by William Hill
He had never seen something comparable to Jason´s soul and he wanted to take him as a disciple without any complaints as he saw the color of the orb Jason had used.
`Wasn't it green before????? Why is it black now? NOO...WHY?!` The old man was in disbelief. He thought he had finally found someone even better than God's Children which were 5-star awakenings but the pitch-black color the orb radiated shattered his lifelong dream.
Calming down he looked at Jason with pity and Greg´s family could understand him completely after seeing the pitch-black orb in front of Jason.
Previously the old man had the gut feeling that this youth would be even more special than Greg and he gave out his contacts because of that but apparently, his gut feeling betrayed him.
Before they could only see the huge and vast world projected by Jason´s soul but now they could clearly see the orb
Greg´s father wasn't sure if he should pity Jason or be happy as he didn't want Jason to be more outstanding than his son but after thinking for a second he was embarrassed about his thought and it was definitely a pity that such a beautiful soul had such a weak soul-power.
The orb´s color indicates the strength of one's soul energy and how strong one's soulbond could be at most.
While Greg´s red, almost light red could form a contract with a stronger evolved beast nobody except the old man understood the pitch-black as black with slight red was normally the weakest possible.
He wondered if the youth in front of him would even be able to endure the pain from a matured one-star wild beast which was by far the weakest possible rank a beast could get.
Looking at Jason the old man announced
"Young man you have a beautiful soul and I'm ashamed to say that I don't know how many beasts you can tie to your soul in the future and I also don't know what the golden hue represents which gives you 5 stars compared to a God's children at the worst….
Unfortunately, your soul energy is the weakest ever recorded in history and it would be fortunate for you if you can form a bond with a one-star wild beast. That means you get zero stars for this section which is generous in my opinion.
Your average would then be two and a half stars but I will only give you two stars as your soul energy is such a big disadvantage that it is almost impossible to overcome and even if you can do it, your pals won´t wait for you and the gap between each other will get only bigger."
After saying this loud out he added on quietly.
"If you find a one-star wild beast cub or at beast even an egg with decent potential it might be possible to get stronger in a slow pace, otherwise your future as a possible hunter or comparable jobs is bound to be destroyed.."
Chapter 13: Unique Eyes?
Jason had to face the cruel reality but it was hard to accept.
He felt as if his whole world shattered. 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 livelong 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 and now, Jason would only be able to form a soulbond with a newborn one-star wild beast at most?... He couldn't believe his ears but somehow he knew that this wasn´t a lie and the cruel reality.
The old man didn't try to sugarcoat Jason´s situation as he 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 Jason´s
Having the advantage to possess many beasts with the disadvantage of an extremely weak beast as a starter 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 traits in his opinion.
Otherwise, the old man couldn´t understand why there was so much mana assembled around his eye area.
Changing the subject, everyone inside the room listened to him while Jason could only hear him faintly.
"Let's go to the beast hatchery where both of you can choose your first soulbond.
While the old man said this Jason stood up and 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 quietly.
Greg had to support Jason slightly 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 training the Heaven´s Hell technique for many years until it shows results.
But finding a beast with potential one among one-star wild beasts is more unlikely than finding a needle in a haystack even for us and we can´t even help out during the whole beast selection process... Another one 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 which could increase one's soul energy but other than being extremely rare they 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 in 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 rather than crying Jason wanted to find a solution to his problem.
Crying wouldn´t help him but solving the problem.
Releasing himself out of Greg´s support Jason straightened his back while thinking about 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 before and 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.
In the second he had activated the effect of his eyes 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.
Thinking about the effect Jason looked around again without having his eyes activated.
He stopped for a moment and after a short moment, he noticed the mana fluctuations of a wolf mother with five cubs next to her.
That was at least what Jason could see from the mana flow and activating his eyes effect for a short moment he began to analy
ze the cubs thoroughly.
The wolf gave birth to all five cubs but Jason noticed that the radiating color was different from two of them.
While three cubs had the same color one was more distinct and denser but still the same color while another cub had a completely different color which was even denser compared to the previously mentioned wolf cub.
Many thoughts run through Jason's head as Greg and the old man notice his behavior.
The old man explained
"This is a blazing horned wolf mother with its five cubs. It's an evolved ranked beast.
