章 13: Unique Eyes?
Jason had to face the harsh reality even if it was hard to accept.
He felt as if his whole world had come crumbling down like the house of cards. He wasn't that ambitious to get a heaven-defying soulbond as his first bond but a one-star wild beast????!!? Even the worst Novice ranks were able to defeat them and such a beast would become his lifelong partner?
Adept ranks were able to defeat the strongest five-star wild beast without much effort as their physique alone was much stronger than these beasts. Now, Jason would only be able to form a soulbond with a newborn one-star wild beast at the most?... He couldn't believe his ears but somehow he knew that this wasn´t a lie, just his fate which was cruel and disheartening.
The old man didn't try to sugarcoat his words and had been direct and clear with him. Though the old man had pitied Jason´s situation, he knew that the youth had to overcome this crisis alone.
He believed that this situation wasn´t the worst outcome at all as he had seen many youths with a soul that could only hold one soulbond in total with a soul energy only slightly stronger than that of Jason.
Having the advantage of possessing many beasts with the disadvantage of an extremely weak beast for a start was better than the former unfortunate ones.
The old man was firmly convinced that the young man in front of him wasn't ordinary as Jason´s eyes seemed to be special in his opinion.
Otherwise, the old man couldn´t understand why there was so much mana assembled around his eyes.
The old man then changed the topic and announced
"Let's go to the beast hatchery where both of you can choose your first soulbond."
Everyone inside the room nodded their heads and followed him outside while Jason stood rooted to the spot for a minute before he noticed everyone had begun to move and he stood up.
He walked down the altar lifelessly.
Greg saw this and ran to him asking "Hey dude, are you okay?"
Obviously, Jason wasn't doing fine but he forced a smile and said "Yeah, of course."
Jason wasn't sure why Greg was worried about him but he didn't care about that at the moment.
The old man walked past the two youths who noticed him and followed meekly.
Greg had to support Jason a little while Greg´s family followed both of them rather quietly.
His mother whispered "How unfortunate… I´ve never seen such a beautiful and large soul….Honey, do you think he will be able to overcome the problem with his weak soul energy somehow? I can't think of any good solution except forming a contract with a good potential soulbond or practicing the Heaven's Hell technique for many years until it shows results.
But, finding a beast with potential among one-star wild beasts is more unlikely than finding a needle in a haystack, even for us! We can't even help him during the whole beast selection process... Another solution would be increasing his rank but this would also take a long time even with resources."
The man answered after thinking for a short moment "Other than forming a contract with a high potential beast, ranking up and practicing the Heaven's Hell technique over a long time, he would have to find high-graded magical treasures. They could increase one's soul energy but other than being extremely rare they also cost a fortune.
I don't think we would be able to afford one with our whole fortune even if our son had a soul like this youth has… It's a pity to lose a promising soul like that to such weak soul energy.
If he works hard maybe he can form a second soulbond in a few years but honestly, I wouldn't be confident in doing something like that."
While Greg supported Jason, Jason´s mind was busy thinking about his huge soul world the whole time.
Other than being disappointed, Jason had to acknowledge the fact that his soul looked really beautiful and magnificent, while the golden color was able to calm him down as he looked around... This however made his heart hurt even more because his soul energy was too weak and he wasn't sure what to do with it...
But he didn't want to cry and instead wanted to find a solution to his problem.
Crying wouldn't help him but solving the problem definitely would.
Relieving himself from Greg´s support, Jason straightened his back while thinking about the possible solutions but there weren't many.
Purchasing a high-graded magical treasure was out of his options as they were way too expensive and forming a contract with a high potential one-star wild beast relied on his luck.
Approximately hundreds of stairs later, they entered another room that was even more gigantic than the soul-awakening hall.
But this place wasn't as quiet as the one they had been in just a short while ago. Jason, who could only see slightly through the bandage because of his blood, was astonished to see thousands of colors radiating from eggs and small beasts inside small landscapes filled with faint mana.
His head began to ache again and Jason turned off his eyes' effect which saw the radiating color of beasts.
Wanting to experiment, he activated the effect of his eyes. The second he did that, Jason noticed that some beasts radiated a stronger color than others even if they were from the same race.
