark roses reached expert mastery in their external skills they will try and evolve the dark roses in a simulated environment filled with darkness energy of sufficient quality and purity. Five would use the dark petal potion while the other five would use the abyssal rose potion.

When the second month of Linus's return to school arrived nothing changed except for him being called by Ms Winter after the first lesson of the day. When he arrived in front of her desk, she asked him to follow her and they headed their way outside of school to Linus's confusion. Ms Winter answered his internal question before he could ask and said that she was bringing him to see someone important.

They took Ms Winter's car to the outskirts of the city until they arrived at the wall where soldiers were stationed to keep beasts away and pet trainers left to hunt and train in the wilderness. The soldiers seemed to recognise Ms Winter's car and let her pass through without a security check.

After the car was parked, they started heading towards a military compound. Linus had many questions on the inside but didn't ask any as most would probably answer themselves after the entire ordeal.

When they arrived at the compound, Linus saw that it was an administrative centre and Ms Winter was bringing him to the general's office. This shocked Linus as the general of White Bone City's military is a master pet trainer who has a king rank pet. The reason for stationing such a strong pet trainer in a small city like White Bone City is that outside the city walls a special undead beast territory can be found. This territory is filled with iron, bronze and silver rank beasts and some gold rank beasts.

What most people didn't know and Linus had managed to learn from Mr Wellington was that there was also another beast inside the undead beast territory and this beast was a king rank lich beast that can control all the wild undead beasts. If it were to be provoked then an undead beast horde would descend onto White Bone City. Luckily no one has ever provoked it as the military oversees that no one above the gold rank enters the undead territory.

When Ms Winters knocked on the door, a voice filled with authority allowed them inside and Linus found two men sitting inside. One was an old man who seemed weak and friendly another was a middle-aged man who emanated viciousness and killing intent making it difficult to breathe for Linus.

Upon entering Ms Winters greeted the middle-aged men with the title general and the old man as 'grandfather'. It was completely unexpected for Linus to meet with both the king rank general and Ms Winter's grandfather. Linus blanked out and didn't know what to do or say making the general frown and the old man laugh.