But he was still too naive. Not long after he stepped into the room, the ten monsters inside immediately launched their attacks in unison!!

The Wind Crystal Butterfly swept a wind blade straight at him, the Poison Dart Frog fired off a poison dart, and in the distance, the Skeleton Soldiers had already raised their bone swords and were charging at Shi Jin, slashing as they came...

The ten extraordinary creatures launched their attacks almost simultaneously, frightening Shi Jin into immediately entering the phased state.

With such a dense barrage, he was lucky to have phasing—otherwise, Shi Jin felt that even with Eleven, unless it used Intimidation to instantly kill every enemy, it would absolutely not be able to block all the attacks for him.

Perhaps only mastery-level Hardening, layering a buff over himself, could have given him any hope of tanking through it.

Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!

Shi Jin completed his phasing, and every one of those skills fell harmlessly through empty air.

Outside.

The old woman attendant, Bai Xi, and Eleven were watching the situation inside the stage through the computer monitor.

"So it's phasing..." When the old woman saw the survival technique Shi Jin employed, she immediately turned to look at Bai Xi.

"This young classmate you brought here is no simple character, is he."

Bai Xi nodded. How could a newcomer Lu Yan had taken a liking to possibly be simple?

To have cracked a ruin during the apprentice period and obtained its relic pearl—even those top-tier beast-tamer heirs were no match for that.

"He's only just grasped the phasing ability. With the constitution of an apprentice beast tamer, holding the phased state for about half a minute is his limit."

"If he can't use phasing wisely, he'll quickly land in danger and fail the challenge." Bai Xi watched Shi Jin on the screen.

Her face was full of exasperation—what a waste!

Phasing was not a permanent buff; it was meant to be activated at critical moments. Keeping it on continuously might be convenient, but did stamina come free?

Did Shi Jin even understand the purpose of this training?

"It's his first time, after all. He needs to adapt slowly..." The old woman, having been through it all herself, said with great understanding.

On the screen, Shi Jin was still maintaining his phased state the whole time, leaving each fierce beast flailing its attacks about like a headless fly—yet it simply could not land a hit on him.

And so, thirty seconds passed.

Forty seconds passed...

When forty-five seconds had passed, the expressions on the old woman's and Bai Xi's faces gradually turned strange!

"How can he stay phased for so long?" Bai Xi could not understand. She too had mastered phasing during her trainee period, and she knew perfectly well how long one could sustain it at each rank and in each state.

Yet when it came to Shi Jin, something seemed to have gone wrong.

"Eep!" Eleven watched the scene quietly, and from Granny's and Bai Xi's expressions it worked out what they were thinking.

Eleven looked utterly calm. No need to make a fuss—so Shi Jin had displayed physical endurance beyond the ordinary. What of it?

Eleven very much wanted to say that it was not that Shi Jin's stamina far exceeded that of beast tamers at his level, but simply that he had abundant experience with "phasing."

Shi Jin, who could endure a weakness period lasting dozens of hours after allocating his points without so much as a change of expression—so what if he overdrew his stamina to phase a little longer? Perfectly reasonable!

"This is not reasonable," Bai Xi said, staring fixedly at the screen.

At that moment, in the room, Shi Jin sank into thought.

He felt that carrying on like this would not do; he sensed he was nearing his limit.

This phasing drained stamina far more than he had imagined!

"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!!!"

As Shi Jin pondered how to break through this stage, the skeleton soldier's great bone sword kept slashing through the air before his eyes with whooshing sweeps, throwing his thoughts into disarray.

"Wait a moment. Since this stage isn't as dangerous as I imagined, perhaps I can go on the counterattack?"

"Senior Beast-Ear also said that a truly outstanding beast tamer must possess the courage to face extraordinary creatures himself."

Shi Jin froze. Some death-wish soul hidden within him, paired with his archaeology, suddenly stirred awake.

At that moment, he recalled the very thing that had drawn him into the field of archaeology.

In truth, the first time Shi Jin on Earth had encountered the word archaeology, it had come from a cartoon.

Jackie Chan Adventures!

The story told of an archaeologist and martial arts expert, Jackie Chan, exploring all manner of mysterious and puzzling enigmas across the world.

The young Shi Jin, with his chuunibyou soul running wild, had thought Jackie Chan incredibly cool, and had even gone through a phase of imitating him.

He not only began studying archaeology, but often practiced his punches and kicks, hoping to reproduce Jackie Chan's difficult moves.

The result: Shi Jin ended up in an ambulance.

That taught him that cartoons were all fake.

Yet a person's dreams never truly end. After growing up, Shi Jin studied many other martial arts.

All sorts of fighting techniques and schools—he knew a little of each, and only a little of each. It was precisely this experience that let Shi Jin last a little longer before dying.

In any case, for various reasons Earth had never allowed him to fulfill his dream—and now, here was the opportunity.

He now possessed magic-like abilities, and his constitution had improved as well, which instantly filled Shi Jin with courage. With a fierce look in his eyes, he recklessly dropped out of the phasing state, planted a kick on the skeleton soldier flailing its blade before him, and sent it sprawling, its bone sword clattering to the ground.

Shi Jin picked up the bone sword, gave it a nervous swing, and leveled it at the remaining nine fierce beasts.

Hot damn—he was about to let himself loose!

"Feels like it could work?" Perhaps this was the first step toward becoming a super Earthling!