`What does that mean?` was what Jason thought but he couldn't find a solution.
As he thought about the effect, Jason looked around again, turning off the effect yet again..
He stopped for a moment and a second later, he noticed the mana fluctuations of a wolf mother with five cubs sitting next to her.
That was, at least, what Jason could see based on the mana flow. He turned on the effect for a short moment and began to analyze the cubs thoroughly.
The wolf had given birth to all five cubs but Jason noticed that the radiating color was different for two of the cubs.
While three cubs had the same color, the fourth one was more distinct and denser but essentially the same color. The fifth cub had a completely different color which was even denser compared to the fourth.
Many thoughts ran through Jason's head as Greg and the old man noticed his behavior.
The old man explained,
"This is a blazing horned wolf mother with its five cubs. It's an evolved ranked beast.
Two of the five cubs are slightly special. One has inherited a slightly superior bloodline, while the other cub underwent a mutation which made it stronger."
Greg listened carefully as this information could be useful for his choice.
"Can you show me which one sir thinks is the stronger one out of these two special cases?"
Jason asked Greg for help which confused him while the old man smiled faintly.
The old man knew that Jason had unique eyes since the beginning as he had seen many humans with special traits. He believed that Jason had simple mana eyes which could see that one beast had slightly stronger mana radiating from it.
A small stream of mana left Greg's body and Jason saw a finger formed of mana pointing at the cub with the superior bloodline.
But, Jason's eyes told him a different story.
His eyes or rather the radiating color told him that the mutated cub had a denser color and a "Why?" escaped his lips before he could take it back.
The old man was still calm and explained.
"Having a superior bloodline indicates the high possibility to evolve into higher ranked beasts while having a mutation can backfire. Some mutations are powerful while other mutations are harmful to certain aspects.
Furthermore, mutations can evolve when the cub grows stronger and in this case, the cub's mutation is still in its initial phase. Though it's not seen as a very good mutation it could further mutate in a bad way. "
"Ahh" Jason and Greg exclaimed at the same time.
クリエイターの想い 
HideousGrain
HideousGrain Have some idea about my story? Comment it and let me know.
章 14: Creating a theory
Walking around the enclosures and breeding stations containing eggs, the old man provided ample information that mainly focused on the characteristics of beast potentials and how to determine their strengths and weaknesses.
Normally a beast selection involves kids choosing a beast based on their first impressions and assumptions. However, the old man was being generous and shared the finer details because he liked the kids.
One had to know that soulbond beasts would not only provide physical enhancements and access to affinity but also amplify their wild instincts such as bloodlust and more.
The characteristics of the physical enhancement was dependent upon the soulbonds strength and also the soul's type including the shared distribution.
For example, if one formed a soulbond with a bull, one would receive more strength. On the other hand, forming a bond with an agile beast would more likely enhance one´s tendons, flexibility, and other lower body parts before the focus would be on the rest.
There were only a few beasts on the first floor of the breeding grounds which inhabited wild beasts, awakened, evolved beasts, and a few unblemished beasts.
Magical-ranked beasts were in the lower basement and probably there were only a handful of them in C-grade cities.
Most awakened, evolved, and unblemished ranked cubs weren't much stronger than wild beasts at the beginning. But higher-ranked beasts grew and matured at an alarming rate so it would be much harder to control them without a huge amount of soul energy. In the absence of an abundance of soul energy, the soulbond could backfire and the beast would be able to either control the contractor, destroy one's soul partly, or in the worst-case scenario even completely.
Greg, who didn't have such problems, could easily control a late evolved ranked beast so he paid attention to every word said by the old man.
One's soul energy would grow with his first soulbond until it matured, evolved, or when a new soulbond contract was formed with another beast.
It was unknown how large the shared amount was but roughly 3% to 10% of a beast's growth was given to the masters which depended fully on one soul.
While most souls only distributed 3% to 5%, some fortunate ones would get a share of 10% from one´s soulbond as their soul was generous.
To put it simply, Greg's soul energy was between 400-500, and forming a soulbond with a fully grown late evolved ranked beast would use up around 450.
