When the old man started laughing, Linus's tense state disappeared and he regained his thoughts. He greeted the general by his title while also greeting the old man as senior as he didn't know his name.

The old man had Ms Winter and Linus sit down before he took the word:

"My little popsicle, it took you five years to contact this grandfather of yours again and it wasn't because you wanted to see me, but introduce one of your little students. That breaks my old heart you know.

When you were small you always cutely said you wanted to be strong like your grandpa, but now your face is as cold as ice and the same goes for your voice. Why don't you say grandpa cutely one more time as you used to."

Ms Winter's brows furrowed at her grandfather's words and she reacted with the same cold voice as always: "Stop playing around old man, I invited you not to meet me but my student, Linus over here is both talented and hard-working. The amount of time he trains during school hours alone is greater than even I used to train under your guidance while his rate of advancement equals that of those heirs from the top 10 corporations and dojos."

Her grandfather then stopped smiling for a second showing the same cold look as Ms Winter before it swiftly returned as if it never left. He then said:

"Yes, I have seen the information you sent me and have to agree with your judgement. But what do you want me to do, I have already retired and have vowed to no longer take any disciples since your mother and father's death. Aside from that, the boy seems to be more interested in becoming a pet cultivator than focusing on being a pet trainer."

He then looked in Linus's direction and started speaking again:

"I am sorry boy, but my granddaughter wasted your time by bringing you here. She wanted me to take you in as a disciple but since a decade ago when I lost my only child, I retired and didn't take in disciples any longer and only trained my granddaughter. Don't be discouraged though as I was honest about my judgement about you.

Capable of training a weak beast race like a dark rose to LVL 4 in four weeks while also teaching it 3 external skills while two of its four skills have reached proficient mastery is testament enough to your talent as a pet trainer. To not make this trip completely fruitless for you, I will grant you one chance to ask anything you want from me and if I deem it a reasonable enough request I will grant it."

Both the general, Ms Winter and Linus were shocked by the old man's last words. Ms Winter and the general because they knew the man's identity, Linus on the other hand by the generosity of the old man.

Ms Winter wanted to give Linus some advice on what to ask, but her grandfather stopped her. the room remained silent for the period wherein Linus thought about what he should ask. Linus's thorough process was very simple, he was trying to look for what he needed or was short of compared to other pet trainers.

His passing the apprentice pet cultivator exam and becoming Mr Wellington's assistant had already opened some roads for development as a pet cultivator. His ability, shadow kingdom, was incredibly powerful in training and nurturing darkness and shadow elemental beasts. Evolving them would rely on his skills as a pet cultivator while fighting experience will naturally grow when grows stronger and goes hunting in the wild.

His prospects and schooling would rely on his performance during the National examination while Nyx's growth shouldn't and couldn't become faster than it already did due to her race unless a miracle happened. This only left him with two possible roadblocks or problems he could have. The first was his poor financial state and the second was his lack of knowledge about this world except what everyone was taught at school.

Money was something he could slowly solve in the future, but the lacking worldly knowledge required connections and backing that he currently didn't have. It was at those thoughts that he finally opened his mouth and asked:

"Senior, currently I am poor and lack worldly knowledge. My poor financial state can slowly be solved in the future by working as an assistant for professional pet cultivators, hunting or working as a pet cultivator. My lacking worldly knowledge on the other hand either requires me to wait and enter a taming university or learn through connections. Thus my request to you is to teach me some knowledge or grant me access to that knowledge."

When Linus started his request the old man, general and Ms Winter were all surprised as they expected either money, a high ranking beast cub or something else of value to be asked. They didn't expect him to ask for knowledge thus all three were momentarily silent.

Linus didn't notice then and when he found that everyone remained silent, he muttered: "If that isn't possible anything else would also be appreciated."

When those words were muttered everyone came back to reality and Ms Winter and her grandfather laughed, even the general showed a smile when they discovered Linus's humble side. Linus was confused but remained silent as he didn't know what was happening.

After laughing for a while, the old man finally calmed down and answered Linus's request:

"Boy, you are the first to not ask me for materials, money, beast cubs or to be trained by me but to ask for something as simple but important as knowledge. I agree with your request and will even give you some extras or otherwise, some of my friends would call me stingy when they know that only that bit of knowledge was gifted when I granted someone's request.

I will give you access to some military intel about the current situation in the Global Federation, the status and power distribution of the Federation's top 10 universities and top 10 corporations and dojos.

Aside from that, I will give you a letter of recommendation for any of the top 10 universities if you manage to survive 8 hours during the National examination's survival test which will grant you privileges equal to the top three scorers.

I will also give you a defensive gold rank hunting suit which can help defend you from a gold rank beast's attack one time or resist any attack below the gold rank, which will help you stay alive if you were to go outside the walls to hunt.

At last, due to my intrigue for your request and my granddaughter's plea, I will guide you and your pet for the rest of today. If you have to let someone know that you aren't available for today then inform them now while we head to the military training grounds."

Linus was shocked and stunned by the old man's words as he was given a lot more than what he had asked for. He did, however, not blank out this time and started following the old man to the military training grounds while messaging Mr Wellington that he couldn't come that day which was approved by him.

