(Chris's PoV)
Over the next few days, I made sure that Snow continued to train, while I improved my meditation technique. Both are important to me at this point.
Either I need to reach Bronze Rank to bond with another beast or increase my soul power to bond with my next beast.
There is no device that can determine whether I have enough soul power to bind with another beast. Whether I can or can't, only I would feel it. That is at least why my teachers told me while teaching this technique.
The technique I am using now is considered the most basic as it was handed out for free by the Federal Alliance to the students who successfully awaken their talents and become Beast Tamers.
Using this technique would take a long time for my Soul Power to increase and facilitate me to bind with another pet. The best way was to reach Bronze Rank and with a rank upgrade I could bind another pet, and this time a beast that doesn't sleep a lot.
Though I trained Snow in the past few days, whenever there is nothing to do, she sleeps. I know that her talent makes her sleepy and it can improve her rank without as much food or training as other beasts need but training is good for survival.
Without proper combat experience, surviving in this world is not an easy thing to do.
I know that if I keep feeding my pet, she would grow faster and so would I but it would be a waste of both of our talents and would stunt our growth.
Sure we would reach ranks faster but without proper combat experience, this strength would be just a crutch. It would be of no use once we have to face opponents in the future.
So proper food along with proper combat training are important at the same time and that is what I intended to do.
---
Before that, let's check on what changes appeared our status after a week after my talent awakening.
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Name: Snow
Species: One-tailed Frost Fox
Rank: Iron, Level 4
Talent: Dream State (Mutation)
Skills: Crystalline Body(Mutation); Frost Bullet;
--
"Status"
--
Name: Christopher Argent
Age: 18
Talent: Beast Fusion (C); Beast Evolution (SSS);
Rank: Iron, Level 3
Pets: Snow (Frost Fox);
Skills: Dream State;
--
Yeah, Snow was able to reach level 4 but I only reached level 3. It is quite common for beast tamers to be sometimes a rank below their beasts.
This is why multiple beasts are needed to keep up with them. Too much of a difference may cause rebellion in the minds of the beasts.
Snow is a pet that I hatched. So, it wouldn't rebel against me no matter what.
Yes, any beast that the beast tamer hatched from an egg would be bonded with him or her from the moment of the beast's birth. To them, the ones that they see first would be regarded as their parents and family.
So, the best way to keep the beast under one hundred percent is to hatch them and train them from the start but that's a time-consuming process.
Most would only do that at the start of their career. After that, they would bind with trained beasts or wild beasts after defeating them.
Trained beasts are okay. Even though they wouldn't have bonded with the Beast Tamers from the moment of their birth, they were still trained by professionals, making it easier to bind with them and keeping them loyal as long as possible.
It would need a lot of rank difference or betrayal from the Tamers for them to rebel. Otherwise, they would be the same as the ones that were hatched from eggs by the Tamers themselves.
The biggest fault was with the ones that were tamed in the wild.
Wild beasts wouldn't bow easily. They needed to show that the Tamers were powerful enough to easily snap their lives and also had to show that there were many benefits to following the Tamers rather than living in the wild.
Otherwise, these beasts wouldn't budge easily. Of course, sometimes the race of the beasts would also play a role in that. Powerful beast races wouldn't easily bow even if their ranks were way below the Beast Tamers and their lives on the line.
Beasts like that have a lot of pride and wouldn't easily bend their knees but they wouldn't betray either unless they were betrayed first. The problem was that these races were very rare and almost no one could tame them. They would rather die than become pets.
The problematic beasts that could rebel were the ones that were wild but bent at the first sign of defeat, even though they were a stronger race compared to the Beast Tamers and could do well in the wild.
So normally it was advised not to tame them unless they were hatched by the tamers themselves or trained by professionals. Of course, there are always idiots who think they can take care of themselves and would still bind with those beasts.
The reason was that these beasts would be the best out there and would increase their strength much faster than most beasts. So many Tamers would take the gamble, hoping that those beasts would be their ride to the top.
Anyway, even though I know that Snow wouldn't betray me, I need to be at the same rank as her at the least or she may stop listening to me. Even at this stage, she is such a diva and ignores me, unless I use food as bait.
If she were to reach a higher rank than me, there is no way that she would listen to me.
Moreover, I lack any shared skills to fight independently, which would reduce the power of the team. Either she should defend me at the same time attacking enemies or had to fuse with me to fight properly.
Both options would limit our power and efficiency. So. what I think is the best way to survive out there was to bind with a second beast as soon as possible.