But an evolved ranked cub used up less than 450 soul energy at the beginning and only at the end it would need the previously mentioned 450 soul energy to get subdued.
This growth would give enough time for Greg's soul energy to grow and mature in size while the cub matures simultaneously.
With a distribution of 10%, Greg would receive around 45 soul energy once his first soulbond matured given that the soul energy it needed was 450 units once it matured.
That was another reason why one would form a soul bond with cubs or eggs in the beginning.
It was one of the most important reasons!
Forming a deep connection with cubs was easier than trying to tame wild beasts who lived in freedom.
When a beast mutated or evolved into a stronger existence many things could happen.
One of the possibilities was that the beast negatively affects the master because the soul energy needed is too high causing the human to suffer unbearable and constant pain. The other possibility could be that the evolved beast shares more of its strength with the human forcing the soul energy to increase which would also hurt them, but only temporarily.
This was a rare occurrence and nobody was sure of the exact cause.
To conclude, having a beast that can evolve is a double-edged sword in most cases.
If one were to raise a beast with a high possibility to evolve, a deep connection is important and also much easier to form.
Even if a soulbonds soul energy is larger than the master´s as long as it doesn't want to break out of the soulbond contract forcefully, everything is fine.
Once a beast with higher soul energy than the contractor revolts, the whole situation takes a dangerous turn.
That's why soul energy is so essential.
Even if Jason formed a contract with a one-star wild beast with potential, it was unsure if this beast would stay with him or if it would break the contract and flee.
Once his soul was damaged, it would take some time to fill in the gap and the missing chunk of the soul world that got destroyed when the previous soulbond left, while the innate soul energy remained.
But this isn't the only way to increase one's soul energy.
Rather than using magical treasures or relying on one's soulbond, one can train the soul energy with certain training methods.
These were rather painful but many desperate people used them because their soul energy was weak.
For them, an increase of one point in their soul energy would mean that they can bind a slightly stronger beast which might have greater potential.
But most zero, one star, and even some two-star soul-awakening rankings would give up their wish to get stronger and achieve something because there would already be hindrances before their journey to increase their mana core's rank had begun.
Training with these methods increases the soul energy only slightly except if the innate soul energy is high.
In this case, the soul energy increases faster because the increasing rate is based on percentage.
Jason meanwhile had at most one point in soul energy, more likely even less. It meant that he would suffer pain even if he were to form a contract with a matured one-star wild beast. Thus, he had no other option but to start training with the special method soon to prevent permanent injuries.
He already knew it but he still couldn't believe his bad luck.
The two boys spent many hours looking at the different beasts in the Pagoda and before they knew it was already late at night but Greg was still undecided on which beast to pick as his first soulbond.
He had narrowed down to three evolved ranked cubs, and all of them had roughly the same dark-green radiating color while one looked marginal denser to Jason.
These beasts were a wind attributed condor hatchling, a thunder attributed wolf cub, and a newborn lesser Orc.
Jason had no particular preference because they looked roughly the same to him until he saw a non-elemental bull calf with a feeble but dense green color enveloping it.
After looking at the thousand types of beasts Jason formed a theory that the colors he could see were the beast's potential.
A list had already formed in his mind over the last few hours beginning with colors black, light-grey, dark-green, and finally green.
There was only a single, neutral green radiating color from a beast but the radiated color was incomparable to dark green.
All of the beasts shortlisted by Greg had the potential color dark green which was comparable to an unblemished beast.
While the black color was comparable to awakened beasts, light-grey seemed to be the potential of evolved beasts.
The green color Jason saw right now was different from the green he had seen radiating from the other beast as it seemed to be weaker. But when Jason saw it, it was quite a marvelous sight as the radiating color moved around the bull calf vigorously.
This green color seemed to be weak and feeble but at the same time it seemed strong and Jason wondered why this was the case.
The calf looked almost excited and Jason was tempted to pull down his bandage but he forced himself to behave or his act would have fallen apart.
He still had his bloodied bandage on but the outlines of this calf were as crystal clear and detailed as if he could see it with his normal eyes.
クリエイターの想い
HideousGrain
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