Several delicious, fantabulous, meritorious Butter Gutter bars later, Il Ji received the printouts he had requested. The printouts in hand, he took the elevator back to the first floor lobby and stopped by Agnes desk.
…A smoky haze flittered against the red lamp on her desk. It was beginning to get dark outside, so the light filtering through the window was nearly gone.
"Il Ji, right?"
"Yes, that's me!" He replied cheerfully.
She continued to drone. "Your exam date is set for 1 month from now. I'd wish you good luck, but you'll either fail or cheat your way through. Here's your books."
She pointed to a large stack on the other side of her desk. Il Ji gulped. There was no way he could carry ALL of them back home…
With a start, he remembered. "Jackpot, open up!"
The newly summoned beast opened its lid as far as it could manage.
Il Ji stacked the books carefully inside the open chest. Since they weren't 'treasure,' they couldn't go into the treasure space.
Luckily, Il Ji had found some time to improvise a tongue guard to keep the rest of the chest from getting wet. He had affixed two small wooden walls that sat on either side of Jackpot's tongue, with a third plank on the bottom.
The third plank was naturally fit to the chest's size. As a result, no chests were harmed or nailed in the making of this tongueguard.
Interestingly enough, the uncured wood he had used had been replaced with dark brown, smoothed wood and had perfectly melded with Jackpot's body. Il Ji quickly took note of the new change: so far, it was Jackpot's first recorded use of his new [Mimic] ability.
The books stored, Il Ji put Jackpot back in his Soul Space, thanked Agnes, and walked out the door.
As he strolled down the street, he took a look at his finances. Since operating the store was free- minus the taxes- everything he received was extra income.
Right now, he had saved a total of 15000 credits. However, to get even this much he had scrimped and saved for the last two years virtually everywhere.
Considering that a new, [Silver] bloodline beast cost at least 20-25,000 federal coins, he truly was broke.
Once he got home, Il Ji called for his sister. "Laila, I'm back!"
He waited several minutes for her response. All he heard was Stormcloud tinkling around upstairs. Carefully pulling himself up the flight, he knocked on her door, waited three seconds, and opened it a crack. "Laila?"
He heard Stormcloud again, this time behind him. Spinning around quickly, he yelled in a deep and menacing voice. "COUNTER-BOO!!"
The little girl jumped, ran into the living room, and pulled herself behind a pillow on the couch.
Il Ji waltzed up, grabbed a blanket, and sat beside her. "Did you finish your homework?" He asked.
She gave him a big smile. "All done!" She stated happily.
"Good! Can you bring it to me?"
Laila ran over to her book bag, grabbed the datapad next to it and brought it to her older brother. "Here it is!"
Il Ji scrolled through the lessons. "Complete, complete, 100%, 100%, well done Laila."
She beamed.
"…You have time for another show yet, if you want. I have some things I need to work on tonight, so I'll be heading downstairs in a bit."
"Do you want to watch the Dragon show with me?"
"Mm, maybe one episode." Il Ji replied. They were short, 20-minute episodes.
He snuggled up to her and placed his arm around her little form. Once the show was over, he kissed her on the cheek. "Two more." he intoned before going downstairs.
He began to use his holodevice to search for cheap animals with the skills he needed. With only one of them, his test taking skills would greatly improve. With all of them, glancing at each page of the textbooks for a single second would guarantee a 100% success rate.
He quickly thumbed through sellers. To gain [Submind Creation], [Brain Partition], [Perfect Recall], [Memory Conditioning], [Mental Master], and [Telepathy], he needed a total of 157 skills.
This meant that, on average, he needed to copy 26 skills just to create a single skill. As such, he decided to start with the first and most important.