DIY Monarch

After that heart-stopping scene, the panel of the Water Demon Beast flashed through Luo Yu's mind — the one that had darted past only moments before. The evolution had failed, but the Water Demon Beast had still briefly taken form. Its data had been clearly imprinted on Luo Yu's eyes. This batch of information held plenty worth digging into. [Species]: Water Demon Beast [Gender]: None [Attribute]: Water [Species Rank]: Lower Monarch Species [Life Level]: Level 5 [Species Abilities]: Ink Sea Raging Tide, Shapeshifting [Individual Talents]: 1. Dominion (advanced talent; a born leader whose bloodline exerts a certain suppressive effect over weaker kin of its kind.) 2. Big Eater (ordinary talent; possesses an appetite beyond that of ordinary individuals.) 3. Vitality (ordinary talent; its energy runs more vigorous than that of its kin.) "July!" "Go fetch my notebook and pen." Luo Yu called out. The little penguin's eyes flicked back and forth between the inkfish and Luo Yu for a moment, then it set off for the research institute in sheer bafflement, waddling unsteadily with a swagger that acknowledged no one. "This data is worth savoring," Luo Yu murmured in his heart. First, the Water Demon Beast's panel carried a [Gender] field — something that had never appeared on any other mutated beast. Gender was simply male or female, yet the Water Demon Beast showed "None," and that seemed to be exactly what was special about it. Which suggested that the Water Demon Beast probably could not breed normally. Come to think of it, that made sense. The Water Demon Beast had come into being through the fusion evolution of a whole group of inkfish, and that group had contained both males and females. Once males and females merged into one body, its sex would naturally be hard to define. But it was also possible that a Water Demon Beast could reproduce entirely on its own, without a mate. Whether that was actually the case, though, was not something Luo Yu could know at this point. He continued his analysis. [Species Rank]: Lower Monarch Species There wasn't much to say about this one. After all, for a group of weak little inkfish to transform into a Monarch Species was already a miracle of life. [Life Level]: Level 5 Now this... was very interesting. You see, ordinary evolution raised only "species rank" and never "life level." Whatever level a beast was before evolving, that was its level after. But ordinary evolution was single-body evolution, and fusion evolution of this kind had few precedents. A school of level-1 inkfish had gained a dramatic boost in life level through fusion evolution... and that was with the fish malnourished and numbering barely a hundred. Didn't that suggest that if each inkfish's base level were a little higher, and the number of individuals a little greater, the evolved form's level might climb even further? [Species Abilities]: Ink Sea Raging Tide, Shapeshifting As for the Water Demon Beast's skills... they had changed from Ink Spray into Ink Sea Raging Tide and Shapeshifting... Ink Sea Raging Tide — as the name implied, Luo Yu figured it was a step above "Ink Spray": an ink spray in the form of tides and billows, carrying more impact, on a larger scale, with greater destructive power. As for Shapeshifting... based on how the Water Demon Beast had evolved, Luo Yu had a rough guess. The inkfish had undergone "elementalization" during their evolution! Before evolving, they had all turned into a kind of ink; in that ink form they had flowed together and combined into the new individual. Didn't that suggest that inkfish — and the Water Demon Beast — possessed the ability of "elementalization"? That they could turn themselves into "ink"? If so, then Shapeshifting was very likely an ability akin to "elementalization." Elements had no fixed form, after all; they could freely combine into any shape. Luo Yu guessed that an evolved Water Demon Beast stood a very good chance of mastering this elementalization ability — that is, of turning itself into ink and recombining to take on other forms. "The most important thing... is the talents." "After evolution, it wasn't that every inkfish's talent stacked on top of the rest, giving the Water Demon Beast dozens of talents — only 3 were retained..." "The Dominion talent did survive. Which raises the question: if a school of inkfish can evolve into a Water Demon Beast, can a group of Water Demon Beasts 'second-stage evolve' into a new species?" "And besides..." In truth, Luo Yu had never seen three talents coexist on a single mutated beast. Two was the most — until now, when at last a mutated beast had broken that rule. He couldn't confirm it fully yet, but this was what Luo Yu already believed... the higher a beast's species rank, the more talents it could carry, and the stronger the talents it could bear. A Common Species could most likely carry no more than two talents... absent some special stroke of fortune, an advanced talent was the ceiling. A Monarch Species, though, had a chance of