Chapter 20: Your Game Is Too Real, Isn’t It?
“Woof, woof, woof! Awoooo!” I’ve already formed a contract with you! I’m your bestest baby! You are absolutely not allowed to think about anyone else!
Amber howled dramatically.
Su Wudeng slapped his furry head. “Stop barking! What are you even panicking about? Who said I was going to replace you?” She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. How could this chaotic dog jump to that conclusion?
She pulled Amber into a hug and planted a firm kiss on his forehead. “I’m asking you a serious question. Relax, you’re my number one baby. I’m never abandoning you.”
“Woof?” Really?
Su Wudeng squeezed his paw, which felt remarkably thick and squishy. “Of course it’s true.”
Amber immediately wiped the tragic look from his face and resumed his dignified, majestic posture.
“Woof, woof, woof!” You should have led with that. You nearly gave me a heart attack.
The hound secretively let out a sigh of relief. He had genuinely feared that the golden meal ticket he had just secured—one that satisfied him perfectly in every conceivable metric—was about to sprout wings and fly away.
“Well… if we’re talking about other apex beasts…”
Amber fell into deep, focused calculation. His intelligent eyes rolled around as a massive list of his lifelong mortal enemies rapidly surfaced in his mind. Then, he sneaked a sideways glance at his master. A sudden, brilliant realization struck his canine brain: Since the master isn’t trying to replace me, does this mean she’s going to help me enact bloody vengeance on my rivals?!
Amber was profoundly moved by his own logic.
“Woof, woof, woof!” Master, you are the most magnificent human in the universe.
But a second later, he fell into deep hesitation. “I’ve offended so many territories out here, which mortal enemy should I name first?” Amber possessed an impeccable memory for tracking grudges, and the names of various high-tier beasts rapidly stacked up in his head.
Fired up by the prospect of his tamer acting as his personal muscle, he grew incredibly excited. Why choose? He’d just read off the entire blacklist and let the master pick who gets pulverized first!
Wasting no time, Amber began listing the names like a waiter rattling off a premium dinner menu.
“Woof, woof!” The Iron-Eating Beast! It’s clad in a black-and-white coat and has a pathological obsession with bamboo. It’s terrifyingly strong.
“Woof, woof, woof!” The Cloud Tiger! It sports flawless silver-white stripes, possesses lightning-fast velocity, and is an absolute master of stealth. Even I can’t catch its slipstream.
“Woof!” The Jasper Peacock! Its plumage is blindingly colorful, and it’s a master of shifting elemental attributes. But honestly, it’s just an incredibly insufferable, narcissistic diva.
“Woof, woof, woof!” The Blue Crystal Whale! It possesses a colossal, planetary frame. Most of them patrol the abyssal deep seas, harboring a staggering, bottomless reservoir of raw energy.
…
Amber started his presentation with semi-professional gravity, but as the list went on, his underlying personal grievances completely took over the narrative.
“Woof, woof!” Master, since you’re asking, let’s hunt down that brain-dead panda first! I remember it with crystal clarity—it violently snatched my prime marrow bone right out of my jaws!
“Woof, woof!” Of course, that stinky tiger is also a prime target. It actually had the audacity to mock my top sprinting speeds! I will carry this grudge to my grave!
“Woof, woof!” And we absolutely must destroy that peacock. It publicly stated that my silver-blue coat looked gray and balding! Does it honestly think looking like a walking box of crayons is high fashion? I refuse to tolerate the insult! We must enact bloody vengeance!
“Woof, woof!” Furthermore, that massive, big-headed whale cannot be spared. Master, you have no idea—it actually found my melodic barking ‘noisy’ a few months back and used its fluke to swat me straight into the ocean!
“No, the more I turn it over in my head, the more furious I get!”
“Master, I can’t sit still for another second! Let’s march out and eliminate them right now!”
Su Wudeng’s face was completely dark by the time he finished.
