Max went to take a look in his sea of soul, excited that his Fairy Queen beast soul had finished evolving.
If the blonde, scarlet eyed woman wearing revealing ruby armor, representing the beast soul had been a tall glass of water before, she was now an ocean.
'Nose bleed worthy...'
Max gawked at the beauty for a few moments before checking out the stats.
'Ah shit! It's super class now! What'll happen if I give it the gem again? Hehe just kidding, if this worked, then I bet this will too...'
With a thought, the black crystal came zooming out of whatever corner of the sea of soul it had been lurking in, happy to do Max's bidding, unlike its real counterpart that never followed Han Sen's commands.
Han Sen had only swallowed his black crystal when heading from the 1st to 2nd god's sanctuary, as you could only take your things inside your sea of soul with you through the evolution pool.
Like the name suggested, evolution pools were used by humans to level up between sanctuaries when they were satisfied with their geno point count, with the bare minimum to evolve being at least 100 geno points of any kind.
There was also no going backwards between sanctuaries, in fact, if you did find a way back, the environment was harmful, degrading the body after enough time.
At Max's command, the black crystal floated back over to the Fairy Queen's palm, and she smiled in a pleased and somewhat seductive manner at Max before she was shrouded in crystalized energy once again.
'What a beauty, she has a bit of room to level up still...Now, the new guy...'
Max looked at his freshly acquired beast soul, the Kirin.
It wasn't the mighty beast it had once been.
All of the features were more or less the same, but it was like it had reverted to what would have been its baby form.
It was extremely adorable and Max fell in love with the pet beast soul immediately.
'Like I said, your name is Zephyr... better start feeding you a bunch of meat so that you unlock your battle form, the same way it's done in the book, it'll be easy-peasy. Hope you have a big appetite bud, well, not too big, I'd like to see you level up soon so that I can give you the crystal next...'
Max exited his sea of soul and turned his attention to the somewhat wrecked clearing in front of him.
"Time to set up shop," he grunted, a wide grin spreading across his face. He triggered the now dormant metal he had used to defeat the Kirin with and put it to a new task.
With a deafening CLANG that rattled through the rock beneath his boots, dense sheets of reinforced steel sprouted upward, expanding and locking into place like an origami bunker.
Alloy beams shot across the clearing, interlocking when they met with each other.
He channeled a pulse of energy through his hands, pounding the main doorframe into place with a single mental nudge that set the alloy slab flush against the floor. Within seconds, a sleek, metal building stood squarely in the island's clearing.
On top, a thick metal rack swung into position, ready to display the thin metal sign he had engraved with his new shop's name.
Max strolled inside, his heavy footfalls echoing off the fresh metal floorboards. Sunlight streamed through the open windows, glinting off the rows of heavy hooks and storage bins he'd installed along the far wall.
He reached into his sea of soul and pulled out his gourd and his spice rack, placing both neatly on the new counter.
Hours had been spent butchering, spicing, and slowly smoking creature flesh, drawing directly on the specialized culinary techniques and preserving methods he'd picked up not only from his preparations in the Marvel Jump, but also from his copy of Super God Gene. (The meat wouldn't spoil this way, and he would be able to move more meat, Han Sen himself had proved this point.)
Every slice was packed with concentrated energy and pristine flavor, guaranteed to draw high prices from any traveler or hunter passing through the sector that needed the geno points.
The amount he had brought with him was whatever he had been able to cram into his backpack, it was able to contain non living items and keep them inside itself while in his sea of soul, acting like a subspace for him.
Beside the jerky, he had quite a few Ordinary to Mutant class beast souls saved up he intended to sell. Max rested both fists on the counter, leaning over to admire what the future layout would look like when the place was a little bit more decorated.
The sleek metallic finish of the shop felt good, but as his eyes scanned the alloy display cases, his mental gears immediately started grinding in a completely different direction. The layout is fine, but the back-end operation is a mess, he thought, his brows furrowing as old habit patterns snapped back into place.
'Where's the inventory log?'
'How am I supposed to track this many beast souls and their tiers, meat weight by the kilogram, and daily profit margins without a proper paper trail?'
For a second, the muscular, reality-hopping powerhouse vanished, replaced entirely by the retail manager who used to run a tight ship back at his old comic book store.
He ran a hand through his blue hair, letting out a long sigh. "I swear, if you don't keep an itemized register, inventory disappears into thin air," Max muttered under his breath, already tapping his chin in deep thought. "Good thing I already thought about this... when we arrive near our first shelter and we are near a teleporter... I'm having them fetch me a stack of grid-lined notepads, sharpies, and a proper ledger, along with the manual meat packaging equipment the shop needs... I am not running this place like an amateur... I mean, it's not like I'm gonna get audited, and I don't have any overhead... Payroll is def simple enough haha... but still..."
He patted the steel counter once more, satisfied with the shop's physical setup, before turning to face the open doorway, walking through it, and flying to the forested area of the island to keep himself busy while waiting for his three stooges to show up.
He intended to hunt around the island a bit to beef up his beast soul stock while he waited, maybe catch that rotten poison frog from earlier in the day while cooking and eating the dead Kirin, adding 10 points to his Sacred Blood geno point count...
They eventually did arrive many days later, and Max did in fact get that toad, and the beast soul that it yielded made him smile.
"Did you guys make it here all right? I see no one's missing any limbs or anything... bring the stuff?" Max asked the men as they touched down and released their beast soul wings back into their sea of souls.
The large packages were also placed on the ground and the three men stepped forward, complaining to high heavens about the trip.
"That mountain fucking sucks butthole!"
"He's right! We almost died, like ten times!"
"Well, if you two idiots hadn't disturbed that rabble of mutant class rabbits, we wouldn't have had to go through those caves!"
Max blinked a few times and a strange smile crept onto his face. 'Bested by wittle bunny wabbits, eh guys?'
"Enough!" Max then called out to stop their yammering.
Biao Zhang, Wang Wei and Yang Ming all shut up and looked at Max.
"Looks like it was a rough run for you guys... This was the last time you need to do something like that, as this floating island is our new base of operations, from now on it's easy street fellas, you've done a good job my dudes."
Biao Zhang squinted, looked around the place and asked slowly, "Wait, you don't mean..."
"I do, the creature that guarded this mystery island has the ability to control where it goes, and now so do I, I got its beast soul, Sacred Blood class pet... you can call him little Zephyr..."
Upon saying that, Max summoned the Kirin and it appeared in a flash of light, looking cuter than ever.
It looked around and then looked up at Max, rubbing its nose against his leg.
All four of them were all of the same mind: 'What a cutie!'
It trotted over to the other three and they each took a turn patting its head and scratching its chin, which little Zephyr seemed to really enjoy.
It would have blown Biao Zhang, Yang Ming, and Wang Wei's minds and not made any sense to them if they realized Max had the raw power to move the floating island by himself, that was something that Demi-gods from the 4th god's sanctuary could be capable of, not someone in the first god's sanctuary. Max was perfectly fine with hiding his real power for now as to not freak them out.
After the goods were all dragged into the store and Max had a glass of juice, the four men finished setting up the place and the floating island started moving at a brisk pace, while max pretended to command Zephyr to guide it towards a fairly remote shelter on his beast soul map of the sanctuary.
And then, time passed...
...