Chapter 25: Enjoy a Good Meal
"Let's start by running two laps to warm up," Qiao Sang said next.
The Fire-Toothed Dog adapted quite quickly to the Weighted Ring, and it seemed to have no problem walking, but if it walks with the weight all the time, there won't be any particularly noticeable training effect.
"Ya."
The Fire-Toothed Dog nodded, having no objection to Qiao Sang's arrangement.
This time, Qiao Sang chose to run with the Fire-Toothed Dog.
Encouraged by Qiao Sang, the Fire-Toothed Dog struggled to complete two laps and then looked at Qiao Sang with a face full of despair.
You call this a warm-up?
Qiao Sang was gasping for air; after running two laps, even her body was feeling the strain.
It seems I need to get in shape in the future...
When Qiao Sang's breath had recovered, she took out her phone to check the time recorded for the run.
In the morning's jog, the Fire-Toothed Dog averaged about 18 minutes per lap.
Now with the Weighted Ring, the first lap was 29:03, and the second was 38:42.
Qiao Sang noted these times in her phone's memo app, planning to compare them later.
"Warm-up's over. Next, use Headbutt against this tree ten times," Qiao Sang said, taking the Fire-Toothed Dog to the wutong tree she read under this morning.
"Ya ~"
Upon hearing this, the Fire-Toothed Dog sat down on its haunches weakly and let out a feeble cry.
"Don't you want to become stronger?" Qiao Sang asked.
She had been with the Fire-Toothed Dog for a few days now and knew about its strong personality and good willpower. Although it had only fought four times, it always rushed to the front and wasn't afraid of getting hurt.
Get stronger?
The Fire-Toothed Dog slowly got up, its gaze becoming resolute.
Wasn't its resolution to become stronger the reason for the contract in the first place, to find more opponents?
Qiao Sang was pleased with the change in the Fire-Toothed Dog's eyes; she remembered the first time she saw the Fire-Toothed Dog.
Back then, the Fire-Toothed Dog, with its youthful body, kept ramming the tree trunk with that same resolute gaze.
Thinking about it now, it seemed like a long time ago.
"Maybe you'll even master the skill you wanted to learn last time through this training," Qiao Sang said with a smile.
"Ya?"
The Fire-Toothed Dog looked at its Beast Tamer with a face full of question marks.
"The skill you wanted to learn the first time I saw you at the Pet Beast Base," Qiao Sang explained.
"Ya?"
The Fire-Toothed Dog was even more confused.
When did it ever want to learn a skill?
"If you didn't want to learn a skill, why were you ramming the tree trunk? Could it be you were practicing Headbutt?" Qiao Sang was also bewildered.
That couldn't be right; Headbutt would at least require running from five meters away to gain momentum, and she remembered the Fire-Toothed Dog ramming from within one meter of the tree last time.
The Fire-Toothed Dog recalled its first meeting with its Beast Tamer.
What was it doing back then?
It was ramming the tree, trying to make the fruit fall down.
"Yaya yaya ya ya ya."
"Yaya."
The Fire-Toothed Dog gestured and tried to explain to Qiao Sang.
Qiao Sang: "..."
After a long silence, Qiao Sang ended the conversation, "Let's begin training."
With thoughts of becoming stronger, the Fire-Toothed Dog trained with particular effort.
Headbutt is a skill that requires one's limbs to store energy, exploding with an instantaneous impact force.
But with the Weighted Ring on, the Fire-Toothed Dog's speed of impact was noticeably slower, and the force generated was not sufficient to qualify as Headbutt.
After striking with force six times, the Fire-Toothed Dog finally executed its first real Headbutt of the day on the seventh attempt.
"Ya!"
It excitedly looked at its Beast Tamer, only to find her daydreaming.
Qiao Sang was actually still immersed in the recent revelation.
She thought her Fire-Toothed Dog was a bit silly; it had been ramming the tree the whole time only for the tree's fruit.
Wasn't the food at the Pet Beast Base enough?
With its small body, how could it possibly knock the fruit down by ramming?