carrying three or even four, and perhaps the odds of a top-tier talent appearing on one were far greater than for a Common Species. It made sense when you thought about it. A high species rank meant a more perfect evolution — and only a more perfect life form deserved to possess more talents and gifts. As a biological scholar, Luo Yu recorded every scrap of the Water Demon Beast's data that he could, spinning one conjecture after another about it. Beside him, July — who had handed over the notebook and pen — scratched its head. Who knew inkfish could be this formidable! That colossal thing just now... it figured it probably couldn't have reeled it in. Even with the Raptor's Strength the Honey-Water Bee's sting had granted it. "But the most crucial part is still..." For all that the findings above commanded his attention, what Luo Yu cared about even more was the Water Demon Beast's pattern of talent inheritance. "This Water Demon Beast was formed through the fusion evolution of 81 inkfish." "Among those 81 inkfish, the individual talents had been a mixed bag." "Still, the most common was the 'Big Eater' talent, with 11 fish." "The 'Vitality' talent followed close behind, with 9." After all, these had been malnourished individuals. On the farm, food was limited: the Big Eaters presumably went hungry day after day, and that stunted their growth, while the Vitality individuals brimmed with energy — and if they never learned to rest, they burned through their stamina faster, could not replenish their nutrition in time, and likewise grew up underdeveloped. So of the malnourished individuals Luo Yu had picked out, these two talents made up the greatest share. And when that school of inkfish evolved... only those two talents survived. The other ordinary talents, in their scattered numbers, seemed to have drowned in the tide of evolution, mercilessly weeded out, becoming nourishment for the evolution itself. "Doesn't this show, once again, that whichever individual talent is most numerous in the school is the one the evolved Water Demon Beast will most likely inherit?" "81 inkfish: 11 Big Eaters, 9 Vitality, with 'Dominion' as the core — hence the three evolved talents were Dominion, Big Eater, and Vitality." "But swap in a different batch — 81 inkfish, 40 with 'Ice Element Affinity' and 40 with 'Eight-Blade Style' — and the evolved talents would be Dominion, Ice Element Affinity, and Eight-Blade Style?" At the thought, Luo Yu felt the Water Demon Beast's potential was boundless! DIY, made-to-order evolution, was it? Whatever talent he wanted the evolved Water Demon Beast to have... he need only work on the "school," adjusting its talent ratios. For a Beast Master, for a breeder, what could possibly feel better than tailoring an evolved form with your own hands? "Come to think of it — if a single talent shows up in great numbers, could that talent itself upgrade after evolution?" "Take 101 inkfish: 1 'Dominion' and 100 with 'Thick Hide.' After evolution, surely the talent can't still be an ordinary defensive one?" "Might all 100 'Thick Hide' talents evolve and sublimate along with the fusion, becoming a higher-grade defensive talent?" "And if that works — gather over a hundred individuals sharing one advanced talent and have them all fuse-evolve together, and could you breed forth a 'top-tier talent'?" Luo Yu felt he had stumbled onto the true way to raise inkfish and Water Demon Beasts. A school of jumbled talents that evolved by pure chance — even if it became a Water Demon Beast, it would probably be a bottom-rung Monarch barely entitled to the rank, its potential dead last among Monarch Species. But raised his way — with the talent of every single inkfish destined to compose the Water Demon Beast strictly screened from the very start — the result would probably be a true king of the sea, a beast of boundless potential. And there was more... just how many inkfish could fuse and condense into a single Water Demon Beast was another question worth studying down the road. A Water Demon Beast evolved from 100 inkfish and one evolved from 1,000 could not be mentioned in the same breath. Luo Yu suspected a limit existed somewhere; that would take slow, patient testing to find. "What a pity... what a pity!!!" Luo Yu sighed. All that analysis, and in the end he could not contract it himself. This was a Monarch Species. He ached to contract a whole swarm of them. Then, with the boundless ocean before him, nowhere would lie beyond his reach. If only Beast Masters could contract unlimited numbers of pet beasts. Alas, under normal circumstances each person could contract only one. But Luo Yu refused to give up... Cultivating a Water Demon Beast to his liking would probably take a long time — the number of high-talent individuals he had to gather was simply too great — and in the meantime, he would have to add a contract slot. He hurried back to the research institute's library and began digging through its materials — methods for increasing one's number of contracts...