“Mom, I'm home!”

As Silam waved goodbye to his companions, he shouted loudly toward his small courtyard.

There was no response from the yard.

Silam: "?"

His mother should be home today; even if she was busy, she should have responded through the window. On the first day of vacation, wasn't his mother always enthusiastic? But instead of the expected smile on his mother's face, there was silence.

Looking through the gaps of the wooden fence, made from randomly picked branches from the nearby forest, he could see that not only was the main door closed, but there was no sign of movement through the open window either.

Silam blinked his eyes, leaped lightly over the fence, and landed in his own yard.

Meanwhile, in a half-walled stone house separated from the main house in the backyard, Lorent and their mother, Ruth, were crouching tensely outside an iron cage, staring at the situation of the claw wolf inside.

Lorent held a stick over a meter long, with an arched iron ring at its end, in one hand and a bottle of his self-made sleeping potion in the other, ready to subdue the claw wolf in the cage at any moment.

You see, this claw wolf was a Level 2 magical beast; even with a broken leg and about to give birth, it was still the most dangerous creature in Lorent's house.

As a teenager who couldn't even wring a chicken's neck, Lorent hadn't faced this beast head-on since the day it was carried into their backyard's shed by mercenaries. He was afraid it might be agitated and start charging at the cage.

If not for knowing that this claw wolf was at its weakest during labor, Lorent would never have agreed to his mother’s suggestion to help with the delivery. Even so, he was constantly on guard against any violent struggle from the claw wolf. At the slightest sign of it charging at the cage, Lorent was ready to lock its throat with one hand and spray its face with his potion to knock it out.

“Brother! What are you doing?” Silam, not finding anyone in the house, circled around to the backyard, and seeing his mother and brother in the stone house that held the claw wolf, he curiously whispered from over Lorent’s shoulder.

Lorent, who was entirely focused, hadn’t noticed his brother’s arrival, and the sudden voice in his ear startled him so much that he shuddered fiercely.

“You almost scared me to death!” Lorent, shocked, slapped Silam on the back loudly.

Their mother, also startled, gave the younger son a couple of scolding pats, “You’re so grown-up now, almost a knight apprentice, and still acting like a fool! Since you’re back, come here, come here, watch over this with your brother!”

Silam grinned foolishly, scratched his head, and squeezed between the two to squat down, “Brother, is this wolf finally going to give birth?”

“Yeah, my first batch of magical pets is about to be born!” Lorent, getting excited as he spoke, tightened his grip on the stick; all of his hopes rested inside this claw wolf’s belly.

“Here, hold this stick. Once the pups are born, press the claw wolf’s neck to keep it from moving while I take the pups out.”

Lorent handed the stick to Silam. The strength of a knight apprentice was far beyond that of this weak boy, making him an excellent choice to restrain the claw wolf.

While Lorent was explaining how to lock the claw wolf’s neck without hurting it, the claw wolf, which had been vigilantly watching the humans outside its cage, let out a low whimper. It turned its head to lick its belly, which had a patch of fur shaved off at some point.

With its movement, a fist-sized oval egg rolled out from under it.

“It’s here! It’s here!” Lorent quickly threw all thoughts of his brother aside and leaned in, wishing he could stick his face into the cage to get a closer look at the patterns on the egg.

This was the culmination of more than a year of effort.

“Brother, what is this? Claw wolf eggs don’t look like this...” Silam squinted his eyes, carefully examining the egg. As a knight apprentice who had completed one semester, he was somewhat familiar with the claw wolf, a relatively common magical beast.

“Claw wolf eggs are supposed to be much larger, and they don’t lay so many at once!” Silam exclaimed in surprise as more eggs rolled out from the wolf one after another, starting to question the accuracy of his course on "The Living Habits and Wild Distribution of Magical Beasts."

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“If all my effort over the past year only produced a few claw wolves, I’d be better off working for Uncle Aine early on.”

Uncle Aine was a herbalist in town. In his younger days, he had studied alchemy for a long time in the city of Sacolon, where the Magic Council was located, but he ultimately lacked the talent to become a mage, so he returned to his hometown to open a small potion shop.

When townsfolk had ailments, they’d go to him for remedies, which usually cured them quickly. He was quite a notable figure in town. Lorent, who needed herbs to make breeding and anesthetic potions for magical beasts, had gone to him several times. After learning about the use of those herbs, Aine always considered Lorent a genius in potion-making and tried to recruit him as an apprentice for his herb shop.

“A job with Uncle Aine is a good gig! Others want to work for him, but he won’t take them!” Silam, with quick reflexes, jabbed the stick at the exhausted claw wolf, easily subduing the weakened Level 2 magical beast.

Lorent didn’t have time to admire the strength of the knight apprentice; he rushed into the cage, scooped up the twelve eggs into his arms amidst the wolf’s howling, and hurriedly brought them out.

“With my treasures here, no job can compare.” Lorent lifted one of the eggs, holding it up to the light to confirm there was a life inside.

