Walking around the enclosures and breeding stations containing eggs, the old man provided ample information that mainly focused on the characteristics of beast potentials and how to determine their strengths and weaknesses.
Normally a beast selection involves kids choosing a beast based on their first impressions and assumptions. However, the old man was being generous and shared the finer details because he liked the kids.
One had to know that soulbond beasts would not only provide physical enhancements and access to affinity but also amplify their wild instincts such as bloodlust and more.
The characteristics of the physical enhancement was dependent upon the soulbonds strength and also the soul's type including the shared distribution.
For example, if one formed a soulbond with a bull, one would receive more strength. On the other hand, forming a bond with an agile beast would more likely enhance one´s tendons, flexibility, and other lower body parts before the focus would be on the rest.
There were only a few beasts on the first floor of the breeding grounds which inhabited wild beasts, awakened, evolved beasts, and a few unblemished beasts.
Magical-ranked beasts were in the lower basement and probably there were only a handful of them in C-grade cities.
Most awakened, evolved, and unblemished ranked cubs weren't much stronger than wild beasts at the beginning. But higher-ranked beasts grew and matured at an alarming rate so it would be much harder to control them without a huge amount of soul energy. In the absence of an abundance of soul energy, the soulbond could backfire and the beast would be able to either control the contractor, destroy one's soul partly, or in the worst-case scenario even completely.
Greg, who didn't have such problems, could easily control a late evolved ranked beast so he paid attention to every word said by the old man.
One's soul energy would grow with his first soulbond until it matured, evolved, or when a new soulbond contract was formed with another beast.
It was unknown how large the shared amount was but roughly 3% to 10% of a beast's growth was given to the masters which depended fully on one soul.
While most souls only distributed 3% to 5%, some fortunate ones would get a share of 10% from one´s soulbond as their soul was generous.
To put it simply, Greg's soul energy was between 400-500, and forming a soulbond with a fully grown late evolved ranked beast would use up around 450.
But an evolved ranked cub used up less than 450 soul energy at the beginning and only at the end it would need the previously mentioned 450 soul energy to get subdued.
This growth would give enough time for Greg's soul energy to grow and mature in size while the cub matures simultaneously.
With a distribution of 10%, Greg would receive around 45 soul energy once his first soulbond matured given that the soul energy it needed was 450 units once it matured.
That was another reason why one would form a soul bond with cubs or eggs in the beginning.
It was one of the most important reasons!
Forming a deep connection with cubs was easier than trying to tame wild beasts who lived in freedom.
When a beast mutated or evolved into a stronger existence many things could happen.
One of the possibilities was that the beast negatively affects the master because the soul energy needed is too high causing the human to suffer unbearable and constant pain. The other possibility could be that the evolved beast shares more of its strength with the human forcing the soul energy to increase which would also hurt them, but only temporarily.
This was a rare occurrence and nobody was sure of the exact cause.
To conclude, having a beast that can evolve is a double-edged sword in most cases.
If one were to raise a beast with a high possibility to evolve, a deep connection is important and also much easier to form.
Even if a soulbonds soul energy is larger than the master´s as long as it doesn't want to break out of the soulbond contract forcefully, everything is fine.
Once a beast with higher soul energy than the contractor revolts, the whole situation takes a dangerous turn.
That's why soul energy is so essential.
Even if Jason formed a contract with a one-star wild beast with potential, it was unsure if this beast would stay with him or if it would break the contract and flee.
Once his soul was damaged, it would take some time to fill in the gap and the missing chunk of the soul world that got destroyed when the previous soulbond left, while the innate soul energy remained.
But this isn't the only way to increase one's soul energy.
Rather than using magical treasures or relying on one's soulbond, one can train the soul energy with certain training methods.
These were rather painful but many desperate people used them because their soul energy was weak.
For them, an increase of one point in their soul energy would mean that they can bind a slightly stronger beast which might have greater potential.
But most zero, one star, and even some two-star soul-awakening rankings would give up their wish to get stronger and achieve something because there would already be hindrances before their journey to increase their mana core's rank had begun.
Training with these methods increases the soul energy only slightly except if the innate soul energy is high.
In this case, the soul energy increases faster because the increasing rate is based on percentage.
Jason meanwhile had at most one point in soul energy, more likely even less. It meant that he would suffer pain even if he were to form a contract with a matured one-star wild beast. Thus, he had no other option but to start training with the special method soon to prevent permanent injuries.
He already knew it but he still couldn't believe his bad luck.
The two boys spent many hours looking at the different beasts in the Pagoda and before they knew it was already late at night but Greg was still undecided on which beast to pick as his first soulbond.
He had narrowed down to three evolved ranked cubs, and all of them had roughly the same dark-green radiating color while one looked marginal denser to Jason.
These beasts were a wind attributed condor hatchling, a thunder attributed wolf cub, and a newborn lesser Orc.
Jason had no particular preference because they looked roughly the same to him until he saw a non-elemental bull calf with a feeble but dense green color enveloping it.
After looking at the thousand types of beasts Jason formed a theory that the colors he could see were the beast's potential.
A list had already formed in his mind over the last few hours beginning with colors black, light-grey, dark-green, and finally green.
There was only a single, neutral green radiating color from a beast but the radiated color was incomparable to dark green.
All of the beasts shortlisted by Greg had the potential color dark green which was comparable to an unblemished beast.
While the black color was comparable to awakened beasts, light-grey seemed to be the potential of evolved beasts.
The green color Jason saw right now was different from the green he had seen radiating from the other beast as it seemed to be weaker. But when Jason saw it, it was quite a marvelous sight as the radiating color moved around the bull calf vigorously.
This green color seemed to be weak and feeble but at the same time it seemed strong and Jason wondered why this was the case.
The calf looked almost excited and Jason was tempted to pull down his bandage but he forced himself to behave or his act would have fallen apart.
He still had his bloodied bandage on but the outlines of this calf were as crystal clear and detailed as if he could see it with his normal eyes.