She had instructed this chaotic dog to provide an overview of the local apex hierarchy, and he had delivered a comprehensive spreadsheet of his personal blood feuds instead.
Watching Amber get increasingly worked up, she quickly scruffed his neck to ground him. “Man, your memory is terrifyingly sharp when it comes to petty things, isn’t it?”
“You carry a grudge against the entire ecosystem.”
“You’ve managed to pick a fight with creatures that run on land, climb mountains, fly in the sky, and swim in the abyssal deep.”
Hearing her analysis, Amber proudly hoisted his head and let out a defiant howl.
“Woof, woof, woof!” It’s an absolute cycle of bad karma! I am an unapologetic grudge-holder, humph! Sooner or later, I’ll force every single one of them to understand the true terror of Amber!
Su Wudeng couldn’t suppress a warm chuckle, gently rubbing his ears. “Alright, let’s say we track them down. How exactly are you planning to punish them?”
Amber immediately adopted a haughty, arrogant stance. “I’m going to strut into their territories and flaunt my ultra-luxury lifestyle! I’ll show them that my master feeds me premium jerky and snacks every single day!”
“I will force them to watch me feast until they literally choke on their own jealousy and die!”
Su Wudeng clamped a hand over her forehead. “You are just an absolute, hopeless glutton.”
What kind of blood feud is this? What kind of revenge? She was willing to bet that in the minds of the Iron-Eating Beast, the Cloud Tiger, the Jasper Peacock, and the Blue Crystal Whale, they didn’t even register that they had ever crossed paths with a chaotic husky.
“Alright, alright, you absolute drama king.”
However, parsing through Amber’s chaotic rant gave Su Wudeng a genuine spark of tactical inspiration. The data logs from her academy cram sessions rapidly flashed across her mind.
The Iron-Eating Beast—the giant panda she was so intensely familiar with from her previous life—was an exceptional candidate. Their perfectly rounded frames and striking black-and-white coats possessed weaponized cuteness. Anyone who laid eyes on them would be completely captured.
But a tamer would have to be an absolute fool to let that docile appearance trick them into overlooking their devastating combat utility. The raw physical output of an Iron-Eating Beast was terrifying; they could effortlessly shatter the terrain and collapse landmasses within a dozens-of-meters radius. Furthermore, the manuals noted that upon navigating their evolutionary milestones, certain variants could awaken a form of nature-manipulation, controlling localized bamboo forests to seamlessly blend absolute defense with crushing offense. It was a high-tier companion beast well worth the investment.
The Cloud Tiger represented a completely different paradigm of majesty. Its immaculate silver-white coat was broken by elegant, jet-black stripes, and its stride radiated absolute regal dominance. It was the undisputed king of the feline predators—formidable, striking, and lethal. Its primary attribute was explosive, supersonic velocity. Once it unlocked its fully matured form, it could disperse its mass into pure atmospheric clouds, flying effortlessly through the airspace. The most elite specimens could even catalyze raw lightning, commanding natural elements to unleash devastating electrical storms.
As for the Jasper Peacock Amber had complained about, it was a creature of breathtaking visual splendor. Its iridescent, colorful plumage wasn’t merely a cosmetic asset; the feathers were engineered to generate hyper-realistic, multi-sensory optical illusions to disorient targets. Furthermore, the individual quills functioned as high-frequency kinetic projectiles. As a rare flying-class beast, it possessed top-tier agility and a highly versatile skill ceiling. Since it operated within the same aerial combat doctrine as a mechanical dragon, Yulan would likely find its synchronization parameters incredibly familiar.
But when it came to matching a dragon’s sheer physical scale, the undisputed titan was the Blue Crystal Whale. Its colossal organic frame easily eclipsed the mass of an elite mecha. This abyssal deep-sea apex predator commanded a terrifying baseline reservoir of raw energy. According to legendary tamer records, a high-tier Blue Crystal Whale King could manually manipulate entire ocean currents and maritime weather patterns, sitting safely at the absolute zenith of the marine hierarchy.
