Beastmaster King

"Heroic spirits?" #18 paused, then nodded vigorously.

It aligned with its interests. In that case, it'd start with heroic spirits.

"You'll have a much better time trying to summon Heroic Spirits. Go to the Archaeology Division and find the old president, Minister Zhao. He has tons of collections and knows many ancient legends of Blue Planet. He's even hoarded artifacts tied to ancient myths. Actually, I have some too."

Lu Ran tossed the ruin branch to #18. "This is the legacy ruin of a renowned beastmaster from the Divine Tree Era, the Tree Monarch. She left behind countless legends, and even the Legendary beastmasters of the Divine Tree Era were said to be her inheritors. See if you can materialize the Tree Monarch's heroic spirit phantom."

"Understood!"

#18 flew off excitedly, already dialing the old president's number.

As Lu Ran watched #18 leave, he exhaled in relief. Honestly, he felt #18 had some psychological issues.

Maybe I have been overworking the kids. This can't continue. I have to spare time to give them occasional therapy sessions.

"If #18 can actually summon heroic spirits before the World War, it might even contribute to the battle," Lu Ran mused as he watched it depart.

The Tree Monarch, an Epic-Legendary plantmaster closest to the Mythical rank, whose legacy was inherited by later Legendaries, was no ordinary figure.

She'd even once said, "We'll meet again someday."

Could she have foreseen that I would recruit #18, who'd then summon her as a Heroic Spirit?

"No way." Lu Ran chuckled and shook his head.

***

Two more days passed. Lu Ran continued honing beastmaster skills like Sealed Transformation, Fusion, and Life Devour, maximizing the use of his second beastmaster space. However, while he trained diligently, he noticed his familiars slacking off.

Captain Doofus spent its days lying on the ground, eyes closed. It sometimes opened them to watch the sword spirit, swordgrass, and lightsaber bicker, and occasionally offered pointers. It was completely relaxed.

Sudden Death King gorged on meteorites daily. It had gathered more fragments of the Nine-Colored Meteorites from the ocean, and sometimes it even flew into space to collect ordinary meteorites. It ate endlessly and even fed its shield, which had inherited its meteorite-eating ability, boosting its level rapidly. It was also completely relaxed.

Dark Crow, now a quasi-Legendary, busied itself with expanding the Dark Crow Legion. With its evolution, an army of 100,000 Transcendent crows was no longer enough, so it aimed for millions. If not for Lu Ran's dominance over the resource-rich Amazon, feeding Dark Crow would've been impossible.

Recently, Dark Crow had grown obsessed with egg-hatching. It discovered that breeding two excellent crows could yield even better offspring, and repeating this process occasionally produced mutants with extraordinary traits.

This discovery fueled its enthusiasm for legion expansion. Still, this counted as relaxation. If Dark Crow had joined the breeding efforts itself, Lu Ran might've accepted it as labor.

However, Dark Crow had lofty standards, declaring its mate must at least be on par with the Divine Phoenix. It refused to settle for less. As Dark Crow put it, if no suitable mate existed, it'd rather reproduce with a gender-swapped clone than compromise.

As for Baby Cloud, it was equally idle. It perfectly inherited Manager Ying's work ethic; its main body binge-watched dramas in the castle while clones absorbed natural energy to recharge the mechanical castle's bomb reserves. It was exploiting its own duplicates.

In short, none of his familiars were using their time efficiently.

Didn't they agree to endure one more year of hardship before slacking off after the World War?

Unable to tolerate this, Lu Ran sought out Six-Path Flower.

"Little Six."

"What?"

Six-Path Flower was beyond his management. Its knowledge and experience far surpassed his. The only training advice he could offer was finding powerful traits, like the Misfortune Trait he'd already handed over. However, Six-Path Flower hadn't fused with it yet, keeping it as a backup.

"How's your progress?" Lu Ran inquired about Six-Path Flower's projects.

Currently, it was also overseeing the empire's Construction Division. With the Dominion Trait, its abilities were amplified within its territory. Thus, it'd been expanding its domain.

Although they had conquered the Amazon, its dominion range hadn't fully covered it yet. Once it did, its power would rise further, making even the Divine Deer struggle to compete for natural wood energy in the region.

Additionally, Six-Path Flower was constructing a permanent Hell Domain. Energy projection had three stages. The third allowed projected skills to absorb external energy to sustain and strengthen themselves. At its peak, projections could last forever.

