Chapter Sixty-Three: Space Traversal

With so many cards in hand, Lu Sheng had already decided whom to upgrade first. He placed the Space-Time Ant in the primary slot and began inserting Bloodthirsty Mosquito cards into the auxiliary slots.

To his surprise, he didn’t need the ten thousand Bloodthirsty Mosquito cards he had anticipated. After just five thousand cards, the progress bar reached one hundred percent.

Normally, this wouldn’t happen unless something unusual had occurred—perhaps the golden fruit the Space-Time Ant had eaten last time had repaired its injuries.

Five thousand mid-second-rank Bloodthirsty Mosquito cards transformed into points of light and merged into the Space-Time Ant card. When the lights faded, a streak of orange brilliance burst forth!

[Space-Time Ant]
Quality: Orange (previously Red)
Rank: Early Third Rank
Abilities: Sub-dimensional Space (20,000 meters), 100x Strength, Time Reversal, Space Freeze, Spatial Shifting.
Evolution Requirements: One third-rank material imbued with space attributes; one third-rank material imbued with time attributes.
Spatial Shifting: Wherever your eyes reach, you can appear; the farther the distance, the greater the energy consumption—within a ten-meter radius, consumption is minimal.

The Space-Time Ant had successfully evolved to orange quality, gaining yet another ability. However, its strength had still not increased—perhaps it had reached its limit.

This new ability reminded Lu Sheng of the method the Space-Time Ant had used to escape from Sky Island. It was likely this very skill. Of course, the description’s power clearly wasn’t enough to break out of Sky Island, and at that time, he had only just awakened, so it couldn’t have been his own strength. The real reason for the escape must have lain within the Space-Time Ant itself.

When the Space-Time Ant had previously demonstrated its spatial power by shrinking the fruit, Lu Sheng realized something: they merely borrowed the power of their life cards—the true mastery belonged to the monster within each card. The power they controlled wasn’t necessarily fully reflected in the panel, just as every monster could attack, firebirds could fly, and rats could burrow.

The Space-Time Ant, true to its name, could wield both time and space.

A wave of happiness welled up in Lu Sheng’s mind—the Space-Time Ant was transmitting its joy to him. Sensing his companion’s delight, Lu Sheng’s own mood soared. Happiness is contagious; share your joy with your friends, and they’ll surely be happy too.

Next, he needed to upgrade the Muscle Dog. This creature was formidable, but since Lu Sheng himself had reached the third rank, a second-rank Muscle Dog was of little help.

Before upgrading Muscle Dog, he had to solve a problem: the dog’s exercise equipment was now sorely lacking. If it advanced to the third rank, the two large stones it used would be insufficient. Replacing them with larger ones would make them unwieldy. This troubled him.

After some thought, he decided to ask Li Kuang about it tomorrow and focus on upgrading first. The world was vast—surely there must be some objects that looked small but weighed a lot.

Muscle Dog was currently late second rank; upgrading it to early third rank would consume 2,200 Bloodthirsty Mosquito cards. Green-quality cards consumed twice as many as white-quality cards; if Muscle Dog were white-quality, it would only require 1,100 Bloodthirsty Mosquito cards.

[Muscle Dog]
Quality: Green
Rank: Early Third Rank
Ability: Training Sharing
Evolution Requirement: 100kg of third-rank ore

A hundred kilograms of third-rank ore wasn’t hard to come by—money could solve that, and Lu Sheng could now afford it. The lowest-grade third-rank iron ore required a thousand third-rank source pearls per hundred kilograms. Lu Sheng had acquired quite a few from killing Meng Yang last time.

After upgrading these two, he had no plans to upgrade any other cards for now. Whether it was Steel Fang, Green Stone, Giant Crocodile, or the Ant Queen, none could advance much further. Even with a million mid-second-rank Bloodthirsty Mosquitoes, he could only raise one card to peak third rank—not even to fourth rank—so it wouldn’t help him much.

After all, the Frogman Chief he’d fought earlier had been a peak third-rank monster.

He decided to focus all his resources on raising the rank of the Bloodthirsty Mosquito.

For now, only his weapon could significantly boost his strength. The Frogman Chief’s spear was decent, but it was only first rank—Lu Sheng found it lacking. He wondered if it could be upgraded... upgraded... upgraded...

The thought flashed through his mind and sent his imagination racing. Recalling the prompt when his talent awakened, it had said he could upgrade cards’ ranks but had never specified that the cards had to contain living creatures.

Perhaps equipment cards could be upgraded as well?

Experimentation would reveal the truth. If it worked, he could also upgrade his first-rank Rapid Growth Device.

First, he used his mind to place the Frogman Spear in the primary card slot.

Success!

Next, he inserted a Bloodthirsty Mosquito card as an auxiliary.

Success!

Upgrade progress: one hundred percent!

He chose to fuse, and the Bloodthirsty Mosquito card turned into points of light, merging with the Frogman Spear.

The white light faded.

[Frogman Spear]
Quality: White
Rank: Second Rank
Skill: Hardening

Weapons and equipment didn’t have subdivisions like early, mid, or late stages. Lu Sheng wasn’t sure about the exact consumption for upgrades, since he had only used one mid-second-rank Bloodthirsty Mosquito card.

But continuing to upgrade would show him.

He placed the Frogman Spear back in the primary slot and began inserting more mid-second-rank Bloodthirsty Mosquito cards—he used up a thousand before reaching one hundred percent progress.

That equated to ten thousand early-second-rank cards.

He chose to fuse, and a third-rank Frogman Spear was born. Its attributes hadn’t changed; he’d have to take it out to see the specifics. He wasn’t in a hurry; instead, he put it back in the primary slot to study the upgrade consumption rules.

It took a thousand Bloodthirsty Mosquito cards just to reach one ten-thousandth of the progress bar.

A thousand Bloodthirsty Mosquito cards equaled one early third-rank card, which meant he’d need ten thousand early third-rank cards to upgrade the third-rank Frogman Spear to fourth rank.

With that, he understood the upgrade progress: one must use ten thousand of the lowest cards of that rank.

He wondered if other equipment worked the same way.

He took out the first-rank Rapid Growth Device to test it.

One minute later—

[Rapid Growth Device]
Quality: White
Rank: Third Rank
Function: Doubles the developmental speed of all creatures within a ten-thousand-meter radius
Consumption: Ten third-rank source pearls per day

Clearly, he had succeeded.

This meant his development speed would now double.

Next, it was time to raise the rank of the Bloodthirsty Mosquito.

His goal was to upgrade one thousand female and one hundred male Bloodthirsty Mosquitoes to early third rank.

Each male would need to impregnate ten females. Lu Sheng estimated that ten times was the limit—any more would be too much.

This used up one million one hundred thousand Bloodthirsty Mosquito cards, leaving him with only ninety thousand mid-second-rank cards in hand.