The more Su Wudeng analyzed the options, the more she realized that every single choice was spectacular. Sourcing any one of these creatures would instantly catapult a tamer’s baseline combat efficacy into a different tier.
But the crushing problem remained: how was she supposed to convince an apex predator to willingly sign a soul-contract? These were fully matured, high-tier organisms, each ruling over an extensive territory as an absolute sovereign. They lived incredibly comfortable, prosperous lives in a natural paradise; they had zero logical reason to abandon their kingdoms to follow her back to a concrete city.
Su Wudeng shook her head, realizing that sitting on her porch daydreaming wasn’t going to solve the crisis.
“Let’s head into the wilderness and scout the perimeter,” she decided. Who knows? Maybe fortune will favor us and we’ll stumble onto a loophole. For instance, finding a high-tier beast that had been severely wounded after a territorial clash with a rival…
Su Wudeng’s eyes brightened. The wilderness of the pet continent was a brutal, non-stop war of survival; the scenario she envisioned was a distinct statistical probability.
“System, initiate traversal!” she called out eagerly.
The environment around her instantly warped and distorted, her cozy cabin vanishing in a flash to be replaced by the dense canopy of an ancient forest. Su Wudeng and Amber materialized directly within the lush wilderness of the Great Prosperity Era.
The exact millisecond her feet touched the grass, she noticed a distinct change.
A sleek, translucent virtual display hud had materialized right within her field of vision. The center of the hud projected a live feed of herself and her immediate surroundings, while a compact control window was nestled neatly in the upper right corner, tracking various administrative metrics. In the lower left quadrant, a non-stop stream of text was rapidly scrolling upward—it was a live stream chat feed.
This was the automated broadcast feature the system had unlocked for her.
Scanning the display, she confirmed that while her own appearance was rendered with perfect fidelity, the priceless, extinct spiritual plants covering the forest floor had been automatically altered on the stream, appearing as common wild grass and ordinary flowers.
A massive wave of relief washed over her chest. The system’s optimization logic was incredibly intelligent. If the desperate citizens of the interstellar era realized she was casually walking across a landscape carpeted with millions of credits worth of legendary botanical treasures, they would probably track her down and tear her to pieces out of sheer madness. With the visual filter active, she didn’t have to worry about exposing her golden goose.
Since the broadcast channel had just launched, her concurrent viewer metric was single-digits, mostly populated by automated platform system bots dropping generic greetings. Ignoring the chat for now, she pushed forward into the thick foliage.
Meanwhile, inside a metropolitan hospital ward.
Cui Qi was scrolling listlessly through his communicator to kill the time. He was a corporate programmer by trade, but a severe wave of toxic industrial smog during his overtime shift yesterday had landed him directly in a medical stabilization pod. In the modern era, respiratory smog poisoning was as common and unavoidable as a seasonal cold from the pre-Cataclysm centuries.
Lying weakly against the sterile pillows, entirely consumed by boredom, his thumb paused over a thumbnail on a live video platform. The image completely arrested his focus for ten full seconds.
A pristine blue sky, crisp white clouds, crystal-clear water, and rolling emerald mountains—a breathtaking, untouched landscape of pure natural splendor.
“What… what kind of next-gen rendering engine is this?” Cui Qi muttered, rubbing his irritated eyes in absolute disbelief.
In the towering concrete jungles of the interstellar sectors, the color green had long become an unattainable luxury. The Great Cataclysm hadn’t just driven animal life into extinction; it had devastated the planet’s flora, leaving behind a scarred wasteland. For the sake of maximum industrial output, humanity had encased the world in cold, sterile metal. The vast majority of the population went their entire lives without ever catching a glimpse of a natural blue sky, let alone a thriving, vibrant mountain range.
