“Really? That’s awesome! I was totally getting bored of fighting Magma Apes. You did get new creatures, right?”

I nodded. “I have the Magma Apes, but I also added Dragonlings to the database during the interview.”

“Dragonlings, huh? You think they’ll be a match for me?” She put her hands on her hips and looked fiercely at me.

“I doubt it. At least not yet. I want to test them on the training equipment and see what evolutionary paths might open up.”

“Well, come on, I can show you around.”

Chapter 16

”Can you summon just the two types of creatures?” Astrid asked me as we headed away from the shower area and into the training hall again.

I nodded. “Apparently,” I said, “I can add new minions to the mansion’s database if I bring creature cores under its influence.”

“Is that so? You know, this might be your lucky day.” Astrid grinned as she went over to a duffle bag lying on a bench near the training dummies.

“It’s already the luckiest day I or any other person could possibly have. I don’t see how it could get much better, but I suspect I’m about to find out.”

I stared intently at the beastkin woman as she fished about in her duffle bag. After a moment, she lifted out something heavy and about the size of my fist. It was wrapped in a thick black cloth, and as Astrid brought it over to me, she drew the wrapping off and held it out to me.

A chunky ice-blue orb sat in the middle of her hand. It looked like a ball of opaque blue crystal, with veins of white running through it, like a giant marble. As I looked at it, I saw that it glowed with a faint internal light.

“A creature core?!” My head buzzed with excitement. As someone who was not particularly interested in hunting, I’d only seen creature cores a couple of times before, mostly when they were brought to Travor’s shop for sale. I’d never seen one as fine as this.

“You bet it is,” Astrid said with a smile. Without hesitation, she handed me the creature core.

The blue orb weighed heavily in my hand. I didn’t need to ask what kind of creature the core had come from because even a low-level cultivator like me could discern its origin by simply touching its crystal surface. My awareness reached out to the crystal and showed me what the essence of the creature this core had come from. I felt a bond of awareness spring up between me and the core.

My mind was filled with a vision of a cougar. It was silver-gray as dawn mist, with bright yellow eyes. Along its slender and sinuous back, ice-like spikes ran the length of its spine, from the nape of the neck to the base of the tail. It was magnificent.