This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Unfortunately, Kain wouldn't be able to take away all 3 objects. He'd already heard upon entering that every once in a while entrants will also be given a choice among multiple rewards instead of just given one chosen for them by the relic.

Kain was quite lucky that he was being given this opportunity after his very first trial.

There were 3 objects available for selection on ornate golden pedestals, all of which he assumed were evolutionary materials suitable for his respective contracts.

The one on the left was a bright green crystal that emitted life-attribute energy—for Eve and Queen's evolution most likely.

The middle object in the center looked like the eye of some kind of spiritual creature, however the colours were inverted. Majority of the eye, which would typically be white, was now black. And at the center was a white pupil surrounded by a golden iris. Since Bea could sense the mental-attribute spiritual power emitting from it, Kain assumed that it was a material prepared for her.

Finally, was a black obsidian-like ore that gave off a heavy atmosphere, almost as though it had its own immense gravitational pull—for Aegis, Kain assumed.

All 3 objects were never seen before by Kain, but based off of the energy they emitted, he was able to conclude that they were evolutionary materials of a quality much higher than any of the ones he'd ever seen before.

Unsure about which would be best to select, Kain was about to enter the Laboratory and run simulations using the 3 materials in front of him, to see what forms may come out. However, with a soft rumble, and three pedestals began to gradually lower into the floor.

'Are you freaking kidding me?!' It seems as though the selection comes with a time limit.

Unable to take his time to run simulation, Kain ran over to grab the life-attribute stone before he was left without an reward.

He was already leaning towards the stone since the evolution of Eve and the Vespirae is more urgent than the other two.

Bea, after evolving into the Apex Mindshard Amoeba of Platinum quality, will not face a bottleneck until green-grade.

Similarly, Aegis was also. Platinum quality and won't face a bottleneck for a while.

However, Queen and Eve are both still silver grade, and without evolving won't be able to surpass their current grade to reach yellow-grade spiritual power.

Kain had also been contemplating what spiritual materials would be most suitable for them, but aside from the seed given to him by his high school teacher Mr. Evergreen, had not found any other suitable materials. Life-attribute materials are even rarer than mental-attribute ones, not to mention not all materials of that attribute would be suitable as the evolutionary base. Explore more at m,v l'e-m|p| y r

Since the next evolutionary form will also impact any potential future forms, he couldn't just carelessly make the decision from the few materials he was able to spot at the college's exchange center.

He does have the seed given to him as a gift, but he was reluctant to use it for the evolution since, from the aura it gave off, Kain believed that its value if he could get it to grow would far exceed being just a consumable evolutionary material.

Thankfully, since this relic seems to believe that this crystal would be suitable, Kain chose to trust its judgement without running any simulations with the System.

The moment Kain made his selection by lifting the green crystal, the scenery around him began to fade as he was transported to the location of another trial.

The second trial took place in a dense, enchanted forest. The trees were tall and their gnarled branches intertwined overhead to create a natural canopy that filtered out most of light coming from above.

The forest floor was filled with ferns, shrubs, and moss, making movement challenging on the ground. Thankfully, only Kain's movements were impeded. The Vespirae could all fly, Bea did not need to move and instead sent threads carrying her splits to the targets, and Aegis was so massive that the dense underbrush was no different from a well-manicured lawn to him.

Kain glanced around uneasily as he tried to spot their next enemy.

"Argh!" Kain had a deep gash suddenly appear on his leg as something attacked him and then quickly moved away. Somehow despite Aegis guarding him closely, it had managed to get through.

The Vespirae guards were sent out to try and identify the enemy while remaining in Kain's line of sight, and Bea also sent out a dense mass of threads to comb the area and attach to anything living nearby. However, there was no luck and after several minutes their enemy was still not identified.

Unfortunately, their enemy appeared to be quite smart and wasn't lured to attack any of the Vespirae and instead attacked Kain again.

On the bright side, Kain was on better guard this time and deflected the attack with his new spear and was even able to finally get a glimpse of their enemy.

It was a small and agile bird-like spiritual creature resembling a sparrow in shape. Its feathers were mostly a deep, muted gray with subtle gradients that shift to lighter shades, creating a shadowy effect. The edges of the wings and tail feathers have shimmering effect that caught the light and gave it a mesmerizing quality.

However, its most mesmerizing quality were the cold and calculating eyes that Kain made direct eye contact with before it disappeared. They were large and luminous, with a reflective quality that caused them to glow faintly. The eye color shifted slightly based on what Kain assumed to be due to the usage of a skill. Right before it disappeared it shifted from deep blue to a shimmering silver.

The good news was that Kain recognized this spiritual creature from his lectures and knew its name and qualities—the Fadecrest Sparrow, a space-attribute spiritual creature that has practically gone extinct and hasn't been seen in the wild in decades.

The bad news was that it was in the lecture of the most difficult spiritual creatures to deal with among yellow-grade creatures.