Outside of premium, hyper-expensive virtual reality simulations, a landscape this immaculate was a physical impossibility. Driven by raw curiosity, Cui Qi immediately clicked into the stream.
The second the feed connected, his mind experienced a violent wave of pure shock. Blue sky, drifting clouds, a gentle breeze rustling through the trees… wild blossoms swaying softly in the wind. The entire scene exuded a serene, deeply moving beauty. These images, which he had only ever witnessed in heavily archived historical documentaries, suddenly felt close enough to touch.
“This… this game’s environmental realism is absolutely insane,” he whispered under his breath.
Without a microsecond of hesitation, Cui Qi grabbed his personal holographic immersion visor and strapped it securely over his eyes.
In a fraction of a second, his consciousness was violently transported into a different reality. A wave of crisp, sweet air hit his face, accompanied by the clear, rhythmic babbling of a nearby stream. In the distance, majestic green peaks stretched across the horizon under a dome of pure sapphire, while the grass beneath his boots was a vibrant, lush emerald.
Cui Qi took a deep, desperate breath. He could actually distinguish the rich aroma of damp earth and the delicate fragrance of wild flora.
“My God… what kind of miracle engine is running this software?” Cui Qi felt his pulse race, his breathing turning shallow—not from his respiratory illness, but from absolute, raw awe and excitement.
He willed his digital avatar to squat down, carefully extending his hand to brush against the blades of grass beneath his feet. The tactile feedback routed through his visor was so staggeringly realistic that his brain completely forgot this was a broadcast; it felt as though he were physically standing right in the heart of an untouched paradise.
“I feel… like I’m trapped in the most beautiful dream of my life.”
At the exact same time, inside the monitoring division of the livestreaming platform, a content moderator named Xiao Zhang was lazily inhaling a bowl of instant noodles. It was just another mind-numbing, monotonous shift in a sterile cubicle. He had randomly pulled up a low-traffic stream to keep him company during his lunch break, occasionally checking the server metric charts out of pure habit. As long as the data lines remained flat, he could smoothly glide through his shift without any friction.
Suddenly, his eyes locked onto a sharp, vertical spike in the traffic tracking graph of a newly launched channel.
“Holy crap, that viewer acceleration line is completely vertical,” Xiao Zhang muttered, his noodle fork freezing mid-air.
His professional training told him that a sudden, unnatural explosion of traffic like this meant one of two things: the stream was broadcasting heavily restricted, illegal content, or the creator was deploying a massive network of bot farms to artificially inflate their metrics.
Xiao Zhang let out a heavy sigh, setting his fork down. “Looks like my lunch break is officially canceled.”
Regardless of whether it was restricted content or bot manipulation, both infractions required immediate, aggressive intervention from the moderation team. If he failed to terminate the stream before it triggered a system alert, the administrative penalties would be slashed directly from his monthly salary.
Xiao Zhang rubbed his burning, strained eyes. The endless, repetitive streams of grey concrete blocks and unboxing videos had practically blinded him over the years. He skillfully copied the stream’s network address and opened the live monitor feed on his primary console.
The very next microsecond, his fork slipped from his fingers, clattering heavily against his keyboard.
Ink-green mountains cutting through the horizon, crystal-clear water acting like a flawless mirror to the sky, the air practically alive with the phantom echo of birdsong and the fragrance of wild blossoms. Then, a young woman stepped into the center of the frame—the shopkeeper.
Xiao Zhang stared at his monitor, rubbing his eyes violently, thoroughly convinced his brain was misfiring. He suddenly found the instant noodles in front of him completely unappetizing.
“What… what the hell am I looking at?” Xiao Zhang stammered to himself. “Is this an unannounced AAA game showcase?”
This was the only logical explanation his brain could process; the sheer, high-density realism of the environment was staggering. Many high-profile creators streamed unreleased holographic titles, running full-immersion playthroughs for their audiences. Xiao Zhang assumed this creator was running a similar showcase.
