Patricia rushed through her afternoon work. She was on nutrition duty today which meant she spent her time adjusting nutrition equations and calculating optimum mating pairs. It was tedious work, but Patricia made sure not to slack off. Even if it nearly drove her to tears of boredom, it was a crucial skill for any breeder. without proper nutrition, and healthy lineages a beast would never live up to its full potential.
Having finished her work, she didn't hesitate to run off to her designated shed. Each group of apprentices were granted a shed of one of three sizes based on the number of contributors. groups with three participants got the largest of these, while individuals had to make due with the smallest. There were a few sheds even larger than the three man sheds granted to the top three achievers upon examination time,regardless of group size.
Patricia gazed longingly at one such shed as she made her way to her own. "Soon, as soon as the next evaluation you shall be mine. MWAHAHAHAHA!" she cackled at the sky looking to all the world that she had finally taken the final half step into madness.
When she reached her shed she pulled out her key and unlocked the door. Only herself and a small group of supervisors possessed keys to her shed, and unless something happened to her or there was an emergency no one would bother checking up on her project. That was why she could be fairly certain that no one suspected what she truly had planned. She approached two cages on top of a small countertop she did her work from. " Hello my pretties! How are we all doing?" Inside of both cages were a number of small grub-like beasts, other than their size and a small stinger on the end of their body they were almost indistinguishable from normal grubs. The grubs were voracious little beasts consuming almost anything they could wrap their mouth-parts around. Patricia had been feeding them a diet of fleshy plant stems and crushed beetles, along with a healthy sprinkling of various minerals to give them what they needed for tough carapaces after their metamorphosis. The bugs in these cages looked nearly spherical, signaling they would soon be ready to spin their cocoons.
"before that I have to check you all one more time.'' She pulled on a pair of thick hide gloves before opening the cage before her and reaching inside to grab a grub. with grub in hand, she moved a tiny collection glass to the grub's rear and slid the stinger through the thin transparent skin covering the top. a non trivial amount of venom dropped from the stinger. Pat then pulled the stinger out and the living skin's healing properties immediately came into effect closing the small puncture wound. With that done she slid the collection jar into a stand in the slot marked 1A, the same label was scribbled on the back of the still wriggling grub. This being done she slipped the grub back into its cage, and repeated the process until she had collected from all the grubs from this group. then she repeated the process with the second cage this time labeling them #B. having finished that, she then began testing the venom. She took a few drops from each sample and dripped them into a series of small divots on a strip of flesh. After a moment, the flesh absorbed each sample and the area immediately around the well would change color to indicate the strength of the venom. It truly was amazing the things beast researchers were capable of producing. Living lab equipment was a staple of any competent breeders tool kit.
Once finished with all the samples, Patricia began to take notes on two results. her mouth split in a big grin as she did so. "the potency has risen drastically since the last generation. the cross breeding wasn't a waste after all." Patricia had gone through half a dozen generations before she decided to go to the market and purchase a toxic centipede to work into the gene pool.
Cross breeding was a process in which different beasts that shared enough similarities were capable of producing viable and fertile offspring. This process would never work with animals, but beasts were different. by allowing her two most venomous female stingers to breed with male toxic centipedes, she could get a clutch of eggs containing stingers with some aspects of the centipedes. of course this wasn't 100% fool proof and Patricia had needed to discard nearly half of the original clutches to weed out the imperfect and damaged individuals. She hated doing this and had hoped to raise each of them to adulthood despite the possible complications, but in the end she had made the difficult decision to play by the book. corrupted beasts, as they were called, tended to live short painful lives, and Patricia decided it was best to end them early rather than letting them struggle.
she didn't let them go to waste. she had given them to Emilia's group as feeders, after warning them of their toxic nature of course. She had been thanked and the eggs had been processed and the toxins neutralized before they were added to feed for their own project's beast. Beast meat was a prime ingredient in most nutrition plans. Even low quality bug meat was a welcome addition, especially if it was free.
Patricia didn't use any beast parts in her plans, she hadn't reached the final generation where it mattered the most and the purchase and care of the centipedes had eaten most of her personal funds. That was one of the reasons she decided to bring her study to a conclusion. " three, no two more generations and we will see if it's all been worth it." she had a good feeling about this one, her last experiment had taught her a lot and she thought that this time she would have something to show all her doubters. "just keep laughing, Emilia, Marty. My time will come, and then everyone will see my genius." she snickered then returned to work.
