Following Dean Wu’s instructions, Han Ning disengaged the safety, adjusted his firing stance, aimed at a small tree 50 meters away, and pulled the trigger.

BOOM!

A powerful sonic boom erupted.

A projectile shot out at high speed, splitting into dozens of smaller pellets in mid-flight and striking the small tree.

With a muffled BANG, the rather thin sapling was blasted clean through, riddled with tiny holes.

Han Ning rubbed his slightly numb shoulder, nodding in satisfaction. "This packs a punch! This shotgun’s destructive power is at least three levels higher than a regular rifle’s!"

"It’s supposed to be powerful. This batch of shotguns was specifically designed for strong young men like you. Although it can only fire one shot at a time, its power is absolutely immense."

"With this, you’ll have some means of self-defense for those times you might run into a Soul Beast alone."

Dean Wu patted Han Ning’s shoulder. "This gun is yours."

"What’s it called?" Han Ning asked casually, toying with the silver-white shotgun.

"It’s made from the Snake Scales of a Silver-Scaled Python. For now, we’re calling it—Silver Scale."

...

「Two more days passed.」

As evening approached, on the lawn near the dorms.

Yin Yi sat on a nearby bench, holding a tablet. Her bare feet dangled over the grass, swinging back and forth.

After two days of letting Egg Pancake play, it was time to begin its physical conditioning.

Han Ning walked to a spot a meter away from Egg Pancake and took a small cloth bag from his pocket. It was filled with small stones, each about the size of a pinky fingernail.

After two days of feasting, Egg Pancake had grown slightly. It was now a bit larger than Han Ning’s palm.

"Cheep!!" Egg Pancake took a bite of the Iron-toothed Snake meat that Sister Yin Yi had hunted, stuffed it into its mouth, and swallowed. Then, it clapped its paws and looked at Han Ning with a questioning gaze.

’Is it finally time to start training?’

"First, we’ll do reaction and evasion training. I’m going to throw stones in different directions, and you need to dodge as many as you can. The more stones you avoid, the bigger the reward will be later."

’I can’t add any points for now, so I’ll just have to improve Egg Pancake’s physical attributes.’ Han Ning thought. ’Training its evasion will also build Egg Pancake’s short-term explosive power and reaction time. It’s basically training its Physical Strength and agility—killing two birds with one stone.’

"Cheep!" Hearing there was a reward, an interested expression appeared on Egg Pancake’s face. It nodded to show it understood.

"Mm." Seeing that it understood, Han Ning walked to a spot 10 meters away from Egg Pancake.

He had coated the stones in red ink. This way, any stone that hit Egg Pancake would leave a small mark, making it easy to count the hits afterward.

"Ready... Begin!"

The moment he finished speaking, Han Ning immediately picked up a stone and flicked his wrist.

The sky was growing dark. Despite the dim light, accurately tracking the fingernail-sized stones was a considerable test of Egg Pancake’s vision.

With a serious expression, Egg Pancake stared intently at Han Ning’s position. When it saw the trajectory of the launched stone, its body instinctively dodged to the side.

First stone dodged!

"Good! I’m going to start throwing them faster, so get used to it!"

At first, Han Ning’s throwing frequency was very low, about one per second, so Egg Pancake could dodge them with relative ease.

But when Yin Yi joined in, acting as the Stone Shooter, the speed of the flying stones suddenly increased. Egg Pancake’s success rate at dodging plummeted, and the stones it couldn’t dodge began to pelt its round little head and body. THWACK! BONK!

"Your dodging speed is still a bit slow. C’mon, you can do it! Try to keep your body steady and listen carefully for the sound of the stones cutting through the air!"

"Cheep! Cheep!"

Egg Pancake wasn’t particularly fast, and as the number of stones increased, it struggled more and more to dodge them.

Han Ning smiled, clapped his hands encouragingly, gave Egg Pancake a few seconds to catch its breath, and then had Yin Yi start firing again.

’It’s clear that Egg Pancake can only manage to dodge about three of the slowest stones per second. It can’t really avoid any of the slightly faster ones.’

Over the next while, Han Ning instructed Yin Yi to fix the firing rate at four stones per second. This was to keep Egg Pancake from being completely unable to dodge, thereby honing its reaction time and dodging speed.

"Huff... huff... cheep... cheep..."

After more than an hour of continuous training, Egg Pancake finally plopped down on the ground, a tired expression on its face, its limbs trembling slightly.

At the same time, Egg Pancake’s Attributes changed to:

[

Power: 0.13

Body: 0.15→0.16

Agility: 0.16→0.17

Spiritual Energy: 0.3

]

Training naturally improves physical attributes.

’The results are pretty good,’ Han Ning thought with a smile. ’In just one hour, its Physical Strength and agility have each increased by 0.01.’

"Very good. You did a great job. Time for a reward."

Egg Pancake was still very young, so he tried his best to use positive reinforcement. He went forward, picked up Egg Pancake, took out a box of Iron-toothed Snake meat, and personally fed it a thin strip.

"Cheep~"

Egg Pancake hugged Han Ning’s finger and opened its mouth to take a big bite.

Sensing the taste of meat on its tongue, its obsidian-like eyes immediately squinted into a pair of beautiful crescents~ 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

"The training is going to get even tougher. If you do well, there will be more goodies to eat."

"Cheep!!"

’He really is just like a little kid.’ Han Ning chuckled in amusement as he watched Egg Pancake’s cute antics.

’No matter how vigilant it tries to be, it’s still just a baby, born only a few days ago. It hasn’t lost that childish innocence yet.’

After a moment’s rest, he called out to Egg Pancake, who seemed to want more and was still licking its paws.

"Break time’s over. Next up is Mud Missile training. Same training method, and there’s a reward if you do well!"

Mud Missile was a long-range offensive Soul Technique.

Egg Pancake would circulate the Spiritual Energy in its body and fire a mud ball at its opponent.

Its destructive power depended on Egg Pancake’s Growth and its Skill Level in wielding Spiritual Energy.

Unlike physical attack moves, Mud Missile required a short channeling period. The length of this channeling time was one of the key indicators of one’s proficiency with a Soul Technique.

Egg Pancake’s channeling time was quite long.

Han Ning waited a full two seconds before he saw Egg Pancake give Yin Yi a slight nod.

"Ling~"

Seeing this, Yin Yi continued to fire stones in different directions.

She didn’t fire many at once, just one to several each time, to make sure Egg Pancake had a good chance of hitting them.

WHOOSH~

An irregular, earth-yellow clump of mud traced a graceful arc through the dim twilight, wobbling as it shattered a flying stone before dissipating into nothing.

...

After another hour of training, Han Ning called a halt again, gave Egg Pancake some milk and chunks of meat, and let it rest for a while.

After that, the Mud Missile training was interspersed with evasion training, alternating between the two.

The training session only stopped when Egg Pancake, panting with exhaustion, sat on the ground, unable to spit out even one more Mud Missile.