But the longer he scrutinized the background environment, the more his logical paradigm began to splinter.
“No way. Why would a studio spend this much capital to render an environmental simulation this hyper-realistic?”
He rapidly discarded his own theory. “No… Since when has rendering technology achieved a tier this advanced? Did one of the megacorporations drop a new processing chip without a press release?”
On his monitor, the live chat feed was scrolling at an absolute breakout velocity.
“MY GOD, IS THAT A REAL BLUE SKY?!”
“PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: STRAP ON YOUR HOLOGRAPHIC VISORS RIGHT NOW!”
“Holy crap, I just put it on. What the hell is that scent feed?!”
“I can actually smell real flowers! This specific olfactory translation is pure black tech!”
“Look at the sky! That cloud formation looks exactly like a rabbit!”
“Oh my god, a bird just flew across the canopy! An actual bird!”
Xiao Zhang stared at the scrolling text in absolute bewilderment. “These chat reactions have to be a coordinated bot farm. Why are their comments this unhinged? Are they serious? Small animals? What a ridiculous joke.”
He frantically pulled up the backend server diagnostics, running a deep trace on the incoming connections.
“The network IPs are perfectly localized… zero footprint of bot farming or proxy manipulation… This completely breaks scientific logic!”
Before the thought could even settle in his head, a tiny squirrel suddenly bounded right into the center of the live video feed. It sat on a mossy branch, letting out a sharp series of chattering barks directly at the massive dog trotting beside the shopkeeper, and the hound immediately barked back with equal ferocity.
Xiao Zhang went entirely rigid, his fingers subconsciously tearing at his hair. “This… this is impossible… Have I finally developed chronic hallucinations from sleep deprivation?”
However, he quickly realized that the vibrant little squirrel on his console wasn’t a glitch in his brain. The live chat feed had officially gone completely nuclear.
“HAHAHA, THE HOUND AND THE SQUIRREL ARE HAVING A FULL-BLOWN ARGUMENT!”
“This is too precious! My soul is melting!”
“What game is this?! I’ve scoured the entire corporate database; there is zero record of a launch like this!”
“What kind of idiot marketing team releases a masterpiece of this caliber without a title promotion?! My god! Is the lead planner brain-dead?”
“Waaah, Shopkeeper, look at the chat! Please tell us what this software is called!”
“I’m dying of jealousy right now! I need to play this!”
Xiao Zhang’s fingers hovered over his control console, trembling violently. He had absolutely no idea how to categorize or handle a situation of this magnitude.
Inside the Great Prosperity Era, Su Wudeng was equally bewildered by the developing situation.
“Amber, seriously, just how many creatures have you picked a fight with out here? We’ve barely stepped ten meters into the woods and we’ve already run straight into one of your rivals? And you’re immediately engaging in a shouting match?”
She quickly reached down, grabbing the hyperactive husky to pull him back. “Alright, cut the swearing. We’re here on a mission.”
As she reined Amber in, her eyes darted over to the virtual display tracking her stream metrics.
Only then did she realize that her concurrent viewer metric—which had been at absolute zero a few minutes ago—had experienced a terrifying, vertical explosion! The live chat was a roaring tide of scrolling text.
A massive grin broke across Su Wudeng’s face as she watched the Hope Value counter in the upper right corner of her hud. It was rising like a rocket ship, violently tearing through the milestones. A system prompt flared across her vision, indicating that she was rapidly closing in on the next major reward tier. A massive, glowing “Newbie Achievement Gift Pack” was hovering in her display interface, pulsing like a highly seductive treasure.
Su Wudeng’s focus ignited instantly. “The Newbie Gift Pack!”
Right on cue, a system tip flashed across her hud: [Engaging in meaningful, authentic interaction with your live audience will accelerate Hope Point accumulation!]
Su Wudeng leaned closer to the display hud, picking out a few top comments to address.
“A game? What game? This isn’t a virtual simulation, everyone.”
