CHAPTER 134: FINISHING UP

Finishing Up

A Month and a Half later.

"Finally done." Osho let out a relieved sigh as he practically collapsed in his chair, his lab coat looking messy with his gloves no longer visible. He had faint bags under his eyes, but there was an underlying sense of satisfaction radiating from him.

’You did it!’ Gale exclaimed happily as he landed in Osho’s lap and nuzzled into him. Osho smiled and stroked the bird’s feathers. He’d grown a bit more throughout this period, he certainly couldn’t stay on his shoulder anymore.

"That’s right." Osho chuckled and looked forward.

As for what he had done, well, in front of him some distance away, a large tub which looked like a pool, but quite a bit smaller with all sorts of measuring devices surrounding it could be seen.

Before his successful operation, the tub had been filled with a shimmering blue liquid that gave off electric sparks at random intervals.

A few dozen beast eggs with a similar color had then been lowered into the tub with a contraption, and the eggs slowly absorbed the liquid. Their appearances slowly changed as the liquid slowly reduced more and more and eventually, what remained was a bit of murky water which had been expelled from the eggs, similar to what happened when Osho evolved Gale’s egg before hatching him.

The contraption slowly lifted the eggs out of the tub, and the murky water that remained was drained.

"Last batch complete." Osho turned to see Lady Haggai walking towards him with her usually impassive expression, tablet in hand. However, Lyra could be seen trailing behind her, her small hand gently holding the hem of Haggai’s lab coat, moreover, she looked a bit different compared to before.

She still looked like a toddler, but now, two small wooden horns were growing out of her forehead, resembling antlers, and there were vine-like markings across her body in random spots.

"They will be distributed shortly. So with that, you’ve done everything you wanted to do in this time frame." She stated, and Osho nodded.

"What are the others up to?" Osho asked. He hadn’t stepped outside in over a week, so he was a bit curious.

"Nothing too different from before. They are still going into the wilderness regularly to get a better feel for their abilities and train. Your friends are also following along with them to train as well." She tilted her head.

"However, Fredrick left the Citadel a few days ago with his mother. Also, rumors about what you’re—or rather, Maven—is doing, are starting to fly about. Lastly, the envoys of the various Beast Tamer Colleges will be arriving in a few days, so you finished at a good time." She concluded, and Osho let out a relieved sigh. Everything was going according to plan.

He stared up for a moment as he briefly recalled everything that had happened this past month and a half.

Not long after evolving Lyra, he evolved the beasts of everyone else while evolving an egg for Major Thompson to use. Then he did it again.

He stopped when their potential all reached the Grandmaster rank. Both because anything higher would cause too much of an uproar, and there was a lack of materials.

Yeah, turns out they didn’t have enough stuff to complete the push for Legendary Rank, but that was fine.

After that, Osho had done the same for Simon and Ellie’s shadow guard, then the E.E.S. teams followed.

Next, they had gone to kidnap... enlist the help of several high-level beasts in the wilderness that were at the peak of their rank so that when Osho evolved them, they would break through immediately. Osho evolved them, they broke through, got killed, and their bodies were harvested for materials which were given to the engineering team to use and create high-level equipment

With that done, Osho decided to evolve the beasts of promising students from other schools. This was done to remove suspicion from the Bright Spark Academy as it would be strange if their students were the only ones who had been beneficiaries of this Maven person, and Osho wanted there to be more talented people moving out of the Citadel.

That said, he didn’t do this for every school and just the ones deemed to have the biggest impact. It is also these schools that had their eggs evolved.

Speaking of, the batch evolution was easily the most stressful thing Osho had to do during this entire ordeal.

The first few times he tried, he failed, and the beasts within the eggs had died, which was insane as Osho didn’t even know that was possible, considering the strange laws that revolved around beast eggs on their planet.

Regardless, after a long round of experimentation, he managed to make it work.

As it turned out, Osho was able to force the scope of his ability to extend to evolving multiple things at once. This was similar to before his ability was upgraded, when he’d need to sacrifice mental energy to see the ribbons of a single egg or beast without needing to touch it, or see the ribbons through things like screens.

It was quite similar now, just that the mental burden had picked up quite a bit.

As for the process itself, well, turns out that Osho had been correct in his conjecture, just that it wasn’t simple to do.

If one wanted to evolve multiple beast eggs using the ability, things would become quite a bit more difficult.

One must remember that no beast was the same, which was the fundamental reason why Beast Evolution as a concept was so unfeasible.

Osho was able to work around this with his ability, but when it came to evolving multiple things at once, the strain became evident.

The same Affinity did not mean the same beast. For instance, the last batch he did which consisted of Beast eggs with the lightning Affinity. All the eggs contained beasts with that Affinity, but that didn’t mean every beast within each egg was the same, even if they were of the same species.

Which is where the workaround came in.

Osho and Lady Haggai—as she was the one who’d been helping him the most this time—speculated that before hatching, beasts were still closely tied to their affinities. This was a trait that existed even after hatching, which is why you’re more likely to see a fish with the water Affinity than a fish with the fire ability.

However, they speculated that this was the case even more so before hatching. The reason was up in the air, but regardless, that was the running theory.

Anyway, as a result of the creatures within being more in tune with their core Affinity before birth, they believed that the sheer differences between creatures regardless of species weren’t as extreme as after they hatched. Hence, Osho with his ability could tweak the process of evolution, allowing it to extend to multiple eggs at a time.

The trail and error was infuriating, but Osho felt gratified in a way he never had before.

Before this, he’d only properly used his ability a total of 5 times. Three times for Gale, once for Hydro, and once for Ellie.

Now, though, he had the resources and backing needed to use it constantly, and with each use, he became more and more familiar with how the ability worked.

For instance, he now realized that evolving a beast didn’t always need to result in a single rank increase. The feedback he got now made him aware that, if he wanted to, he could tweak that increase and make it less. He had a feeling he could increase it, but for now, he could only reduce it.

One might ask if there was any point to that, but Osho found it quite fitting as that meant he had far more control over the evolution process.

What’s more, Osho could now sort of get a ’feel’ for what direction a beast he was evolving would move towards.

This one was quite vague and was only a rudimentary feeling at best. But say he was evolving a canine-like beast, he’d be able to tell if the evolution he was performing would lead to an emphasis on its attack power, defensive power, agility, or sheer magical prowess. And he could choose what direction he wanted to move in, which would, in conjunction, somewhat affect the materials needed for the evolution.

This was huge.

It meant that Osho could now, to a degree, create specialized beasts for people to hatch, and hatch them based on their preferences.

It was also the reason why Fredrick left so late after Osho had evolved Hydro again. When he figured out he could influence the specializations of what he evolved, they’d spent a while gathering darkness/shadow Affinity beast eggs, and Osho evolved them in the direction of stealth, subterfuge, and information gathering.

Well, he believed he did. The thing was still a bit too vague for him to truly be certain, but he was sure it’d be alright.

"I’m assuming you’re going to sleep?" Lady Haggai asked, though, it was more of a question.

"Yeah." Osho nodded as he rubbed his eyes. He’d gotten better at handling the mental burden that came with forcing the ability to work beyond its current level, but it was still quite stressful.

"Hm, alright. You know where the rooms are. Call me if you need anything." She said curtly and walked away.

’Ugh, Gale, assistance please.’ Osho said through their bond, too lazy to stand up.

’Kk.’ The bird obliged, and he felt himself get lifted by a gentle yet firm breeze as he was carried towards the room Lady Haggai spoke of.