Linus was lying on his bed staring at the empty ceiling. It had been a week since his transmigration to this world. This body had died inside a car accident in which both his parents had also died resulting in Linus becoming an orphan after having taken over.
His new dead parents weren't wealthy and were only capable of renting an apartment on the outskirts of White Bone City. He had only inherited 10000 Federation dollars of which 2000 had been used for the funeral. Leaving him with 8000 FD, the apartment's rent had already been paid before the accident leaving him with five months before he had to vacate the premise.
Today was Linus's birthday in both this and Earth's world. He was about to become an adult at 18 years old. He did, however, still have to go to high school for another 3 months before the National examination was planned to take place. Tomorrow would be his first day back to school since the accident or for the current Linus the very first day at school in this world.
Linus had inherited the previous body's memories and knew everything the previous owner knew. He was currently on the Central continent of the Blue planet which consisted of five continents which were named after the four directions with the Central continent at the centre of the other four.
Compared to Earth, this world was more advanced in technology as another digital world existed in which people could shop, order and test various items without having to leave the house. This wasn't everything though as this world was also very dangerous and wonderful. Vicious beasts lived outside the cities and they were the true rulers of the Blue planet. Those vicious beasts could control the elements or trample on mountains with their mighty bodies. Humans on the other hand learned how to tame these vicious beasts by cultivating something called a contract space which grants them the ability to contract beasts as their pets and become pet trainers.
Humans had to unite together to survive and after many years they managed to take complete control over the Central continent and establish some Military forts on the other four continents. There doesn't exist any country, but a single Global Federation which governs overall human cities and territory.
All humans are provided free education until they become 18 years old and graduate as that is the age when they awaken their contract space and contract their first pet. Most humans aspire to become mighty pet trainers and will try and become professional pet trainers, but only one in ten can become one while the other nine will become common citizens who will never leave their city and its protective walls.
His parents had belonged to that last group and only managed to barely scrape by year after year. This body's name was also Linus Black and looked the same as he had looked on Earth. He has blond short hair, black eyes and slightly bronze skin, but instead of a trained body like on Earth, his current body was thin and weak.
After living and experiencing this world for a week, Linus had completely integrated into it while also understanding what he had to do to elevate himself. Here everything was ruled by pets and their trainers. Only professional pet trainers or those who have a pet-related occupation are respected and have a chance to gain some influence.
The previous body's owner had been the White Bone public high school's number one student due to all the time he had put into studying pet-related knowledge as his dream had been to become an official pet cultivator, as becoming a professional pet trainer would require sufficient money to nurture a bronze rank pet.
Pet cultivators instead used their knowledge of plants and treasures to create potions that strengthen, heal, and even allow pets to evolve. Linus planned to take the same path as the previous Linus due to having inherited all the previous Linus's memories and knowledge. Aside from that, it was also because he needed a way to earn money which he would then use to buy and nurture his future pets together with his knowledge as a pet cultivator. This path would be his only chance in becoming a professional pet trainer and trying to become one of the strongest pet trainers who are known as mythical pet trainers.
This was, however, for later as he was now waiting for himself to become 18 years old and then awaken his contract space together with his taming ability. All humans would after awakening gain a special ability related to their contract ability which could range from enhancing a certain element to allowing them to fuse with their pet and fight with their own enhanced body.
Taming abilities were categorized into four categories according to the Global Federation and the Pet trainer association. The first category is the elemental category which is the most common category as it allows for the strengthening of a certain or more elemental type of pet. The second is the physical enhancement category as it includes abilities that affect pets physically. The third is the trainer category as it includes abilities that allow the enhancement of the pet trainer through their contracted pets. The last fourth category is the special category which includes special and unique abilities which do not belong to the first three categories.
