"Let it be."
Dark picked up the [Meowth] Magic Guide Card and accepted reality.
If he didn't like the fur color, he could dye it.
If there were issues with its personality, it could be disciplined.
There was nothing that couldn't be changed.
For a Magic Guide Spirit, the most important things were its attributes, three main stats, and skills.
When a Magic Guide Spirit uses a skill of the same attribute as itself, it receives a power boost.
Therefore, the match between attribute and skills is very important.
Being Dark-type, among [Meowth]'s four Ultimate Moves, [Thief] and [Foul Play] seemed to be Dark-type as well!
Dark injected a wisp of mana into the [Meowth] Magic Guide Card, and information was quickly fed back.
First of all.
This was obviously a Gold Card!
The golden halo surrounding the edge of the Magic Guide Card was a symbol of rarity.
Secondly.
This was a 3-star card!
This was another unexpected point for Dark.
He had originally thought that Magic Guide Spirits refined using [Major Sin Fruits] would be at least 4-star. He never expected to actually get a 3-star card this time!
However, 3-star had its own benefits; it was very useful for enriching the deck.
Moreover, the three main stats of this [Meowth] were robust enough.
Although none of the three stats—Magic, Attack, and Defense—broke the limit, they excelled in balance.
Theoretically capped Mana and Attack values shouldn't have appeared on a species like Meowth, which gave people a weak impression.
But in reality, Dark had long discovered that within the same tier, a Magic Guide Spirit's star rating was more like a level in a game.
This could be seen from how the [Magic Beast (Ditto)] could increase its stars sequentially after using a [Major Sin Card].
The fact that this [Meowth]'s three main stats were so high could be understood as its 'level' being very high.
This was the same logic as [Eevee] being able to rise to 2-star after using [Pride II].
A Level 50 Meowth and a Level 10 Meowth would definitely be different in terms of stats.
But whether a Magic Guide Spirit Card was powerful or not ultimately depended on its Ultimate Moves!
A Meowth possessing four Ultimate Moves had a massive advantage in this regard.
If there was even one 'Divine Skill' among them, it would be enough to support it becoming a strong card among 3-stars.
Dark examined them carefully.
To him, Meowth's four Ultimate Moves, aside from [Pay Day], were actually quite unfamiliar.
[Pay Day] should be the skill with the highest degree of compatibility with [Greed] and the [Ancient Gold Coin], and it was also the Ultimate Move he had predicted would appear from the start.
But the description of this Ultimate Move's effect seemed slightly different from what he imagined?
[Pay Day: Meowth summons a large amount of gold coins from the gold coin on its head and throws them at the opponent, causing variable damage based on the quantity of gold coins.]
[Pay Day (Additional Effect): Meowth beckons wealth and gathers treasure; occasionally, it will obtain rare treasures.]
"It's a throwing-type Ultimate Move, only the damage magnitude is determined by the number of gold coins... But there must be an upper limit to the number of summoned gold coins. The [Pay Day] in my impression isn't some powerful move? Its power setting in the Pokémon games seems to be only 40."
Dark couldn't help but ponder.
"Basically, Ultimate Moves of this type aren't even as good as a Magic Guide Spirit's normal attack; at most, it changes a melee attack into a ranged one."
"This means that in most cases, this Ultimate Move is only fit for dealing chip damage."
"But its core clearly isn't on the attack, but on the subsequent addition: [Beckons Wealth and Gathers Treasure]."
"Meowth beckons wealth and gathers treasure; occasionally, it will obtain rare treasures... What exactly does this mean?"
"Is it treasure falling from the sky, or picking up money in broad daylight?"
"I have a feeling this will be a big surprise!"
But thinking alone was useless.
He temporarily suppressed the urge to verify it immediately and continued to look at the next Ultimate Move.
[Technician] originated from Meowth's ability. It belonged to passive skills, the same type as Sylveon's [Charming Body] and Miltank's [Sap Sipper].
[Technician: Meowth is a natural born technician. When using Ultimate Moves with lower power, the power is increased by 50% of the original.]
"Is this Technician?"
"Does Pay Day count as an Ultimate Move with lower power? It should count!"
"If it counts, the power of [Pay Day] will increase by 50%, going from 40 to 60... Hahaha."
Dark gave two dry laughs, then thought deeper.
"However, the name of the Ultimate Move [Technician] very likely implies that Meowth has extremely high talent in technical aspects!"
