'What do I do about this?' Bryan thought a he stared at the egg in front of him.
He wanted to hatch it but he still hadn't had a proper speech with the person who had given it to him.
Time had passed and it was already dusk but he hadn't heard from her.
"I should take a nap first." Bryan said as he placed the egg in an inconspicuous location and was just about to head to his room upstairs when he felt the building vibrate.
"Alert! A spatial rift has opened above sector Thirty-one. All residents in the affected areas should evacuated to the nearest bunker." A robotic voice said as cries of various creatures rang out outside.
Bryan immediately ran towards the living room and pressed a red button on the wall. In response to the action, the building shook as metal shutters rise from the ground and encased the building and covered it firmly, sealing it away from the outside world.
And it was just in time. Bryan felt gravity leaves him as he was flung into the air from something that slammed into his house and almost removed it from its foundations.
"What was that?" Bryan stood up with shaky legs as he reached out to his terminal and tapped it and an interface showed up and he swiped across the list of apps until he found one with a camera icon and clicked on it.
He looked at the empty wall in front of him and pointed the Terminal at it and the wall lit up as it began showing scenes of what was happening outside.
It was pure chaos. Dusk was closed to the time that most people came back from work, school and other places. Which meant that there were more people outside than normal.
Surrounding the humans that seemed like ants compared to them were massive beasts. Wolves that reached ten meters in height, birds that caused mini hurricanes with every flap of their wings, hordes of rats that consumed everything in their paths.
If this was Earth, no human would have been able to put up resistance against them. But this was not Earth.
This was... Aleuora.
Roughly a hundred years ago, a higher dimension made contact with Aleuora. From this dimension came ether - a mysterious energy that caused evolution in plants and animals.
And not just plants and animals. Everything in this world was blessed by this mysterious energy. All except one species.
Humans. In this changing world, the human race was excluded from this change and the world that they once ruled was their enemy once again.
Humanity was almost pushed to the brink of extermination until they appeared. People who forged contracts with the newly evolved beasts and harnesses their powers to fight.
They reclaimed the land that was taken from them and managed to regain their territory. At least, a part of it.
But humanity was still not safe. From time to time, spatial rifts that called froth beasts from unknown locations would spontaneously open.
It was unpredictable and the only thing humans could do was just prepare themselves for when it occured.
In this world where one could die at any moment, the only way to avoid an untimely death was to become a beast tamer.
In this age, with only a few, rare exceptions, everyone was a beast tamer.
Bryan recalled what he learnt about this world and looked at the screen with excitement in his eyes.
For him, beast tamers were his heroes and his goal.
Like an anthem, all the people present in the streets regardless of age, race or gender called out.
"Beast Call!"
Light erupted and standing against the invader beasts were other beasts. The only difference between them was the intelligence that often signified being raised by a beast tamer.
If one had to state a clear difference between wild beasts and tamed beasts, the greatest one would be their intelligence.
Although humans weren't able to access ether without the help of their beasts, we gained the ability of being able to hone our spiritual strength.
Humans could then use their spiritual strength to nurture the intelligence of their tamed beasts and increase their base strength and intelligence.
Beasts provide humans with combat abilities and humans provide beasts with intellectual and greater combat power and intelligence.
A mutual relationship with neither being dominant or submissive.
"Ahh... I want to be like them." Bryan watched as people his age and some even younger fought on the screen while he just cowered in safety.
His mates often mocked him for his lack of a beast but he shut them all up with his ability.
There were two main points of strength for a beast tamer. The strength of their spiritual power and the level of their tamed beasts.
While he had no tamed beast, his spiritual power was unusually high, far higher than those of the same age.
'I guess that was the only reason they let me stay at the academy.'
The middle school Bryan attended was a preparatory school for beast tamers. Normally, it would have been necessary for one to have a tamed beast in order to enroll but he was exempted because of his talent.
"Knowing my dad, he probably wanted me to contract that as my first tamed beast." Bryan's gaze drifted to the egg that was in the center of the room when he noticed something.
Runic inscriptions had appeared on the surface of the egg and he senses the ether in the air get sucked into the egg as it formed a mini vortex of ether.
'What?' Bryan inches closer to the egg and reached out and touched it and his finger automatically stuck on a rune and fixed itself there.
He almost instinctively tried to remove it but froze in fear of damaging the egg and just watched as ether refined by the egg flowed into his body.
This made him recall another fact that he was taught in class. Humans were unable to absorbed natural ether and could only use the one refined by their tamed beasts to strengthen their body.
'Does that means I have a contract with whatever is inside the egg?' Bryan wondered and entered his spiritual world
In the white void, he found a small red line connected to somewhere outside his mind and he gently touched it and felt it vibrate.
Opening his eyes, he saw that small cracks had appeared on the shell of the egg.
"Is it about to hatch?" He wondered what was written in the note his father left for him but he saw that the cracks had already extended to the point that it seemed the egg would shatter at any moment.
'Welp. Looks like it's too late.' Whatever the repercussions of hatching it this way would bring, he would have to face it later.
But now, it was time to see what kind of beast this egg was carrying.
A few seconds later, the cracks stopped expanding and the shell shattered and mysteriously, there was not even the slightest trace of liquid on the inner part of the shell.
Turning his sight from ths shell, he gazed at the beast that had hatched from the egg.
"Gao!" A small lizard greeted him as it burped flames that only went three centimeters into the air.
"A lizard?" He was slightly disappointed as he was expecting something with a more majestic feature.
'I don't think hoping for a phoenix would be dreaming too much.' The thought that Miss Agnes may have swapped the egg for another briefly crossed his mind but he shook his head.
'I doubt she would do something like that after what she said.' Miss Agnes was not just any random stranger but a family friend.
From his experience in his previous life, he knew that not all family friends were trustworthy but she did not seem like the type.
"And she's also going to be my guardian in the future." He looked at the lizard and saw that the lizard had begun snacking on its shell.
Pausing just as it was about to place a piece in its mouth, it noticed Bryan's stare and stuck out its tongue at him and continued eating.
'Did the lizard... just show me attitude?' For a creature that was just born, it had attitude.
'I would smack it but I shouldn't. Not now at least.' He feared that the lizard might accidentally die if he hit it.
"You really-" Bryan was about to speak when the building shook and he remembered that the city was still being attacked.
The lizard did not even move and just finished eating its shell and burped and looked at its owner.
"I guess I shouldn't expect much from you." The thought of going outside to fight briefly crossed his mind but he looked at the lizard that could just barely occupy his palm and sighed.
Perhaps irked but this, the lizard scrambled across the room and began heading upstairs. Bryan wanted to stop it but decided to see what it wanted to do.
He headed upstairs and saw that the lizard was scratching at a window. For a newborn, it sure seemed agile, was what Bryan thought as he looked at it.
Bryan looked at his Terminal and checked and saw that the area in front of that window was clear and he decided to open a small hole.
'Worst case scenario, I can just close it.' He reasoned and opened a small hole in front of the lizard.
The lizard looked at Bryan with a defiant look in its eyes and poked its head into the hole.
Bryan felt the ether in the room begin to shake as the objects present in the hallway vibrated.
The next instance, he felt a shockwave pass by him and he followed in the direction of the force and crashed into the other end of the hallway.