This Beast Tamer Has So Many Questions

Two weeks passed, and with them came the answers Elias needed most.

The first and most pressing worry was put to rest: the contract with Briar would remain intact through the evolution, and Briar would still be Briar afterward—the same stubborn, beloved little vine, simply grown into something greater. Whatever emerged would be his friend, not a stranger wearing its shape. That alone lifted a weight he hadn’t fully admitted he was carrying.

The second answer spared the vines a crueler fate than he’d feared. For Briar, and for the rare vines with two or three favorites, the second step did not actually require them to die to each attribute directly. They merely had to be saturated in it—steeped in enough of their favored element to be brought to the very brink of death, near enough to touch it, without quite crossing over for each one. A grim, delicate balance to strike, and one he was not remotely looking forward to managing across six attributes at once.

Even with that confirmed, Elias didn’t rush headlong into it.

He made himself wait until he’d worked out the third and final step first. He had no desire to fill his laboratory with a heap of near-dead vines and then discover he didn’t know what to do with them next. Better to understand the whole path before walking it.

The final step, mercifully, proved easy enough to crack. He already knew the evolved form would carry the Life attribute, and so he reasoned the last step had something to do with life—and he was right. The dying vines, brought to the brink by their favored elements, had to be steeped in concentrated life energy to carry them across the threshold and to call forth the evolution. Death by their favorite, and rebirth through Life. A door, and the key to open it.

And he had exactly the materials for it.

Across his laboratory sat ten sets of remains—the ten vines he’d tested, each killed by a different attribute, each ruined in a different way. Some charred black, some burned to fine ash, some rotted soft, some frozen and shattered, some withered to brittle husks. Ten deaths, ten distinct forms of ruin.

Now each set of remains rested inside a jar—submerged in a rich mixture of Lifebloom honey blended with precious royal jelly, the most concentrated life energy Elias could produce.

And slowly, surely, they had begun to change.

It had been about a week since he’d sealed them in, and the transformation crept along day by day. The honey was being drawn steadily into the remains, drunk up by the ruined vines—and as it was absorbed, the scattered fragments began to draw toward one another, gathering, compacting, knitting themselves back together from ash and char and husk into something dense and whole.

Two more weeks passed in patient vigil.

Elias refilled the honey-and-royal-jelly mixture as the remains drank it dry, again and again, and with each passing day the gathered remains grew more compact—denser, tighter, smaller—until at last each had shrunk to roughly the size of a finger. A seed, of sorts. And then, slowly, their colors and textures began to shift, each one taking on the character of the attribute that had killed it.

The fire seed deepened to a fiery red, the air around it noticeably warming, a faint heat radiating from the jar.

The water seed turned a cool blue, beading with moisture, tiny droplets forming and trickling down the glass.

The poison seed shifted into a sickly swirl of green and purple—and began leaking a faint, noxious gas that sent Elias lunging to seal and quarantine it at once, while he, Holly, Honey, and Hope all panicked.

The lightning seed became a restless mix of purple and yellow, throwing off small sparks—one of which zapped Holly, then Honey, both of whom buzzed in deep affront. Hope, however, got zapped and decided the sensation was tremendous fun, and had to be physically discouraged from going back for more.

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And so it went, each seed declaring its nature—and, somehow, its personality—as it formed. The earth seed sat heavy and patient; the wind seed stirred restless little breezes; the light seed glowed softly; the dark seed drank the light from around it; the metal seed took on a hard grey sheen; the ice seed rimed its jar with frost. Each one was unmistakably, charmingly itself.

After three more days, the transformation was completed.

The evolution finished, and as it did, two things happened at once. Elias found he could read the status of the seed before him—and the familiar wheel of fortune surfaced in his mind, his reward for completing the evolution.

He looked at the status first, hardly daring to breathe.

Race: Hundred Fragrance Vine

Type: Plant

Attributes: Wood, Life, Fire

Current Rank: Common Rank 3

Potential Rank: Commander Rank 9

Mood: Content

Skills:

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