Monster Pet Evolution

A large pile of ash lay on the ground. It was still giving off heat when Gao Peng walked up to it.

As he rummaged through the ash pile for a while, Gao Peng's hand grazed against something solid that he quickly pulled out.

It was the Golden Palm Tree Spirit's core crystal, which was as big as a goose's egg. It was also gleaming with a bright green light.

Monster core crystals contained extremely high element concentrations. These elements usually rejected one another.

As a result, these crystals were impervious to elemental attacks. The only thing capable of breaking them was physical attacks.

The core crystal in Gao Peng's hand belonged to a plant-type Commander-tier monster. Its market value was at least a few thousand Alliance credits.

Only those who were truly strapped for cash would sell one. Ordinarily, Monster Trainers would trade these crystals for something else.

Soon after, Gao Peng found a mountain cave, which was essentially just a 17-foot-deep crack in the mountain.

It had originally been an Adamantine Duck's nest, which Gao Peng now claimed as his own.

"Quack! Quack!" The Adamantine Duck stamped its feet furiously outside its nest.

This is my home! My home!

Damn you brigands!

Gao Peng impatiently waved a hand at it and said, "I'm just borrowing your place for a day, no need to make a fuss about it. You might want to leave before my familiars start feeling hungry."

The Adamantine Duck's eyes widened, as if it wasn't at all intimidated by Gao Peng's threat. It stretched its neck out and began quacking loudly. "Croak, croak, croak..."

"Quack!" retorted Gao Peng when he realized that the duck wasn't even quacking like a proper duck.

"Croak? Quack? Quack? Quack, quack, quack!" The Adamantine Duck silently ruminated on Gao Peng's quack, which had sounded natural.

Boom!

The Adamantine Duck simply stood there with an incredulous look on its face, as if it had been struck by lightning.

Its own quack was even less natural-sounding than Gao Peng's!

Who's really the duck here? it thought. The Adamantine Duck cautiously approached the cave.

It strained its eyes at Gao Peng in the darkness of the cave.

As hot tempered and stubborn as most Adamantine Ducks might have seemed, there hadn't been any record of them devouring human beings.

Gao Peng poked his head out of the cave so that the duck could take a better look at him. However, he didn't pay it any mind. He simply ordered his familiars not to let their guards down and pulled out his sleeping bag, ready to rest for the night.

The Adamantine Duck's eyes nearly popped out in surprise when it saw Gao Peng pull such a big sleeping bag out of Silly's body.

It looked at Silly, then at Gao Peng. Its duck bill was hanging wide open.

Flamy was giggling happily at the sight of the creature who looked so taken aback by this.

One night passed. Dumby, who had stayed up all night at the cave's entrance, got up and entered the cave.

It then woke Gao Peng up by patting his sleeping bag.

Gao Peng opened his eyes and yawned, looking at the watch on his wrist. It was half past five in the morning.

He then curled back up inside his sleeping bag. Ten minutes later, he opened his eyes again and unzipped his sleeping bag.

Outside the cave, the Adamantine Duck was staring at the entrance. It hadn't slept a wink the whole night.

Here he comes! The Adamantine Duck kept its eyes fixed on the cave expectantly.

That's the one! That's the one!

The duck's body shook excitedly when it saw Gao Peng push his sleeping bag back inside Silly's portable space.

It stamped its feet on the ground and waggled its tail in excitement.

Gao Peng swallowed a bit of salt and then some water before walking up to the Adamantine Duck and patting its head lightly. He then spat out the salt water in his mouth and said slowly, "There's no point in looking. You won't be able to learn that."

"Quack?" The duck looked at Gao Peng dumbly.

Gao Peng smiled at it, then beckoned to his familiars. "Let's go. We'll be able to reach our destination today."

He said to the Adamantine Duck, "Silly thing, don't be so quick to approach other humans next time. You never know when you could get yourself killed."

The Adamantine Duck was indeed fearless. Not only had it not run when it saw Gao Peng, it had even been bold enough to approach him.

...

"Master, I'm hungry. I want to eat duck," said Stripey pleadingly.

"Hungry, want to eat duck! Eat duck!" said Da Zi.

"Dumby's the one carrying you around. You have no business saying that you're hungry," said Gao Peng with a frown.

"You're the one riding Stripey," retorted Da Zi.

Gao Peng paused and turned around. A yellow, absent-looking duck, half as tall as a person, was waddling towards him, its wings flapping wildly on both sides.

Upon seeing Gao Peng turn around, the Adamantine Duck's eyes lit up. "Quack, quack, quack!"

Without a Blood Contract, Gao Peng had no idea what it was quacking about.

He frowned, wondering what the duck wanted from him.

"Master. It's calling you," said Flamy suddenly.

"You can understand it?" said Gao Peng, looking at Flamy in surprise.

"I am a Level-8 master in bird language after all," said Flamy, who puffed up its chest proudly.

"What's it saying?" asked Gao Peng.

"It's saying, 'Wait for me, duck, wait for me,'" said Flamy. "Gao Peng, I assume you're not a duck."

"That's rubbish, of course I'm not."

Gao Peng frowned, somewhat troubled by this. Had this Adamantine Duck really thought he was also a duck? Why? He had only corrected the duck's quacking last night.

The Adamantine Duck was on the verge of collapsing after waddling and flapping its wings for so long. It lost its balance completely when it started quacking.

The duck's wings thumped its sides twice before it fell and rolled a couple of times in the grass.

The Adamantine Duck's head was covered in dirt and grime.

Ow... That strange duck left... I knew it, it must not have liked me...

The Adamantine Duck buried its head deep in the grass, extremely sore everywhere. At that moment, there was complete blankness in its head.

Suddenly, it felt itself being hoisted up.

Eh, it's you! Duckie! Gao Peng's frowning face was the first thing the Adamantine Duck saw when it lifted its head up.

Flamy was eagerly waiting to translate the duck's quacking for Gao Peng once more.

"Shut your beak, I don't need you to translate for me this time," said Gao Peng as he pressed Flamy's beak shut with one hand.

"Why did you come after me?"

"Quack, quack, quack."

"What do you want from me?"

"Quack, quack, quack."

"Is this the only sentence you know?"

"Quack, quack, quack."

"..."

"All right then. Translate for me." Gao Peng loosened the hand that was around Flamy's beak.

Flamy immediately reported, "It said, 'Duckie, I knew you wouldn't leave me like that.'"

With Flamy as an interpreter, the remainder of the conversation between the man and duck was able to proceed smoothly.

From his conversation with it, Gao Peng found out that that this Adamantine Duck had been abandoned by its parents and that it had been living on its own in the wild ever since.

However, Gao Peng was still curious about how such a simple-minded thing as it had been able to live out there for so long.