Monster Paradise

It was the New Year on the 8th of February.

Lin Huang, who had been practicing his sword skill for the past few days, decided to rest that day. He headed out with Lin Xin early in the morning.

All of the stores nearby, regardless of whether big or small, were closed due to the festivities. The siblings headed straight to the largest supermarket close by to buy the ingredients that Mr. Fu needed.

Mr. Fu and the bunch of imperial monsters were the only ones left in the three-story villa. He sat by the coffee table watching Bloody and Grimace playing a chess game.

Naturally, the two monsters that possessed Super Intelligence were not playing an ordinary chess game but were playing Chain Strike that was claimed to be the most difficult game by everyone.

Each of them would have 32 chess pieces with different functions of their own. The most difficult part was the space on the chess board and the time given. The chess board was three-dimensional with a total of 27,000 coordinates. In addition to that, achieving certain conditions would unlock various time and space effects.

For instance, there were turning back tome (reviving a disqualified chess piece), time acceleration (giving oneself more turns in the game), freezing time (denying the opponent their turn for a few rounds), teleportation (trade places with any chess piece on the chess board), space jump (moving chess pieces ahead), space crack (forcing all of the chess pieces in a certain area to be out of the game).

Bloody and Grimace had played that for the entire day yesterday and did not even sleep that night. Grimace surrendered for more than 30 rounds, and he loathed losing over and over again.

On the other hand, Bloody was playing at ease while sipping coffee in a relaxed manner while Grimace frowned looking like he bore a deep grudge.

In reality, the duo was evenly-matched in terms of their computing ability. The main reason Bloody was winning all the way was that it would play this game on the Heart Network with others whenever it was free. It even got dragged into a master club and would often play with experts. Hence, it was much better than Grimace in this game since it knew all of the functions and rules of each chess piece.

Grimace was a rookie when it came to this. Although he knew the rules, he was not as skilled as Bloody when it came to using them, let alone Bloody who was an expert at finding the loopholes of man-made rules.

Mr. Fu had fun watching them. He was an expert in this game as well, but his computing ability lagged behind compared to these two extremely intelligent monsters. He kept nodding while watching them play; he was learning so much from watching them.

The Seventails had been clinging onto Thunder. It was not that Little 7 had never encountered any bird monsters ever since it was born, but none had ever played with it. Those monitor birds would fly away whenever they saw it from a distance. As for those Silvertongue Birds that delivered items, they would be so scared that they would fly away instead of waiting for candies. This bird with such a bloodline was the cause of it not having anybody to play with. Naturally, it would not let go of Thunder since it was a rare opportunity that was hard to come by.

Initially, Thunder wanted to ignore the little fellow, but since Lin Huang ordered it to take good care of Little 7, it could only take up the burden. Thunder was tired whenever it thought of having to take care of Little 7 and being its flying mount instead of fighting alongside with other monsters.

Meanwhile, Charcoal slept lying down in front of the furnace. Little 7 was actually a little curious about his extended wings, but it would ignore Little 7 whenever it got closer to it. Instead, Charcoal would pretend to sleep so that it could escape from being assigned babysitter duties.

The Witch was scolding the Imp and the Malachian Fiend in the kitchen. “Can the both of you not mess the kitchen up? You guys have been walking all over the place while I prepare snacks. Look at that! Your footprints are all over the floor now.”

“I’ll go get the mop.” The Imp stood up and walked to the bathroom.

“I’ll go too.” The Malachian Fiend followed him.

Lancelot was watching the projected television on the couch in the living room while munching on dried vegetables.

Killer, who was sitting beside him, had the intention to battle all over his face. “I’ve digested another Sword Dao inheritance. Lancelot, let’s spar.”

“I want to watch TV,” Lancelot declined right away without even lifting his head.

“I’ll spar with you,” Sitting beside him, the Evil Dominator grinned.

“I’m going to make this clear. You’re not allowed to use substitutes that are above imperial-level yellow gold-rank.” Killer remembered that the Evil Dominator had used an imperial-level white gold-rank and beaten him up the last time they sparred.

“Sure, I won’t,” agreed the Evil Dominator.

They were sent into the Kingdom to battle as soon as they went to Mr. Fu.

The Herculean King and Bing Wang shrunk to the size of a palm and hopped from one lantern to another on the ceiling.

Bai, on the other hand, stood by the window and stared blankly at the snow outside.

Tyrant walked to him with ice-cream in his hands and put one of it in front of Bai.

“You go ahead.” Bai shook his head.

“Try it. It’s really delicious!” Tyrant persuaded and licked his ice-cream. He did not want to chomp into it because it was too yummy. Otherwise, he would be able to inhale a few of the ice-creams in one go.

Bai accepted it after a moment of hesitation.

“Bloody said you’re in a bad mood, so I’d like to ask you what’s wrong.” Tyrant betrayed Bloody right away.

Bai turned and shot daggers at Bloody. It was still playing chess and did not seem to notice him at all.

“I’m alright.”

“Just tell me. We’re brothers. There’s nothing that we can’t talk about.” Tyrant put his hand on Bai’s shoulder.

Bai peeped where Lancelot and the other two ‘gay friends’ were, then he looked away immediately. He then held his head while looking down at the ice-cream in his hand. “I’m Master’s first imperial monster, but Lancelot and the rest have elevated to pseudo-mythical-level while Kylie has elevated to mythical-level. And I’m stuck on legendary-level while my overall ability’s even lower than Warlord who’s new to the team…”

“Warlord has his own army. You shouldn’t compare yourself to him. Believe in Master. Us being stuck on legendary-level is only temporary. We’ll elevate to mythical-level sooner or later.” Tyrant was an old-timer just like Bai, but he was much more optimistic.