Dark couldn't help but recall that special Meowth in 'Pokémon'—not only could it speak, but it could also manufacture various high-tech items. It was simply a god!
"If my family's Meowth could also be that formidable... Slurp~!"
He couldn't help but think this way.
"Can't daydream anymore, better continue researching the remaining Ultimate Moves. [Thief] and [Foul Play], worthy of being Dark-type skills; just the names reveal an aura of evil."
[Thief: Empty-handed theft. Steals an item while attacking, but cannot steal if one is already holding an item.]
Clearly, [Thief] was an Ultimate Move of the same type as Eevee's [Covet].
Both could steal items from the opponent.
And the power was similar to [Covet], being only 60.
With a power of 60, even with the 50% boost from [Technician], plus the STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus), it would probably approach the level of Sylveon using [Moon Power].
Although not particularly powerful, it was passable.
The core of this Ultimate Move still lay in the additional effect of "stealing items."
Overall, it was a very good Ultimate Move.
"The final Ultimate Move—[Foul Play]!"
[Foul Play: Borrowing force to strike force. Uses the opponent's strength to attack. The higher the opponent's attack, the greater the power!]
"Gulp, Gusu Murong Meow???"
Undoubtedly, this was a true Divine Skill perfectly befitting a Gold Card!
Just from the literal description, one could see it was very similar to the [Shuckle] series of skills, belonging roughly to the same category.
Both were cases of becoming stronger when meeting the strong.
Dealing with a person by their own way!
But [Meowth]'s [Foul Play] was more direct in its skill mechanism than [Shuckle]'s tricks; it was the nemesis of power-attack type Magic Guide Spirits.
If it were just this, it actually wasn't unsolvable.
After all, the effects of a Magic Guide Spirit's Ultimate Moves also had tier restrictions.
Skill effects crossing tiers would be weakened.
Under normal circumstances, if it crossed two tiers, the skill effect would be almost ineffective.
But the Magic Guide Spirits Dark refined were of a higher status than general Magic Guide Spirits, which was why crossing tiers became possible.
After carefully digesting all the information, Dark silently recited the [Normal Summoning] spell and began to summon [Meowth] under the gaze of the Magic Guide Spirits.
"In the name of Dark Demon, Magic Guide Summon!"
A layer of golden light, slightly mismatched with the blue-purple of [Greed], lit up on the Magic Guide Card.
The [Meowth] emerging from the card face took form within the radiance.
The incarnation of [Greed] and [Gold Coin], a grey cat with an oval gold coin pasted on its forehead, breathed the air of this world for the first time!
It had silky grey fur; only its ears, the front part of its feet, and a part of its tail were white.
A height of merely 0.4 meters made it as cute as a house cat.
Although Meowth was a spirit that could walk upright on two legs, they actually mostly walked on four.
Dark's Meowth was no exception.
Having just come into contact with this world, its face still carried a trace of innocent ignorance, possessing none of the cunning from the card face.
But unsurprisingly, once it gradually became familiar with the world, the personality at its root would gradually manifest.
"Meow~"
Meowth opened its eyes to look around, intelligence already present in its gaze.
Magic Guide Spirits refined using the [Major Sin Fruit] did not need a [Major Sin Card] to unlock their intellect.
They were incarnations of Major Sins themselves, naturally possessing intelligence higher than the ordinary.
Almost instinctively.
Meowth locked eyes with Gatomon on the cat climbing frame at the first moment!
Grey cat and white cat.
Greed and Pride.
Although there wasn't an irreconcilable conflict like black and white, it definitely couldn't be considered harmonious.
But Gatomon just gave a light snort and refocused on its literacy picture book.
"Tsk."
Sensing it was being slighted, Meowth couldn't help but grin, its large round eyes closing halfway, hiding its true heart deep within the depths of its eyes.
Immediately after, it stood upright from the ground, raised its paws slightly, and extended a sharp claw.
But before it could make a move.
Its feet suddenly floated into the air.
The expression on its face collapsed in an instant.
It whipped its head around to look at the person behind it who had used both hands to support it under the armpits and lifted it up without permission.
In that instant, the collapsed expression melted like a magic trick.
"Meow~"
The soft and sugary meow made one's goosebumps rise.
After Dark lifted Meowth up, he flipped it over, examining it up and down, left and right, before speaking: "Don't you like it?"