Currently, Six-Path Flower was the only one in Lu Ran's team to master the third stage of energy projection and energy formation, thanks to its 99 levels of experience. Since it couldn't stay in its domain indefinitely but needed the Hell Domain active, creating a permanent one was essential, even though it was far more complex and time-consuming.

"It's going smoothly. Just say it. What do you want?"

"Nothing much. Just checking if you're busy. If not, I'd like you to train Captain Doofus and the others for a few more days."

"I've taught them everything I can."

Lu Ran smiled. "There's always room for improvement. I want you to train all my familiars, including the three sword kins, to master the second stage of all four energy techniques. This includes the hardest, which is energy compression. Push them to the second stage's limit, which is a hundredfold compression."

Six-Path Flower's lips twitched. It almost retorted that Lu Ran was insane, but then recalled he had a Legendary Flame Spirit and Sudden Death King's defensive halo to bolster the others' physiques. At level 60, a hundredfold compression was possible. At least for it, even at level 60, it'd temporarily regained a hundredfold compression through the Hungry Ghost Path's healing cycle.

"Fine." Six-Path Flower nodded.

"They have been slacking off lately, unlike you."

"In that case, toss them back into the Hell Path for a while. If something unexpected happens in the World War, relying solely on me isn't safe. They should perfect their basics."

"Right?" Lu Ran grinned.

Before Lu Ran left, Six-Path Flower stopped him. "Wait, I have a question."

"Hmm?What is it?"

"On Blue Planet, haven't people with special abilities, psychics, always been hunted by mysterious bounty hunters? As a psychic yourself, you must know, right?"

Lu Ran paused. "When I first became a beastmaster, I heard rumors about underground bounties on psychics. However, in reality, psychics are powerful and treasured by nations. Hunting them is nearly impossible. Over time, the bounty became a joke and was ignored by most. Why do you ask?"

Six-Path Flower said, "A while ago, I sent an energy clone to sense malevolent energy and assassinate humans steeped in evil, harvesting their power. My clone dismantled several underground factions, including one called Shadow.

"Shadow is a mysterious assassin group with fewer than ten members, all above level 5 beastmasters, and some even level 6. On Blue Planet, that's formidable, rivaling factions like the Other Shore. Before I killed Shadow's leader, they begged me for a favor."

"What favor?" Lu Ran asked.

"Shadow's leader was likely the one behind the psychic bounties. They said, 'Since you're so strong, could you kill all psychics on Blue Planet? Please.'"

Lu Ran was stunned. "Wait, you found the bounty sponsor? And why do they hate psychics so much? Also, if they built such a powerful assassin group, why didn't they hunt psychics themselves? There's been no news of such activities."

Six-Path Flower explained, "It's because the group was only recently formed. They'd just finished recruiting when I wiped them out. As for their hatred, they confessed before death, though I didn't actually kill them."

"What's the reason?"

"They claimed to be the messengers of a god, tasked by divine will to do this."

"Huh?"

"They said the god dwelled in the time tunnel, maintaining temporal order, and its mission was to stop time travelers. One day, a real time traveler from the future tried to alter the past, triggering a battle with the timekeeper. The result was mutual annihilation, and both were forced to reincarnate.

"According to Shadow's leader, the timekeeper urgently entrusted them in a dream to kill the traveler's reincarnation, lest countless timelines collapse from historical tampering. The traveler's trait is psychic abilities.

"Since both the timekeeper and traveler were injured to the point of losing memories and power upon reincarnation, the timekeeper could only delegate the task, unsure who'd recover first.

"Though the timekeeper only mentioned the traveler's psychic trait, the messenger found this insufficient for identification. Thus, they decided to eliminate all psychics, even though they lacked the strength. Doesn't this sound like a fabricated tale?

"However, we know a timekeeper exists. It's the kin of the Time Dragon. It's so enigmatic that even the Divine Deer has never seen it. If no one's seen it, it's possible it was met with misfortune."

Lu Ran's head throbbed. "What...? So there really is a time traveler, or rather, a reincarnator. To fight the Time Dragon's kin to a standstill is impressive."

Six-Path Flower eyed Lu Ran suspiciously. "If this is true, you're the prime suspect. Among Blue Planet's psychics, you're the most outrageous. You're also the top target on that assassin's list."

Lu Ran scoffed. "No way. If I were a reincarnator, I'd already be trampling the Dragon God and punching the Divine Tree. Why would I train so hard?"