Two cubs are slightly special while one has inherited a slightly superior bloodline 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 also listened but his question confused Greg while the old man smiled faintly
The old man knew that Jason had special eyes since the beginning as he had seen many humans with special traits and he thought Jason had simple mana eyes which could see that one beast had slightly stronger mana radiating from it.
A small stream of mana left his body and Jason saw a finger formed out of mana pointing at the cub with the superior bloodline.
But Jason saw something different.
His eyes or rather the radiating color told him that the mutated cub had a denser color and a "Why?" left his mouth without thinking.
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 our case, the cub's mutation is still in its initial phase while 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.
Chapter 14: Creating a theory
Walking around the enclosures and breeding stations with eggs inside, the old man provided mountains of information mainly focused on the characteristics of beast potentials and how to determine their strengths and weaknesses.
Normally a beast-selection was different without information provided but the old man was generous because he liked the kids.
One had to know that soulbond beasts would not only provide physical enhancements and access to affinity but also their wild instincts such as bloodlust and more.
The characteristics of the physical enhancement depend on the soulbonds strength and also the soul's type including the shared distribution.
If one formed a soulbond with a bull one would get more strength while forming a bond with an agile beast would more likely enhance one´s tendons, flexibility, and other speed-related bodyparts 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 beats, and a few unblemished beats.
Magical-ranked beasts were in the lower basement and probably extremely few in C-grade cities.
Most awakened, evolved, and unblemished ranked cubs weren't much stronger than wild beasts at the beginning but their growth was faster and it would be much harder to control them without a huge amount of soul energy which was required for higher-ranked beasts, otherwise, 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 as such he listened extremely carefully.
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 were 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 soulbound 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 cause Greg's soul energy to grow and mature in size while the cub matures equally.
With a distribution of 10%, Greg would receive around 45 soul energy once his first soulbond matured under the requirement that the soul energy it needed were 450 units once its matured.
That was another reason why one would form a soul bond with cubs or eggs in the beginning.
It´s almost one of the most important reasons!
Forming a deep connection with cubs is easier than trying to tame wild beasts who lived in freedom.
When a beast mutated or evolved into a stronger existence many things can happen.
Either the beast affects the master because the soul energy needed is too high causing the human to suffer unbearable permanent pain or the evolved beast shares more of its strength to the human forcing the sole power to increase which would also hurt but only temporarily.
This happens rarely and it's still unknown how this can be.
To conclude, having a beast that can evolve is a double-edged sword in most cases.
And here comes the previously mentioned connection back to the main topic.
If one raised up 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 with force, 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 regenerate the certain spot the previous soulbond occupied, 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 use them because their soul energy is 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 a stronger 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 obstructions were programmed.
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 cause the increasing rate is based on percentage.
Jason meanwhile had at most one point in soul energy, more likely even less which means he would suffer pain even if he formed a contract with a matured one-star wild beast so he had 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.
After looking around for a few hours it was already late at night but Greg was still pondering which beast to pick as his first soulbond.
Three evolved ranked cubs were among them and all of them had roughly the same dark-green radiating color while one looked marginal denser for Jason.
These beasts were a wind attributed condor, a thunder attributed wolf, and a newborn lesser Orc.
&nb
sp; Jason didn't mind which one he should pick out of them because they were roughly the same until he saw a non-elemental bull calf with a feeble but dense green color enveloping it.
After looking at these thousand types of beasts Jason formed the 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 color black, light-grey, dark-green, and finally green.
There was only a single green radiating color from a beast but the radiated color was incomparable to dark green.
The beasts Greg was pondered to choose had all the potential color dark green which was comparable to an unblemished beast
While Black 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 on the other beast as it seemed to be weaker but when Jason saw it, it was quite marvelous to see 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.
It looked almost excited and Jason was tempted to pull down his bandage but he behaved himself.
He had still his blooded bandage on but the outlines of this calf were detailed as if he saw it with his normal eyes.
Chapter 15: Intimidation
Jason´s steps stopped and he risked exposing himself without any logical reason.
But somehow he felt it was the right decision, even if he wasn´t sure why.
"Greg… Why don't you form a soul contract with this bull calf?"
Without any explanation, Jason asked the question not thinking about anything special.
This sentence caused the old man to stop in his tracks as looked at the calf carefully.
"This is only a normal mid-evolved ranked beast cub called reinforced horned bull. Its chances to evolve into a higher unblemished being is lower compared to the other three potential bonds of Greg. Contracting this beast would be a waste."
