Arthur never thought that they would offer him such a good deal right from the start. By the looks of it, he has some importance to these monsters after all.
First, he needed to know what they want in exchange so that he can weigh in his leverage to stay alive. But the next words out of Rodan's mouth left him completely dazed.
"Actually, we are just guardians here and we are tasked to do this wether we like it or not. The things that we are offering you are just for the training phase. You still need to complete the trials given here."
"If you overcome the trials, then you can go home with the rewards that you get. If you fail, then we can just kill you here. This big guy can cook anything".
"Fail and I kill you slow. No mercy." Lord Saven who was very quiet just a moment ago, released a terrifying killing intent. It was cold.
"Can I choose not to take the trials and you just let me go?"
"No, you can't. You already received the benefits of the pond yesterday and right now, so you already started the training phase."
"Fine, I will take the trials". Arthur felt helpless but atleast there is a way out for him.
'You may be a smart kid, but you can't still beat this crafty old wolf.' Rodan may look very serious on the outside but he was laughing on the inside.
"What are you afraid of? With the both of us training you for a while, you already have fifty percent chance of success."
"I am strong. With me, you will become strong." Rodan just smiled at his partner's remarks and decided to leave for now.
"Just stay here for now. Training starts tomorrow. I will explain more after breakfast. I need to prepare some things. Big Guy, let's go."
Lord Saven finally went out of the pond leaving Arthur alone in it. Then the duo started walking slowly into the distance.
Arthur spent the rest of the day floating in the pond. For some weird reason, a few minutes after Lord Saven and Rodan left, he fell asleep. It was in the middle of the night that he woke up, however, he was not hungry at all.
He observed his surroundings and found that the two monsters are not there. He went inside the cave and waited for them to return.
Morning came, and when Arthur left the cave, he saw Lord Saven was already preparing to roast meat. Rodan, on the other hand, is in the pond, quietly floating there. He decided to help cook breakfast but was stopped by the cook. He sat down on his spot and waited for the meal.
After breakfast was over, Lord Saven called the white wolf by roaring loudly.
"Hehe before we can start your training, let me check your knowledge about skill seeds. What do you know about skill seeds?" Rodan sounded sleepy when he got out of the pond.
"Well, I know that there are different kinds of skill seeds. The shape of the skill seed pertains to the ability that it can produce. Triangle shape skill seeds are offensive type ones. Square shapes are defensive types. Circle shapes are either transformation types or support types. Cross shape ones are random types but the abilities given are a little bit strange."
"Okay, go on. How do you acquire a skill seed?"
"I read some books about that. Also my uncle and my father confirmed that to obtain a skill seed, there are three ways. By way of submission, by killing monsters or people and lastly, by harvesting elemental offspring.
Submission is also called offering ritual because you need a beast to offer his abilities in exchange of not killing it. Once the ability is offered and the skill seed is formed, the monster will temporarily weaken and unable to use the offered ability.
The second one is directly killing the monster or hybrids. In the case of monsters, the strongest or unique ability will form the skill seed. It's also the same for hybrids, but unlike monsters, hybrids can swap the skill seeds on their body and equip or unequip them. It's basically robbing.
Skill seeds are also differentiated into colors. Green, blue, yellow, white, red and orange: green being the lowest rank and orange being the highest.
As for the third way, they never taught me about it yet. That's all I know."
After Arthur said all of these, he saw Lord Saven give him a look of contempt. Even Rodan had a face of looking at him like an idiot person.
"Okay, let me correct or add some things to what you told us. First, cross shape skill seeds are not random types, skill seed formation follow rules like bloodline factors. I will explain further next time. Second, offensive, defensive and circle shape skill seeds is divided into magical and weapon form. Third, orange is not the highest rank skill seed. Fourth, actually monsters can swap skills, but we do certain procedures or follow some rules. And lastly, there are other ways to obtain skill seeds."
"Enough. Pond time now. Tomorrow continue." Lord Saven suddenly cut the discussion and glared impatiently at the white wolf.
"You heard him, it's time for pond time. Your first task: just go in the pond. Now, you just have to fight the urge to sleep once you are in. Or you can choose to sleep, however, you need to wake up after one hour or less. After you do that, we can go to the next step.