"Are you all set?"
Ezra's father; Gardner asked as he started the truck. The vehicle coughed out massive amounts of dark smoke before moving wheezing to life.
Ezra nodded, leading a black sheep to the back of the truck before hopping in.
Having noticed the sheep, Ezra's father knew it as the biggest of his farm animals. Although it had no combat strength, it was enough to increase his neural pathways.
Gardner removed his gaze from the sheep and swept his eyes over Ezra and asked.
"Have you decided?"
Ezra adjusted the seat belt over himself and sat comfortably on the torn vehicle seat.
"Yes, like you've told me several times, having no combat strength isn't bad, as long as I don't put my self in grave danger, linking with any animal would eventually activate my Neural Cortex and increase my nuclear energy."
Hearing his words, Gardner looked at his son deeply, a bit startled by his obedient behavior but he ultimately nodded his head, placing his hand on the acceleration button, the vehicle wheezed once more and then moved.
*
The old truck finally stopped 50 meters away from a large school gate.
Ezra stared at his dad for a second before getting down from the vehicle.
He had actually wanted to tell his father about the lost 79 sheep but he wasn't sure how his old man would take the news of his blood and sweat being reduced.
Ultimately, he decided not to tell the old man for fear of him collapsing to the ground out of shock.
Walking to the back of the truck, he guarded the large, black sheep down.
His father remained seated in the vehicle and didn't leave until Ezra couldn't be seen and was mixed with the crowds of other students.
*
Although the sight of walking a sheep was rather rare, Ezra did not capture that much attention. After all, practically every household has a genetically modified beast as their means of defense, similar to how cats and dogs were kept as pets before the cataclysm.
Furthermore, Monsters came in all shapes and sizes as most people would choose to genetically modify their beasts. Most people chose monsters that looked cute or majestic. At the same time, there would always be those with unusual tastes who chose the strangely modified monsters instead.
For instance, just to Ezra's left was a fashionable looking student who was holding a chain as thick as an infant's arm to walk her one-meter tall, two-meter long, medium-sized Rainbow Python.
That's right: a python of this size only counted as a large, medium-sized snake in this day and age, not a large snake.
Ahead, hurriedly running in Ezra's direction was a young teenager in a Jean and a t-shirt who looked like a real nerd. Seated on his head was a red striped cat, closing its eyes.
Behind the nerd was an 11th-grade student like Ezra who seemed to have just reached 16. Walking by his side was a three-meter-tall bear with rippling muscles which even its long furs couldn't hide.
The bear had six retractable blades in its back and its eyes glowed a mechanical light that scanned its surroundings.
This was probably a Steel-bear that had undergone genetic transformations and had a few tech mods installed in it to raise its grade as well as its combat ability.
For some reason, people found modding their beasts with various bio-tech, fashionable.
Making them appear more menacing. It was a popular trend amongst kids nowadays.
In contrast, Ezra's black sheep looked very plain and almost ugly at first sight. But after careful observation, it was rather cute and innocent to look at.
There were quite a few students walking along the school gates rushing to their classes, many of whom were walking their beasts.
No matter what kind of monster it was, they had one thing in common.
Their eyes were devoid of life!
No, the beasts weren't been tortured when they were alive nor were they experimented on.
One thing about beast-link is that it is difficult to work with a beast with even the slightest bit of resistance as it would bring back immense backlash and even turn a person into vegetables.
Therefore, the most usable/suitable and easy beasts to link with are genetically modified beast or a recently dead beast.
However, Monsters are truly expensive, they cost almost an arm and a leg to purchase, even in black markets which is why some people go decades without ever getting one. It was for this reason Beastmasters are revered amongst other profession.
Just like Ezra, his family wasn't all that well off and the farm was the only thing they depended on. They didn't have enough money to purchase a Monster for Ezra even when he had turned 16 a year ago as the farm was the only thing they depended on.
The only one with a Monster in their family was his father. However, his Monster was an old Wolf he had encountered and had luckily killed in the woods a few decades ago. If not for that, he wouldn't have gotten one even after so many years.
Without a Monster, Ezra wasn't allowed to graduate. Beast link was an important subject a student must pass in order to graduate high school and move to college but since Ezra didn't own a beast, he was hence, unable to able to graduate.
His father had tried to convince him to link with one of their farm sheep to which Ezra absolutely refused. Apart from their fur and meat, they had absolutely no combat power and could barely activate his Cells.
Linking with it meant that he was cutting off his future and giving up the path to become a Beastmaster.
The day Ezra was considering linking with one of his family's sheep, he had gotten into a fight with one of his classmates who had attacked him and blasted him with one strike of his linked beast.
Hence, the newly reincarnated Ezra took over, along with the beast fusion system.
He would have still thought the fusion of an entire flock of sheep merging together to form a silver-grade monster was a dream but when he activated the beast=link, he knew clearly that what happened this morning was reality and not a dream.
If the fusion of 79 flocks of sheep could create a monstrous beast such as the Abyssal Bloodhoof Wrathram with three blood skills, just what monstrosity would a thousand sheep produce?
He could imagine that there would be some sort of limit to the fusion ability but it was still a heaven-defying ability to fuse monsters together.
He could imagine if it was a herd of beasts, then he would truly create a mythical beast that no one had ever seen.