After Linus and the old man left, Ms Winter and the general remained within the office. Ms Winter was smiling as the old cougar had half broken his promise by at least guiding Linus for one session. The general on the other hand was envious of Linus's good fortune. The two were, however, interested in the training and followed after the old man and Linus to watch their training session.

When they arrived at a private training field, the old man asked Linus to summon his pet and have it use all of its skills. When Linus summoned Nyx, she was initially confused but when she was asked to display her skills, she immediately used her dark petal skill alone, charming petals of which she could only generate a mix of different flower scents without any effect except smelling nice, sharp blossoming combined with dark petal and enhanced dark cells by converting her internal darkness energy into life energy.

After displaying all her skills, the old man commented to both Nyx and Linus:

"For only a month of training, that was quite an impressive display of skill usage. I see some very good aspects, but also some which are bad if you don't correct them before she reaches the diamond rank as then you will have to waste a very long time to relearn the basics of some skills to make them reach transcendent mastery.

Let's start with the good points. Your pet has absorbed very high-quality darkness energy throughout her training making her petals pure black and of the highest quality. I guess that the energy is of the pristine quality and at least of low purity as it would otherwise be impossible. I think that the reason why you can do this is that shadow kingdom ability of yours. Having such high-quality energy inside your contract space due to your ability means that it belongs to the top among nurturing abilities.

Your pet is also very disciplined and healthy and hasn't sustained any hidden wounds from training too much which means that you look after her well. Learning the enhanced dark cells skill is also extremely suitable for her due to your ability.

The bad points, however, are a little more difficult and couldn't have been known to you as you didn't grow up in a strong family or dojo. My granddaughter couldn't see it too as she isn't a pet teacher like me and only high-rank professional or above pet teachers know about this.

Your pet is currently training her racial skill and how to use them more effectively. But when you do that, you don't develop the basic qualities of the skill which will bottleneck it at perfection mastery and to elevate it to transcendent mastery, you will have to retrain the entire skill from the basics and incorporate all the changes again until she has fully mastered the skill to perfection again. This could waste months or years of training depending on the number of skills and difficulty of training said skills.

What you have to do is not only train and focus on the petal part of the skill dark petal but also the dark part which means using darkness energy. This will increase both the power and defence of the petals by half a factor.

The same can be said for the two skills of sharp blossoming and charming petals. Currently, you are only teaching her to use the most basic form of the external skills, but to truly master the skills, she will have to make them suitable for her and a dark rose's only speciality aside from its petals is its absorption and capability of using the absorbed darkness energy.

My advice is to add the following three things while training in addition to what she already does. First, have her infuse her internal darkness energy before unleashing dark petals each time. Secondarily coat her thorns with darkness energy while sharpening the petals which also have to be infused with darkness energy. Thirdly and last infuse the created smells of the charming petals' skill with darkness energy to grant it additional effects unique to the darkness element.

The darkness element innately focuses on absorption, corruption and lingering. When those aspects are added to those three skills, the petals will be capable of defending better by absorbing a portion of the attacks. Wounds caused by the petals will heal more difficult and even damage the wounded more. Lastly, the scents generated by her will increase in effectiveness the longer one is exposed to them while wounds will increase the effect even more like the scent has a certain corruption effect.

Those three skills can also be used in tandem to create sharp scent coated dark petals which are many times more dangerous than ordinary dark petals. Now I will guide and teach you and your pet how to train and use the incorporation of darkness energy into skills while also pointing out flaws in her current skill usage."

Then the old man slowly and patiently guided Linus and Nyx on how to train and use skills together with darkness energy. On the side, Ms Winter and the general were also watching and paying attention to the old man's words. The general agreed with all that the old man had said as he had learned the hard way that energy incorporation into training skills is a necessary prerequisite for reaching transcendent mastery.

Ms Winter on the other hand was feeling a bit down that she hadn't noticed the problem within her student's training even though she had been taught all of that by her grandfather many years ago. She couldn't blame herself, however, as it wasn't as simple as the old man had made it out to be.

Most beasts and pets couldn't use elemental energy proficiently when their race was below the gold rank except for a few races like dark roses. Secondarily beasts with gold races did this instinctively and didn't have to train this aspect. All her pets originated from her grandfather and all were high-quality races who did this instinctively thus she assumed that other pets did the same when training.

The last reason why Linus could already train this aspect of his iron rank pet was the dark shadow energy produced by his ability as otherwise a lot of money for energy-rich food would have to be spent on the pet costing more than 1 million FD per month as this training requires energy of at least high purity and high quality to be absorbed and used during training.

Time swiftly passed for Linus and Nyx who were immersed in training under the old man's guidance. When the sun went under the old man stopped the training and left after giving some final advice together with saying some last words to his granddaughter. The advice went as follows:

"Boy, if you keep up the hard work and train all your pets with the same dedication and ideas as I taught you today then you will be guaranteed to at least reach king rank if you don't die. I also recommend that you read those pieces of information I sent you with utter seriousness as understanding this knowledge will allow you to choose the most suitable university for you to enter if you have multiple choices. My recommendation would be to choose from the three top universities as the other seven are a notch below the other three in resources and opportunities. If we were to meet in the future I will allow you to call me teacher instead of senior and maybe I will guide you again if your growth satisfies me."