The biggest expense for the new familiars were those belonging to the exotic appetites such as the onix that ate literal metal. the behemoth ate an entire cow daily as well which was a huge expenditure in and of itself. this was until leon scienced his way to cheating with his cloned zorah magdaros flesh that was way more nutritious than beef. so nutrient heavy in fact that a mere pound of the stuff was all it took to fill the behemoth whelp to the point of lethargy. monster hunter carnivores were simply built more needy resource wise which is why none of them had a problem eating their body weight of such flesh.
Leon shrugged off the cost of the cloned flesh since the most expensive part of the cloning process was a one off expenditure unless you used up all of your starter culture. sure it took a steady drip of money to keep the cells replicating without damaging them but it was only a tiny amount at a time. the most expensive familiars such as the onix were beyond leons aid however since the only thing they ate cost a good amount per meal.
The new burden on the finances wasn't enough to cause problems for beacon but it certainly tightened the budget by a good chunk. the next two days leon had the foreign students show up with their familiars so he could catch them up on the relevant training exercises that his own students had already learnt. leon snickered at sun when he showed up physicly bound over his familiar who looked downright fed up with sun. apparently the abra knew that leon's lesson's were extremely important but sun had wanted to ditch them to goof off instead and abra was having none of that.
Honestly leon felt a bit bad for the boy as he basically got stripped of most of his autonomy when he bound the abra. for a person like sun this was by far the most torturous thing that had ever happened to him and he had dealt with discrimination all his life as a faunus! to make matters worse leon could tell that sun was refusing to try and meet some sort of middle ground with abra out of stubbornness. the boy loathed the idea of giving his whimsical lifestyle in any way so he was stuck in a vicious cycle with abra reining him in forcefully.
"Now that everyone is here i will now go over the second lesson or rather the first real lesson about your familiars. assuming each of you has reached some sort of balance with your familiar you should now be able to begin reaping the benefits that having such a thing entails. if you pay attention you should be able to feel your familiars with your eyes closed , this feeling is what i call {bonded tether}. it works as an indicator of where your familiar is at all times as well as a way to understand the condition your partner is in." leon explained seriously.
"The biggest benefit that this gives you is in the case either of you get captured or put in danger the other can find you with a rescue party or reinforcements. for your familiars they can feel your aura reserves to determine what is going on such as if they were to suddenly drop from a sneak attack the familiar would immediately seek to aid you. at a deeper level it is even possible to share senses to gain a better understanding of the situation."
"The second benefit each of you got but may not have noticed was that your aura reserves have received large boost in amount and potency after your familiar was bound. this phenomenon is what i call {soul resonance}. thanks to the bond being between both your own soul and the soul of your familiar , both are supported and nourished by the other allowing a rapid growth in aura that would normally only occur over a very long amount of time. as a result despite your young ages you each should have the aura reserves you normally would have only gotten after triple your current age was reached." Leon explained patiently as the students started verifying that , yes this was in fact true.
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