The audience’s imaginations were remarkably creative, firmly believing she was running a premium software showcase. But this was a raw, unfiltered live broadcast! More authentic than real gold!
“Oh, look at the little squirrel on that branch. This is a living organism, everyone. Just look at the grain of the fur; what software studio possesses the computing power to render organic texturing down to the individual follicle?”
As she spoke, she reached out to test the interface, attempting to manipulate the camera drone’s feed. To her absolute delight, the control console allowed her to smoothly zoom the lens in at will, locking a high-definition macro-focus directly onto the little squirrel. Every single filament of its plush coat was rendered with crystal-clear, vibrant detail. It was impossible to be more real.
The live chat completely lost its collective mind:
“HOLY CRAP! THAT MACRO OPTIC RESOLUTION IS INSANE!”
“It’s too fluid! This has to be an actual, physical environment!”
“Shopkeeper Su! I need that squirrel! I’m begging you, trap it and bring it back to the shop!”
“I will sign over whatever you want, seriously!”
By now, a massive portion of the incoming traffic had successfully identified her. There was no helping it; her previous Snow Crystal Cat broadcast had captured the global algorithm so aggressively that nearly every active mecha tamer in the sector had watched the highlights.
Su Wudeng laughed as she read the desperate requests. “I think you guys are treating my broadcast like a wishing well! I can’t just scoop up an animal and drag it back to the shop on a whim, everyone. Sourcing a pet beast requires establishing mutual trust and securing their explicit, authentic approval first.”
She cast a sideways look at Amber and the chattering squirrel, letting out a soft internal sigh. The two animals had just completed their intense “negotiation,” and it was abundantly clear that the squirrel wasn’t buying a single word the dog was saying.
Truth be told, she was deeply coveting the little squirrel herself. That massive, incredibly plush furry tail, those bright, intelligent black eyes, those tiny, dexterous paws… She desperately wanted to pack it up and bring it home!
Amber had just spent the last five minutes aggressively bragging to the squirrel about his ultra-luxury lifestyle, detailing the endless mountain of premium treats and gourmet meals his new human provided around the clock. But the squirrel treated his claims like pure, unadulterated fiction. It stared down at Su Wudeng’s relatively slender, fragile human frame, fully convinced Amber had suffered a severe mental malfunction. In the wilderness of the pet continent, only the absolute heaviest, most terrifying apex predators could command a territory that guaranteed an endless supply of resources without constant survival strain. How could a tiny, unarmored creature like Su Wudeng possibly provide that tier of luxury?
Amber had to be completely full of crap.
Furious at the blatant disrespect, the dog and the rodent immediately resumed their screaming match.
Su Wudeng swiftly stepped in, pulling Amber back into her arms to firmly massage his head. “Alright, alright, don’t force the issue. Since our little friend here refuses to believe us, let’s keep moving and explore deeper.”
She looked out into the vast, primeval forest, a surge of pure excitement racing through her veins. She had no clue what manner of exotic, mythical beasts she might stumble onto today. Regardless of what crossed her path, she had zero intention of deploying raw physical force or coercion; she was going to rely strictly on the art of tactical seduction.
It had worked flawlessly on a certain chaotic, gluttonous husky, after all. Furthermore, if she happened to run into an animal trapped in a life-threatening crisis, she could step in to execute a rescue operation to earn its eternal gratitude.
While this strict, ethical approach considerably bottlenecked her acquisition speed, she didn’t care in the slightest. Su Wudeng operated with absolute clarity. These animals were destined to forge soul-contracts with human tamers in the future; securing their explicit, unforced consent beforehand was a non-negotiable requirement. Forcing an alliance onto a creature would only result in a bitter, fractured neural link, and that was entirely worthless.
Right at that exact microsecond, the bright sky above them suddenly plummeted into absolute darkness.
A colossal, terrifying shadow that literally blotted out the sun violently swept across the upper atmosphere.