"Group A's most potent venom are 3A and 7A. for group B its B12 and B13." their numbering was roughly based on the grubs size with larger numbers meaning smaller grubs. For this reason he preferred group B's choices, but she decided to use both to keep the lineages diverse enough. She then checked on the two eggs she had retrieved from the forest. Both could be seen wriggling, a sure sign they were due to hatch some time in the next several hours. Patricia hoped she would be present for the big moment but had set out their first meal just in case she missed it.
having finished checking in on all her charges. She sat at a chair and desk jammed into a corner and began developing a breeding plan. Breeding was generally simple. Let's say you had four individuals. call them A, B, C, and D. first you would split them into pairs. A and B come from the same parents and are both male. C and D also come from their own pair of parents, and are both female. What you would do is breed together A with both C and D, and B with both C and D. You would then get 4 clutches of eggs, eggs AC, AD, BC, and BD. you could then select the best from these 4 clutches and give yourself AC1 and AC2, AD1 and AD2, and so on. then it was a simple matter of matching them and avoiding breeding together a pair that shared a letter. This wasn't much of a problem for the first two generations, but once you got to generation 7 it became a bit of a mad house. It was general practice to keep track of 3 generations, the parents, the parent's parents and the parent's parent's parents. for the next generation you'd get rid of the oldest and track the newest. bugs were a bit more lenient than most, only needing two generations of tracking in most cases, but it was still a hassle. luckily for Patricia, the introduction of the centipedes had been a reset of sorts. She only bred her two fastest and most potent stingers from two different lineages. meaning that the two clutches of grubs could effectively be called group A and group B without any need for parent tracking. Of course, the new two were related and therefore couldn't be bred, and if they were different sexes it would only further complicate the balance. Patricia drew up a few plans accounting for possible sexes and even for the possibility of one passing before reaching breeding age. if both died she'd be kinda screwed but she couldn't do anything about that. She then went over and checked on the eggs and was pleased to see one of the grubs had eaten through its egg casing and was about half way out. it wriggled feebly, and slowly but surely pushed itself closer to freedom.the second egg was pulsing rhythmically, as the grub inside wore away at the inside of the casing. Patricia pulled up a chair and eagerly watched the two fight to escape the prison before making their way to the dish of food left out for them. then they began to gorge themselves. "grow up small and agile my precious babies." she cooed at them. before beginning to speak to herself. "a week until they spin their cocoons. then a little over a week after that for them to finish metamorphosis. after that I have a window of about twenty days before the older boys and girls pass the optimum breeding age." beasts had a period of time where their bodies were most geared towards producing the strongest offspring. After that they could still produce children, but they mostly focused on growing stronger and defending their remaining young rather than making more. This was even more the case with bugs who lived for a little over a year as an adult but produced their strongest clutches of eggs within a month of successful metamorphosis. it would be rushed and for the third generation Patricia would have no choice but to breed bugs with one set of shared grandparents. but she didn't need the whole clutch to be viable, all she needed was for the ones that were viable to be as strong as possible. "If I can get five or six strong bugs, then I have everything I need to compete in a tournament." with luck she would get enough to fill a whole roster. The tournament she had her eye on was a simple low tier general double elimination bracket. it would only host some of the weakest of beasts, and all of them would be of the tier of attribute designated general. The general category largely covered basic attributes such as insect, water, plant, earthen, sky, and unaligned. there were more but these were the standard. occasionally you'd see a low level toxic beast but these were rare in this region. of these sky, insect, and toxic posed the biggest threat to her stingers. sky attributes were generally quick and could often attack an area with wide slashes of wind. insects had hard carapaces which would prove a challenge for her weakened stingers. and toxin would effectively render her only real means of damage dealing ineffectual.
"Something needs to go right for me. but if it's double elimination then I have a bit more wiggle room if I catch a bad match up." many water attributes would be at a disadvantage in a general competition since no special arenas with water would be prepared. Plants were particularly susceptible to poisons and venom. and earthens resistance to venom could be countered by numerous attacks that their low agility couldn't come with. "unaligned will be a neutral match up, but they rarely have a distinct advantage over any other attributes."
unaligned was a catch all group for all beasts that didn't fit into a specific category and failed to display any unique powers. The unique category was the big brother of unaligned. it held beasts that didn't fit into other categories that displayed something totally different from any other known beasts. if enough of a certain subset of uniques were found they would become a new attribute. The most recent of these was light beasts. Once the light beast attribute was founded many beasts that had previously been hesitantly classified under other attributes, usually fire, plant, or even unaligned, were shifted into the light category.
"now all I have left to do now is monitor and observe them.'' She pulled out a notebook she kept on her and began scribbling notes on each of their behaviors. before she could believe it, it was time for her to head back to her dorm. Several minutes later she stumbled into her dorm and hauled herself into her bed before collapsing. "8 weeks. no more than 8 weeks. then the real test begins."