“But Kylie elevated to mythical-level with her own efforts…” Bai took that to heart. He was not jealous. He just thought he was not good enough.

“Bai, you’re too hard on yourself. Kylie actually put a lot of effort into elevating to mythical-level. She depends mostly on the mini world that she obtained. Meanwhile, Lancelot depended on his sword servants to elevate to pseudo-mythical-level. Killer was born close to mythical-level. The Evil Dominator was born a god whereby his existence came from God Blood Pods.” Bloody could not help itself but speak through voice transmission at that moment.

“You, me and most of the imperial monsters under Master elevated step by step from single mutated to double mutated. Our starting point is different from Killer and the rest. If you want to compare with them, you should only do that when you’ve elevated to pseudo-mythical-level or mythical-level. You can only compare whose ability is more powerful when you’re on the same level as them.

“Moreover, us stopping at legendary-level now is vital in helping Master with his current combat strength. As soon as we elevate to mythical-level as Kylie did, we can no longer help him. That’s bad for Master.

“If you have time for self-loathing now, why don’t you take the time to cultivate the human combat methods instead? Close the gap of your abilities between Lancelot and the rest with diligent cultivation.”

Bai’s gloom earlier vanished after listening to Bloody’s advice. He was in high spirits again.

“Bloody, pick a method that’s suitable for me!”

Bai gave the ice-cream that was melting in his hand back to Tyrant and headed straight to the balcony on the top floor.

Seeing that the ice-cream was melting, Tyrant shoved the ice-cream Bai had just passed him into his mouth immediately. He swallowed it after some munching. “Mmm… So good!”

Lin Huang and Lin Xin had returned after buying ingredients when it was almost noon. They had lunch together while the Witch helped in the kitchen.

When it was time for lunch, Mr. Fu brought Killer and the Evil Dominator back from Kingdom.

Killer lost terribly and shouted at the Evil Dominator, “You liar! You said you wouldn’t use substitutes above imperial-level yellow gold-rank.”

“You can’t blame me. A verbal agreement isn’t serious enough, to begin with.” The Evil Dominator spread his hands, looking like a douchebag.

Since lunch, the imperial monsters behaved themselves because Lin Huang was home.

Bloody told Lin Huang about Bai. Subsequently, he told Bloody his plan after that.

“Besides Advance Card, they’ll need materials to elevate from legendary-level to mythical-level. I planned to only start collecting those materials after the New Year because we need many types of materials and some of them are rather rare. It’ll take some time to gather all of them, so it’s better to get started as soon as possible. Take note of that, Bai. I’ll gather all the materials that we need as soon as I can.”

The villa became crowded again when Mr. Fu was cooking in the evening.

The dishes Mr. Fu prepared smelled fantastic. The imperial monsters were drooling before the dishes were even served. They did not have the mood to play. Almost all of them gathered at the dining hall, waiting for the food to be served.

Everyone was stunned when they gaped at the mouth-watering dishes Mr. Fu put onto plates.

They were much more enthusiastic about having dinner compared to lunch.

Not having eaten much during lunch, Bai could not resist the tempting food. He ate so much that he became bloated.

Lin Huang recalled the Herculean King and the other imperial monsters that were lying bloated on the floor into cards and summoned the Fallen Knight and the rest. They had not been summoned for the past few days, so the dinner was definitely a treat for them.

“I’ve never had such delicious meat in my life!” Tyrant commented.

“You mean there’s food that’s even more delicious than dried carrot?!” Lancelot was completely shocked.

“Master, could you learn to cook this well?” Even Grimace humbled himself to Lin Huang for the sake of good food.

“Your master shouldn’t be learning to cook in order to conserve his energy.” Mr. Fu shook his head while smiling. “If all of you would like to learn, I could send you a cooking inheritance.”

“I’ll try to learn!” Bloody was the first to register.

“I want to learn too.” Lin Xin was the second to raise her hand.

“Me too.” The Witch raised her hand too.

“I’ll be in charge of eating then,” Tyrant offered while smiling. The rest shared the same thought too.

Night soon fell after dinner. It was beginning to get crowded outside too.

Fireworks of all colors exploded.

Under Grimace’s illusion as their cover, all of the imperial monsters gathered on the balcony of the second and the third floor, watching the fireworks dazzling in the sky.

For most of them, it was their first time seeing fireworks.

“It’s so beautiful!”

“I bought some in the morning. Would you guys want to play?” Lin Huang asked while smiling.

“Yes!” The imperial monsters answered in unison.

Lin Huang took the fireworks out and put them into a little pile. He got the imperial monsters to choose what they wanted and all of the fireworks were whizzed away immediately.

He demonstrated by setting off one firework. They learned fast and began setting their fireworks off on their own.

Fireworks of various colors shot into the sky and exploded into beautiful glows. The sound of laughter came from below.

Lin Xin secretly lay her head on Lin Huang’s shoulder while he grabbed her shoulder and caressed her hair lovingly.

Mr. Fu was smiling faintly as he watched the siblings and the imperial monsters under the sparks.

This third New Year was the most crowded and warm one Lin Huang had ever experienced in this world.