The little squirrel let out a frantic squeak, transforming into a blurred streak as it shot straight into the deepest hollow of its tree trunk. Even Amber experienced an involuntary, primal shudder, his entire body freezing instantly as his ears pinned back.
Su Wudeng instinctively tilted her head up under the dim canopy, her eyes widening as she traced the path of the massive black shadow.
“My God… what kind of titan organism is that?!”
The shadow completely obscured the sky like an apocalyptic storm cloud, casting the entire forest floor into dense twilight.
Amber lowered his voice to a barely audible, tight rumble. “That’s an ancient mythical sovereign. A creature of absolute, apocalyptic destruction. But as for its specific lineage… its energy output is too massive for me to process.”
Su Wudeng felt a wave of profound awe wash over her. “An ancient mythical sovereign… Is their baseline physical mass truly this terrifying?”
But Amber rapidly shook his head. “What are you talking about, Master? Sizing it up based on just this? This is merely the ambient shadow cast by its slipstream; its actual physical form is currently miles away in the high stratosphere.”
Su Wudeng sucked in a sharp breath of freezing air. Both human and dog immediately dropped flat onto the grass, dropping their energy output to absolute zero and remaining completely motionless.
Ten grueling minutes crawled by before the colossal shadow slowly, majestically glided past their sector.
When Su Wudeng finally pushed herself up from the grass, she discovered her uniform was completely drenched in cold sweat. This was a deep, biological terror rooted in the survival instincts of her DNA.
The exact second the shadow cleared the airspace, the millions of viewers trapped on the other side of the live feed seemed to violently wake up from a trance.
“HOLY CRAP! THAT SCENE WAS TOO DAMN REAL!”
“I literally forgot to breathe! What class of pet beast was that?!”
“That was terrifying. I was too paralyzed with fear to even type a message. For a second there, I completely forgot I was watching a hologram from a hospital bed; it felt like I was physically trapped under that shadow.”
“Seriously, the realism of this broadcast is getting unsettling. I am officially jumping ship—there is no way this is a pre-rendered game engine.”
Her statement immediately ignited a massive, fiery debate in the chat rankings.
“Are you out of your mind? You’re actually trying to claim that a lush, vibrant natural paradise like this physically exists somewhere in the galaxy?!”
“And an ancient mythical sovereign casually cruising through the air?! That’s a pure fantasy narrative!”
The comment section rapidly transformed into an absolute battleground of conflicting theories.
“It has to be real! No graphics card in existence commands the processing power required to render atmospheric displacement and organic tracking on that scale!”
“It’s a hoax! Apex beasts of that tier went completely extinct generations ago, okay? It’s basic history!”
“You idiots don’t know a damn thing…”
…
Su Wudeng didn’t waste a single microsecond monitoring the online debate. She stared up at the clear sky, her eyes brimming with a deep, burning longing as she looked toward the horizon where the ancient sovereign had vanished.
“If I can successfully forge a soul-contract with a titan of that caliber… I could literally walk across the entire galaxy without a single care, couldn’t I?”
Ever since the Live Broadcast function had initialized, the system hud had also unlocked a real-time geographical mapping feature. She checked her current coordinates on the interface, only to discover she was still locked within the baseline “Initial Staging Map.” And compared to the staggering, near-infinite layout of the entire “Beast Taming Continent,” her current perimeter was a pitifully small blip.
What frustrated her even more was the realization that even within the context of this Initial Staging Map, she hadn’t officially penetrated the border. This dense forest zone represented the literal outer threshold of the map; she had merely been exploring the extreme edge of the territory.
“But… one day…” Su Wudeng’s chest swelled with immense, unyielding ambition. “I will absolutely lock down a contract with a mythical sovereign!”
Amber stared up at her with his classic, vacant look of canine wisdom, privately concluding that his master’s brain had suffered a catastrophic short circuit. But hey, talk was cheap; everyone had the right to indulge in a little delusions of grandeur. Heck, he regularly fantasized about running across the entire continent himself.