It would be better to use Headbutt against the tree...
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It's just that, after fruitlessly bumping into the tree for ages without causing a single fruit to fall, their head ached...
Why couldn't they just climb the tree...
"Ya!"
"Ya!"
The Fire-Toothed Dog's barking brought Qiao Sang back to reality.
"I'm okay," Qiao Sang said.
"Ya."
The Fire-Toothed Dog nodded, forgetting the original reason for calling its Beast Tamer, and resumed its training.
5:53 PM.
Training ended.
The Fire-Toothed Dog lay exhausted on the ground. Qiao Sang approached and gently picked it up, saying with emotion, "You're the best Fire-Toothed Dog I've ever seen."
Although she hadn't seen many Fire-Toothed Dogs, that didn't stop her from praising it.
Despite having no strength left, it gritted its teeth and persisted with determination to complete the last of the ten fierce charges.
An entire afternoon of charging, one hundred impacts had been achieved.
"Ya~"
The Fire-Toothed Dog nestled shyly in Qiao Sang's arms.
"I'll take you out for a nice meal," Qiao Sang said with a smile.
...
The Nian Fruit Pavilion.
The Fire-Toothed Dog stared at the food on the table, dumbfounded.
Fruit platter, fruit salad, fruit noodle, fruit ice cream, fruit cake, fruit jelly, fruit pie, juice...
An entire table was filled with a variety of foods made from fruits.
"Grrl..."
The Fire-Toothed Dog's stomach grumbled while it stared.
"Go ahead and eat," Qiao Sang said gently.
The Fire-Toothed Dog didn't hesitate any longer and used its paws to grab a piece of fruit cake, gobbling it down voraciously.
Qiao Sang found this scene exceptionally heartwarming and beautiful.
But this beautiful scene did not come without a price...
The price was a fifth of Qiao Sang's savings, plus a scolding from her mother...
...
Three days later.
"Bang!"
A flame the size of an adult's fist erupted with a blazing heat, causing a distant rock to burst open, forming a sizable hole.
[Name: Fire-Toothed Dog]
[Attribute: Fire]
[Level: Beginner (127/1000)+]
[Skills: Bite (Beginner 74/100)+, Fierce Charge (Expert 168/500)+, Flame Tooth (Expert 116/500)+, Spark (Expert 135/500)+]
[Points: 55]
In just four days, the Fire-Toothed Dog's Flame Tooth and Spark reached expert level.
If others found out about this, it would definitely cause a huge stir.
Leaving Spark aside, as it wasn't unprecedented for a Pet Beast with extremely special talent to train a low-level skill from beginner to expert in a short time.
But Flame Tooth was different, it was a bona fide mid-level skill!
Normally, it took an average of six months to train a mid-level skill from beginner to expert, yet the Fire-Toothed Dog achieved it in just four days!
At that moment, the Fire-Toothed Dog was wearing the dark green triangular sunglasses that had arrived the day before yesterday, focusing intently on its skill release training.
In the striking red-and-green combo, the Fire-Toothed Dog's head-turning rate rose steadily. Many children playing in the park stopped to watch but kept their distance because of the flames engulfing the Fire-Toothed Dog.
With the rhythm of training in the past few days, the Fire-Toothed Dog no longer needed Qiao Sang's guidance and knew what to do.
Under the phoenix tree.
Qiao Sang read her book.
Since the Fire-Toothed Dog's Spark and Flame Tooth reached the expert level, she was not worried at all about the Pet Beast combat exam at Shengshui Middle School.
Everyone had just contracted their Pet Beasts. It was impossible for anyone else's Pet Beast to be like Ya Ya and have a mid-level skill trained to expert level.
In the past few days, the Fire-Toothed Dog's speed had also steadily improved. Yesterday, wearing a Weighted Ring, it completed a lap in 22 minutes and 7 seconds, nearly 7 minutes faster than the first day.
The Pet Beast battle in five days was not a concern, but Qiao Sang was still not absolutely certain about the middle school exams in twelve days.
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