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Aside from the first category which is the most common which is followed by the second category, the third and fourth are equally rare and are only found in one out of ten thousand people. Abilities would also affect the type of beast a person could contract with to become their pet. An example would be that a person with a water element strengthening ability could only contract a beast which was related to the water element. The most common elements are water, fire, earth, and wind while more specialised elements like ice, metal and lightning are uncommon. Aside from those elements rare and special elements like light, dark, life, death, space and time also existed with some extremely specialized elements like sound, soul, illusion and more also existing as the fusion of multiple other elements.
Linus hoped that his ability and element could be of the rarer type and not one of the four common elements as it would increase his value in the eyes of others as people like that are often more focused on increasing their nurturing. Another 5 minutes passed before Linus officially became 18 years old. At that exact moment, inside his soul, something changed and a special space opened inside of it.
This was his contract space which had awakened and he immediately checked it out to find out what his ability was. He closed his eyes and entered his contract space using the publically available meditation technique. Upon entry, he immediately discovered that his contract space was very different from the described contract space of others. Its first characteristic was that it had double the range of other contract spaces, the second different characteristic was that he felt two different abilities instead of one.
After the initial confusion and awe, he immediately understood that this was because of his transmigration. It seems that due to him taking over the previous Linus's body while also acquiring his memories, he had absorbed the other's soul resulting in the awakening of two abilities and doubling the range of his contract space. This meant that aside from possessing two abilities, he would also have double the training speed when cultivating his contract space which relied on the feedback from pets and meditation.
After understanding all this, he focused his attention on his two abilities. The first ability was called the darkness domain which belonged to the first category and allowed him to strengthen any darkness type pet within a certain radius around him which was also his domain. The second ability was called shadow king and allowed him to control his own and any of his pets' shadows. The second ability belonged to the fourth special category, but he didn't know all that he could do with this ability.
After checking out his abilities, he tried to control his first ability darkness domain but when he did and successfully used it, something unexpected happened. The second ability shadow king started working together with the darkness domain and started affecting it. Linus immediately tried to stop the two abilities, but he didn't succeed and checked back into his contract space. Upon entry, he immediately sensed that it was changing together with the strange phenomenon of his two abilities.
Previously the contract space had two energies inside, the first was darkness energy while the second was shadow energy. Both energies mixed and represented the two abilities of the shadow king and darkness domain. Now, however, the two energies were surging, clashing and fusing which damaged his contract space. This chaos continued for an hour until everything calmed down and the two abilities stopped working.
Linus's thoughts, however, were chaotic his eyes had tears. The one hour of conflict had resulted in extensive damage to his contract space resulting in it shrinking from double the normal size to back to the normal size. Aside from that only one type of energy remained which was a fusion of darkness and shadow energy. This was because the two abilities had fought for supremacy over the other due to their similarities, but none could overpower the other resulting in an hour of conflict before they become weakened and merged. The newly merged ability had inherited the domain characteristic from the darkness domain while inheriting the pet shadow control ability from the shadow king ability. This combination had formed a very unique form from both shadow and darkness called the shadow kingdom in which the king ruled over all and darkness reigned within the kingdom.
Unfortunately, Linus wasn't happy about those changes as he had lost the double range of his contract space, while he didn't know what the exact usage of his new ability was. Upon activation, nothing had happened but he knew that he had lost the ability to amplify darkness type pets while he could not control his own shadow too. After trying for some more time, he managed to calm down and ascertain his thoughts and circumstances.
Firstly, he still had a special ability which belonged to the fourth category and only had to figure out how to use it. Secondarily, the pets he had to contract belonged to the darkness and shadow elements which were a rare element and an extremely specialised element born from darkness and space. Thirdly his contract space was still the normal size that any other person who awakened it had and while he had lost his advantage, he hadn't become disadvantaged compared to others.
Now that his thoughts were clear, he activated his virtual bracelet to enter the digital world where he had to register his awakening with the Global Federation while he also planned to take the virtual pet cultivator exam. The first was mandatory while the second was necessary if he wanted to become an official apprentice pet cultivator, he would already have taken that exam if awakening hadn't been a requirement. He then entered the digital world where he would set his first steps into becoming a mythical figure of this special world.