The hound happily smacked his lips, trotting forward. “Alright, let’s pick up the pace. I’m going to guide you to the territory of an old neighbor of mine.”
The human and the canine pushed deeper into the dense heart of the primeval forest. Amber was in spectacular physical form, navigating the treacherous undergrowth with the effortless ease of an indigenous guide.
“The closest territory belongs to the Iron-Eating Beast. It regularly patrols the bamboo groves right ahead of this ridge.”
“Don’t let its obsession with munching on bamboo trick you, Master—that creature is an absolute opportunist. It will literally devour anything it can crush.”
Amber barked continuously, diving into a passionate, long-winded tirade recounting the exact details of how the wretched Iron-Eating Beast had villainously plundered his prime meat ration back in the day.
Su Wudeng couldn’t help but ask, “Just out of curiosity, Amber… how old were you when this tragic theft occurred?”
To maintain a blood feud of this intensity over a single piece of meat meant this dog was… an absolute, world-class grudge-holder!
Amber’s neck went rigid, his ears twitching awkwardly. “Uh… I was navigating my evolutionary transition period. You have to understand, Master—my body was screaming for calories at that stage! I had to pack away massive amounts of energy just to survive!”
“I had finally managed to scavenge a glorious chunk of meat after tracking it for hours, and that oversized ball of fluff just casually strode out and ripped it straight out of my jaws!”
“Humph! I swear to enact bloody vengeance for that bone!”
The evolutionary transition period…
Su Wudeng’s mind raced as the piece of data clicked into place. No wonder Amber remembered the incident with such vivid, burning fury. During that critical physiological milestone, a Sword Heart Husky required an astronomical influx of high-density energy to catalyze their growth.
She immediately mapped the realization to the five little puppies currently residing in her shop. Their bottomless appetites were so terrifying that they were on the verge of driving her into complete financial bankruptcy. Industrial buckets of premium dog food were disappearing into their mouths as if being hurled into a black hole. She had no clue how much longer it would take for them to successfully clear the transition threshold.
But… those puppies currently had her to systematically manufacture and fund their specialized rations, allowing them to gorge themselves in absolute safety.
How on earth had Amber survived that brutal milestone entirely on his own?
Calculating the timeline based on his logs, he had been ruthlessly cast out by the clan right before his transition period initialized. In other words, he had been the exact same age as the cubs currently sitting in her breeding room. He should have been incredibly frail, weak, and entirely vulnerable.
How had a lone, defenseless pup managed to scavenge the colossal reservoirs of pure energy required to successfully grow the blade on his back?
Su Wudeng shifted her gaze to the beautifully forged, gleaming longsword secured across the hound’s shoulders. Against all statistical odds, he hadn’t just survived—he had developed an exceptionally robust, elite physical frame.
“Could Amber’s pathological obsession with food be a direct biological consequence of the starvation trauma he endured during that transition period?” she wondered, her heart aching slightly.
She opened her mouth, about to ask him about his past, but Amber suddenly went completely rigid.
The plush fur along his spine violently stood on end. The corners of his jaws pulled back sharply, exposing rows of lethal, gleaming white teeth as a low, vibrating warning rumble vibrated through his chest cavity.
His eyes, which were usually filled with a comically vacant look of wisdom, were now locked dead ahead, his blue pupils instantly shrinking to the sharp diameter of a needle tip.
He had assumed a textbook, high-alert combat stance.
“Stay behind me!” he growled, his mental voice sharp and completely devoid of playfulness.
Su Wudeng’s muscles tensed instantly, a wave of cold dread gripping her chest as she sensed the sudden, suffocating pressure drop in the air. She had never once witnessed Amber display a level of absolute vigilance this severe. It was as if… they were standing face-to-face with an unstoppable, catastrophic enemy!
