Rudra was sitting in his room in stunned silence as he comprehended the implication of the new information he had just received. His power was not a typical card type, instead, it was a variant that was never seen before. With its special ability, he could grow his tamed beasts while they were in their card form.
According to the information transmitted to him by the cardholder book in his mental space, it had four main powers.
First power was related to the growth of the tamed beasts. As long as the tamed beasts were placed in the cardholder and the cardholder was supplied with enough mental energy, it could directly improve the beasts without Rudra having to summon them out.
The second power was a supplementary passive ability that improved the benefits of the first power. As long as a beast was contracted to Rudra and placed in a card form in the cardholder, it would enjoy an increased growth rate of stats, the reduced energy requirement for grading up, and increased chances for acquiring new and powerful skills.
The third and fourth abilities of his cardholder were something Rudra was determined never to reveal to the public, because of the jealousy he would incur from the masses if they came to know what he was capable of.
The third power of the cardholder required Rudra to first have a contract with multiple tamed beasts. Rudra could then use the cardholder to drain energy cultivated by one of his tamed beasts, its stats, and its skills, and give it to another one of his tamed beasts.
This way, if he used a large amount of unimportant tamed beasts as a sacrifice, he could make his favourite tamed beasts stronger at a rapid pace, even produce variant types of tamed beasts due to the presence of skills that they could have never acquired otherwise.
The fourth power of the cardholder was similar to yet different from its third power. Using this ability, Rudra could fuse two tamed beast cards, allowing him to create a stronger variant of one of the two beasts, a hybrid of the two beasts, or an entirely new species derived from the two tamed beasts.
The true power of this ability depended on Rudra's knowledge of Tamed Beasts. With more knowledge, he would be able to better pair two tamed beasts for fusion, complementing and amplifying the result of combining their powers, and even create a hybrid or new species that would have none of the weaknesses and all of the strengths of the parent species.
The more he thought about these abilities, the happier Rudra grew. Finally, he had found his way of growing stronger. Even though his starting point was very low, Rudra was determined to catch up to the truly strong beings of the world with the help of his new special powers.
-x-x-x-x-
For the next week, Rudra didn't take a step outside his apartment, continuing the routine he followed during the hatching of the eggs. Only this time, he was not infusing the energy into the eggs, but rather into the cardholder book in his mental space.
After a few days of constant energy infusion, Rudra felt the cardholder book in his Mental Space transmits a feeling of fullness to him. He decided that it was time to try out the first ability of his cardholder.
Going into his mental space, Rudra activated the cardholder. Immediately the two cards stored in the cardholder started glowing with a dim glow. This was because Rudra had activated the first ability of the cardholder and started transferring energy to the two cards.
Rudra watched in fascination as his cards rapidly progressed. Earlier when he had tried providing energy to the mutated caterpillar larvae by summoning it to the real world, he had only managed to make it grow by 0.2% even after exhausting his energy which lasted for around ten minutes.
But now, the card was growing by the rate of 2% every ten minutes and there was no wastage of energy as he didn't need to summon the tamed beast at all. This was ten times better progress as compared to his before.
It took him close to eight hours of effort, but Rudra finally managed to level up the two tamed beasts. They grew up directly from the larvae stage to the full-grown stage.
[Mutated Caterpillar]
Rank: No-Grade
Rank Progress: 0%
Physical Stat: 10
Mental Stat: 3
Energy Stat: 10
Skills: Spit Silk, Repulsive Stench, Insect Bite, Curl Up
[Mutated Worker Ant]
Rank: Common-Grade
Rank Progress: 0%
Physical Stat: 30
Mental Stat: 5
Energy Stat: 20
Skills: Stone Eater, Empowered Strength(Passive), Empowered Defense(Passive), Absolute Obedience(Passive), Iron Tackle, Burrow, Crunch
Rudra was both ecstatic and shocked at seeing the vastly different cards before him. The pathetic beasts with pitiful stats had disappeared. What he saw before were powerful beasts that could probably survive for a long time even in the wild.
'Where did all these skills come from? According to what I learned in class, tamed beasts rarely learn skills when they level up. Most tamed beasts know only one or two skills as they grow to adulthood. Most of the other skills have to be trained into them by the tamers.'
'Yet, here I can see even the 'weak' Mutated Caterpillar with three skills, even though it has a reputation of being useless. Not to mention the whole arsenal of skills on the Mutated Worker Ant.' Rudra thought.
After thinking for a while, Rudra figured out the reason. It was the result of the second skill of the cardholder. According to that power, as long as a beast was contracted to Rudra and placed in a card form in the cardholder, it would enjoy an increased growth rate of stats, the reduced energy requirement for grading up, and increased chances for acquiring new and powerful skills.
"Well, I finally have some tamed beasts now. What do I do next?" Rudra wondered.
While he was pondering this, he was interrupted by the ringing of the phone in his home. Rudra was startled at the sudden sound. When he picked up the phone, an enchanting and melodious voice spoke from the other side.
"I am back."
Just the one sentence made a wave of confusing emotions churn in Rudra's mind. He took a deep breath to calm himself before he responded.
"Hello, Maya."
-x-x-x-
"Hmm, she is late. Does she like making me wait for her? Is it some kind of power play to show who is the boss between us siblings?" Rudra muttered as he nervously tapped his feet to pass the time.
Rudra was currently sitting in an open-air cafe. He was waiting for Maya, who had given him the address of this place and told him that she would meet him there. Rudra even made sure to bathe thrice and dress up in his best clothes before coming here.
All of a sudden, a fancy car stopped in front of the cafe before slowly getting parked. A tall model-like woman with shimmering black hair and an angelic face got out of the car.
She wore a sleeveless top and short pants that complimented her figure nicely. All the single males in and around the cafe drooled as they daydreamed about this beauty that was walking towards the cafe with a natural sway of her hip.
Rudra looked at this woman and sighed internally. There she was, the source of all his nervousness and trepidation. He stood up and waited with a grim look on his face as the woman drew near him.
"Hello, Brother." the melodious voice that had called him on the phone sounded again. The woman looked him over from top to bottom with an amused smile, "You clean up pretty nice whenever I am involved."
Rudra nodded and gathered all the scraps of his courage to fight against his nervousness, "Hello, Sister."
Glancing at the fancy car her sister had driven here and the gaggle of drooling men secretly trying to listen to their conversation pretending to do other things, Rudra shook his head slightly.
"Can't you be a little low profile, Sister? In this day and age where Tamed Beast mounts are the norm, you are showing off with your fancy car. How many thousands of credits do you waste every time for the precious fuel you need for driving your car?"
"Well, what is the use of money if I don't use it?" Maya scoffed before looking at Rudra with an annoyed look, "If you are so worried about me wasting money then you should have just taken the excess money I have when I offer them to you."
"But you keep refusing me while just taking the bare minimum you need to survive on your own. So you don't get to comment about my money wastage now." Maya scoffed.
"Whatever. Your money, do as you like." Rudra said with a shrug.
"There is a good boy." Maya said with a happy nod, "Anyway, I came today because I came to know you are not going to the school anymore where you were training to become a Beast Tamer."
"Did you already pass the assessment and successfully awaken to become a beast tamer? Or did you fail and decided to not try anymore as it would 'waste money'?"
"I awakened successfully." Rudra said, "I even have some tamed beasts now."
"You got tamed beasts? With that pitiful amount of money, you have? I am curious now, just what kind of beasts did you manage to get with that number of credits?" Maya asked as she put her elbow on the table and propped her face on her hands.