"Meow!" Meowth hurriedly shook its head.
Dark: "That's good. I thought you had some opinion about your own birth."
Meowth: "Meow?"
Dark: "If that were really the case, I could only melt you down and reforge you."
Meowth: "Meow meow meow?"
Dark: "Good thing it's not."
Meowth: "Meow..."
Dark: "I'm joking."
Meowth: "Meow!"
Dark observed Meowth's reactions with a beaming smile.
After all, it was just a newborn Meowth. No matter how intelligent, lacking sufficient accumulation of knowledge, it was still somewhat lacking.
And it clearly had no mental guard against Dark, its master.
If educated properly, it surely wouldn't walk down a crooked path.
It was just a pity that [Meowth]'s information hadn't been recorded into [Paradise], so it couldn't live in the dormitory for long periods like the other Magic Guide Spirits.
Although there were six chances left for [Paradise]'s information entry, he couldn't consume one of those chances just for one Magic Guide Spirit.
According to Dark's projection, he would wait until he had at least ten new Magic Guide Spirits before performing the second batch of information entry.
Before that, if he wanted [Meowth] to be able to move around outside for long periods too, refining the [Zoo] as soon as possible was a relatively practical method.
But now was clearly not the time to think about the future.
Dark was intimate with Meowth for a while, then began experiments targeting Meowth's various skills.
The main focus was to experiment on whether [Technician] could have an effect on other Ultimate Moves, and whether [Thief] could steal [Item Cards].
The experiment results were relatively ideal.
From what was currently seen, the effects of Meowth's four Ultimate Moves were not much different from Dark's judgment.
What couldn't be verified, aside from Meowth's talent in technical learning, was only the additional effect of [Pay Day]—Beckoning Wealth and Gathering Treasure!
"I can't possibly let Meowth go out for a walk and see if it can pick up money or something, right?"
"Please, the academy has no currency at all!"
After multiple fruitless attempts, Dark understood that he could only wait for traces to be revealed later before he could further deduce the additional effects of [Pay Day].
After that.
Dark took out the Major Sin series Magic Cards and performed experiments on Meowth.
The focus of this experiment lay on [Lust III] and [Pride III].
[Lust III] and [Pride III] possessed the effect of evolving Eevee and DemiDevimon into 4-star Magic Guide Spirits respectively.
And Meowth was also merely 3-star.
So he needed to confirm whether [Lust III] and [Pride III] could cause it to evolve!
The result was obvious.
The effects of [Lust III] and [Pride III] on Meowth were not significant.
[Lust III] turned Meowth into an unusually clingy little cutie.
[Pride III] merely made it become reserved.
Under such circumstances, Dark first thought of refining a [Greed III] to see if [Greed III] could make Meowth evolve into [Persian].
But refining [Greed III] required a full 10 points of [Greed]!
This month, although there was still a quota of 10.5 points to extract, it was obviously impossible to use it all on [Greed].
Moreover, the current [Greed] indicator was 95.5, only 0.5 points above the standard line of 95.
How to control the increase of [Greed] with restraint was actually a not-so-small topic.
—It wasn't as easy to deal with as [Lust]!
So the most ideal state was to start refining [Greed III] next month.
And for the plan for the rest of this month, the priority was still to bring [Lust] down.
After the experiment ended, Dark had no choice but to recall [Meowth] into the Magic Guide Card.
Although his mana recovery rate was actually enough to support [Meowth] moving around outside for a long time, this kind of behavior treated the symptoms but not the root cause, and had little meaning.
Instead, it was better to let it accept tempering inside the Magic Guide Card—Dark handed it over to Trash Slime!
The [Meowth] Magic Guide Card formed the head.
Trash Slime formed the body.
Unexpectedly, they complemented each other well.
Magic Guide Spirits could move inside the Magic Guide Card; although it would also consume mana values, the consumption was very low.
[Meowth], forming the head, kept meowing, but alas, Trash Slime forming the body couldn't actually understand the cries of the Spirit system...
This was the essence of Dark handing it over to Trash Slime to look after!
If he let it live comfortably, what kind of "tempering" would that be?
Regardless of whether you are [Greed] or [Pride], if you want to "move" as you please, you have to learn to communicate patiently with Trash Slime, or learn to communicate amicably with other spirits.
Thus, inside the Noble House Room 201 kindergarten, a student with a subtle styling was added.
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