Chapter 742: Scouting the Floating Island

Moon asked Honeybun to show him what the Jade Turtle Core’s inheritance had granted it, curious what core trait the turtle had absorbed from its ancestor.

Honeybun complied.

Its golden shell began to change, taking on a new color, one it hadn’t carried before, and one Moon recognized immediately. Under his slowly widening eyes, the shell shifted from the center outward, a deep jade green bleeding across the gold, spreading plate by plate until the entire shell had turned a rich, familiar jade.

The color of its mother. The color of the Supreme-Ranked Jade Turtle.

Once the transformation completed, Honeybun lifted its head and looked at Moon, waiting.

"That’s it?" Moon asked, uncertain whether the color change was the whole of it or just the beginning. A new shell hue was striking, sure, but hardly seemed worth a journey through the River of Paths to acquire a new skill for. "Is there more, or—"

As if it had been waiting for exactly that question, Honeybun moved.

The turtle vanished.

One instant it sat before him with its new jade shell, and the next it was simply gone, a blur too fast for Moon’s eyes to track.

He turned his head, trying to follow, and caught only streaks of jade green flashing around the chamber, the turtle rocketing across the room at a speed that shocked Moon to his core, especially given the defensive power that he knew it had.

"What the—"

He struggled to keep up, his eyes straining to pin down the darting shape. Honeybun tore around the entire chamber in the blink of an eye, ricocheting from one point to another faster than Moon could turn to face it, a jade bullet bouncing around.

~Crash!~

The turtle, unable to arrest its own insane momentum, slammed into one of the chamber walls and brought a whole section of it crashing down in a shower of stone and crystal.

"Careful there!" Moon called out, half-alarmed, half-delighted.

Honeybun righted itself amid the rubble, looking faintly sheepish, its jade shell none the worse for having demolished a wall.

Moon stared, processing what he’d just witnessed.

The Jade Turtle’s core trait of speed. He shook his head in disbelief.

A defensively powerful shell that now moves faster than my eyes can follow. That combination is deadly...

Although, he added, watching the turtle shake rubble from its shell, it clearly doesn’t have full control over it yet, that crash proves it. The speed came on faster than its instincts can handle. It’ll take time to learn to steer at those velocities, to stop and turn without putting itself through a wall. But still...

He let out a low whistle, grinning.

"That speed. That’s insane, Honeybun." His voice softened with a touch of wonder.

"You know, that reminds me of your mother. The Jade Turtle could move like that too, when she wanted to. A fortress that struck like lightning and now you carry it forward." He walked over and rested a hand on the jade shell. "She really does live on in you. Her blood, her speed, all of it."

Honeybun pressed its head against his hand, and Moon could feel the pride and the eagerness radiating from it, a Surpasser-tier beast with an unbreakable adaptive shell, a powerful crystal element, and now the blinding speed of its mother, all packed into one body that was barely two days old.

"We’re going to have a lot of fun figuring out what you can do," Moon said, grinning. "Once you learn to stop crashing into walls, anyway."

Moon stared at the collapsed wall with a wry expression.

"Talan and the brute are going to have to get to work again, it seems."

He stepped out of the chamber with Mirage and Honeybun trailing beside him. On the way out, he called over to Talan, who was coordinating something near the pavilion entrance.

"The chamber needs some fixing. Thanks in advance."

Talan’s head whipped around. "What fixing, boss? We’ll get right on it, but what happened? I told that damn brute the design wasn’t complete yet, if a design isn’t to your liking it’s because he rushed the—"

"You’ll find out once you go in," Moon interrupted, a small smile tugging at his lips. "For now, I’m heading out."

He left the pavilion before Talan could ask any more questions, setting off to explore the rest of the floating island while training with his beasts.

◇◇◇◇

[You have killed a Level 57 Four-Star Twin-Horned Boar]

[You have gained 100 Lives]

A sigh escaped Moon’s lips.

It had been nearly an hour since he’d left the pavilion, roaming the island in search of stronger prey for Honeybun and Mirage to cut their teeth on. Unfortunately, nothing like the Shadow Panther had crossed their path. The Twin-Horned Boar had been the strongest thing they’d found, and it hadn’t even been a warmup for a Surpasser-tier turtle.

"We’ll just keep looking," Moon said to his beasts. "The Shadow Panther existed, which means there have to be other Surpasser-level creatures hiding somewhere on this island. The Panther can’t have been the only one. We just need to find where they den."

He was about to move on when a scream of agonizing pain came from the western direction.

"That’s a human voice." Moon’s head snapped toward the direction of the sound, and he nudged Mirage without hesitation. "Go, that way, quick!"

Mirage didn’t wait. The white steed exploded into a full gallop, Honeybun keeping pace beside them without any trouble, the three of them tearing across the island toward the source of the cry.

Within ten seconds, they reached the location.

Moon took in the scene, a woman in the middle of a battle against another Twin-Horned Boar.

The woman, in the middle of her struggle, felt someone approaching from behind and twisted around to look. The moment her eyes landed on Moon, they went just as wide with recognition and disbelief.

"Moon?"

Moon’s own eyes widened in shock as he recognized the woman at the center of it.

"It’s you?"