"Little Fluffy, upgrade Little Snow to the highest level possible right now." James ordered.
[Ding! Do you want to upgrade Little Snow's rank to Peak-level Bronze Rank Beast?]
"Yes." James confirmed, as he already knew that he could only level up Little Snow to peak rank 2 because he was still stuck at peak rank 1.
[Ding! 25k coppers have been successfully deducted.]
[Ding! Congratulations to the host! Your pet, Little Snow has successfully broken through to the Mid-level Ferocious Rank Beast.]
[Ding! 60k coppers have been successfully deducted.]
[Ding! Congratulations to the host! Your pet, Little Snow has successfully broken through to the High-level Ferocious Rank Beast.]
[Ding! 150k coppers have been successfully deducted.]
[Ding! Congratulations to the host! Your pet, Little Snow has successfully broken through to the Peak-ĺevel Ferocious Rank Beast.]
[Ding! 500k coppers have been successfully deducted.]
[Ding! Congratulations to the host! Your pet, Little Snow has successfully broken through to the Low-level Iron Rank Beast.]
[Ding! 2,5 million coppers have been successfully deducted.]
[Ding! Congratulations to the host! Your pet, Little Snow has successfully broken through to the Mid-level Iron Rank Beast.]
....
Along with the continuous notifications ringing in his mind, James watched Little Snow's body grew bigger and bigger at a fast speed.
"Awoo!"
"Awoo!"
Little Snow howled excitedly as he became stronger and grew bigger at a rapid pace.
A little while later,
Little Snow's body stopped growing when it reached approximately 1 meter in length and 75 cm in height, with a shoulder height of around 50 cm.
Along with Little Snow becoming stronger, James felt the unknown energy start to pour into his body again.
This time, the energy was significantly higher than previously, most likely due to the addition of the corresponding 20% strength and mana from the peak rank 2 beast.
However, this time the body part that got strengthened was his physical body and mana, as he felt a surge of power in his heart.
His strength has once again increased significantly. However, James didn't know exactly how much stronger he had become because his cultivation realm was only at peak rank 1, but his physical strength plus the amount of mana he possessed was equivalent to 20% of Little Snow, who was at Peak-level Bronze Rank Beast.
He was getting more impatient to find a beast and test his newfound strength.
James then looked at Little Snow to see his personal information.
[Race: Snow Wolf]
[Attribute: Middle-level Ice Element]
[Rank: Peak-level Bronze Rank Beast]
[Qualification: Diamond]
[Skills: Ice Claw, Frostbite, Ice Bullet]
[Description: This is an agile and brave wolf with strength and combat power that far exceeds that of the average wolf. Its ice claw skill can cover its claw in ice, dealing greater damage to the enemy and freezing the body part that was hit, while its frostbite skill can slow down its enemy's movement if bitten by it. After reaching the children's state, it can fire an ice bullet at the enemy, with the damage and range determined by the quantity of mana expended.]
Looking at Little Snow's information, James's eyes lit up. Little Snow had a new skill, Ice Bullet.
Previously, James decided to not learn any of Little Snow's skills because it didn't suit him at all, he would rather use a sword than a claw, and he wouldn't fight using his mouth anyway.
However, looking at Little Snow's new skill, he could picture himself using it, and it didn't look that bad, so he decided to learn it.
"Little Fluffy, learn the ice bullet skill from Little Snow." James ordered and looked at his personal information.
[Personal Information]
[Name: James Wayne]
[Age: 18]
[Race: Human]
[Attribute: Perfect Level Fire Attribute, Middle Level Ice Attribute]
[Cultivation Rank: Peak Level Rank 1 Martial Warrior (0%)]
[Cultivation Technique: Peak Rank 7 Fire Cultivation Technique]
[Martial Skills: Flame Splitting Slash (Peak Rank 7 Fire Sword Skill)]
[Beast Master Level: Peak Bronze Rank Beast Master]
[Pets: Snow Wolf (Peak Bronze Rank Beast)]
[Skills: Fire Vortex (Peak Rank 7 Fire Skill), Ice Bullet (Peak Rank 2 Ice Skill)]
James was satisfied when he looked at his own personal information.
After he had done everything that needed to be done, he decided to go outside the cave right away.
"Little Snow, stay here and protect Minji while I am away." James then walked to Little Snow and petted his head while putting down Minji.
"Minji, don't play too much and go to sleep after this, if something happens, you can talk to me through the system like I said before." James said, then patted Minji's head too.
"Okay brother, be careful out there, don't forget to hunt 10 wild boars, ok? No, 15 big wild boars, 5 more for Little Snow." Minji then hugged his brother and looked up at his brother's face.
"Okay, okay... your brother will hunt a lot of wild boar this time." James smiled wryly, thinking,
'Why did my sister still remember about the ten wild boars?'
After exiting the cave and entering the dense forest, James scanned his surroundings with the system and found no dangers around.
Subsequently, James decided to sweep around the cave like he had done before.
And after ensuring that there were no beasts lurking around the cave's perimeter of a few hundred meters, he decided to walk in the direction that he left half of the body and the head of the big wild boar that he had killed previously.
To check if any ferocious beasts were attracted to it and hunt them to give it to his little sister first to stock up on food, before exploring further and gathering information about this world.
James was considering a few things before bringing his small sister out of the cave to experience the outside world.
First and foremost, he needed to ensure Minji's safety. That's either to become so strong that no forces or someone could threaten him or Minji.
However, that's impossible to achieve in a short time, and he didn't want Minji to wait for a long time in the cave because she needs to go out to see the world and experience it as a child.
Because relying on James alone to become strong in a short time is impractical, the second option was to find a backer, and that was to join one of the biggest forces or at least a strong force.
This was really unlikely. First, he was still weak now, even though James believed he could become stronger faster than anybody else using the system, he couldn't tell others that he had a system and could become stronger only by relying on the system's point.
Second, he was too weak to be accepted by any major forces. Furthermore, he was unaware of the requirements to join those major forces.
Additionally, bringing Minji to such forces could be dangerous, as there were numerous possibilities that could happen.
Finally, and most importantly, things did not go according to his plan, which was to use the system to its full potential, namely to become stronger faster as long as he was wealthy enough.
This was actually not a problem because he was a businessman himself in his first life, and he could see a big potential to become rich using the system.
The simplest solution was to use alchemy and blacksmithing, and there are a few ways to implement it, for example, by opening a business as a pill or item refining service, because the system could refine it with a 99–100% success rate.
And the second thing was to sell pills or items himself as long as he can gather the materials.
However, doing business on his own was quite dangerous because James lacked the strength to protect his business.
Of course, opening pill or item refining services could be dangerous too. If people knew that he could refine with a 99–100% success rate and he didn't have a strong backer, there could be someone with ill intentions to kidnap him and make him a slave to produce pills and weapons.
At the end of the day, everything was related to their own strength.
However, after discussing with Little Fluffy about everything that the system could do, James had a solution for that.
Nonetheless, given his previous life experiences, doing so would be unethical. Even so, if there were no other options, he would do it for the sake of his and Minji's survival, because in this dangerous world, he had already been prepared to bury his morality, since morality itself can't make you survive in this dangerous world.
After contemplating it for a while, James heard the system's notification, and his gaze focused on the direction ahead with a solemn gaze.