He sat cross-legged on the ground, carefully wiping each egg clean with a cloth and wrapping them individually.

Leaving his brother to handle the aftermath, Lorent, cradling the bundle of eggs, returned to the nursery area he had set up in his room. The "nursery" was just a section of space cleared and padded with soft scraps of fabric to make a cozy surface.

Once each egg was carefully nestled into its own bit of soft fabric, Lorent finally breathed a sigh of relief.

According to the description in the bestiary, the incubation period for the crystal ice-flame hound was 3–5 days. During this time, apart from regular application of nutritional potions, there was little else to do.

Humming a cheerful tune, Lorent applied the prepared nutrient solution to each of the twelve eggs, murmuring to himself, “Come on out quickly, I’ve got delicious treats ready for you~ Whoever hatches first gets to eat first!”

After finishing these tasks, fatigue washed over him. Lorent drew the curtains in his room, turned, and collapsed onto his bed, opening the Bestiary in his mind.

The bestiary was divided into six grades: S, A, B, C, D, and E. Above that, there were the special, glittering ranks of SR, SSR, and UR.

Until today, all the sections had been a dull black, but now, after the B-grade section, there was an additional small entry.

[Crystal Ice-Flame Hound]................................0001.

Lorent rubbed his hands in excitement and tapped on the entry.

An impressive and majestic dog appeared before him. It had thick limbs, a wide mouth, and strong claws, with a beautiful blue crystal embedded in the middle of its forehead.

Its entire body was covered in sleek, gray-blue fur, with a fluffy white mane at its chest forming a beautiful arc. Around its four paws floated a few wisps of ice-blue flames. A long, fluffy tail, nearly the length of its body, rested on its back, also surrounded by those icy flames.

Initially sitting on the ground, the dog seemed to sense Lorent’s attention, stood up, circled around, sniffed curiously, and then returned to its spot to lie down, back turned.

Once the magnificent image of the dog faded, a string of skills appeared in the bestiary.

Crystal Ice-Flame Hound Skills:

[Flame Ball]: The hound can swing its tail to shoot blue, high-temperature flame balls with a diameter of about 50 cm and a range of around 200 meters to attack its prey.

[Flame Bite]: The hound covers its mouth with the icy flames, biting its enemy and injecting the flames into its body, melting it from within.

[Flame Step]: The hound can choose to leave behind blue flames wherever its paws tread, continuously burning its enemies. Passing through these flames increases the hound's movement speed.

[Fireseed]: All of the hound's ice flames can serve as a fireseed, and the hound has a keen sense for it, able to locate its fireseed even days after it has been extinguished.

[Endurance]: The hound has high temperature tolerance, maintaining agility in most conditions.

Seeing this list of skills again, Lorent couldn’t contain his excitement. A B-grade magical pet, possessing five innate skills, was enough to rival Level 5 to 7 magical beasts. Moreover, the crystal ice-flame hound had a high degree of intelligence; even when facing a Level 7 beast alone, it could outwit its opponent.

With twelve crystal ice-flame hounds, Lorent was confident he could hold his own against a Level 8 beast if he commanded them well.

Of course, for now, Lorent could only gaze longingly at the twelve eggs in his room and dream about a future where he led his pack of hounds into battle against magical beasts.

It had been fourteen years since Lorent arrived in this world filled with elves, orcs, magic, and combat qi. He had coveted his Bestiary for all of those fourteen years.

The Bestiary came with a "Breeding Simulation" function. By placing two different magical beasts inside, assigning them as male and female, and selecting the right potions for use during breeding, it could simulate their breeding outcomes. When the result was a magical pet and not just a beast, a gray silhouette would appear, recording the breeding path in the bestiary.

However, fourteen years had not yielded many breeding paths for Lorent. Even though he often visited churches or the Mage Association library to search for magical beast illustrations, only a handful of those he found could be used in the simulator. This made Lorent question the accuracy of those books.

Aside from these dubious illustrations, Lorent had only encountered a few of the lowest-level magical beasts throughout his fourteen years of life—small creatures like spring rabbits and fluffy monsters that even ordinary people could handle.

Moreover, some of the breeding paths for these pets were unimaginable. To this day, Lorent believed that, without his Bestiary, no one would have thought in a million years to breed a male crystal rabbit with a female claw wolf.

Similarly, no one would have thought to breed a bomb-tailed cat with an ice-beaked bird to produce a crystal rabbit. And let’s not even get started on breeding a flame squirrel with a fluffy monster to produce a bomb-tailed cat, or a spring rabbit with a flame-tailed rat to produce a flame squirrel...

Even if someone were insane enough to attempt these combinations, without the right potions to aid the process, these creatures would only produce offspring of one of the parent species.

After four generations of bizarre breeding, each step so outrageous it defied belief, the miracle that was the crystal ice-flame hound was finally born in Lorent’s hands.

And this was just the beginning.

Besides the B-grade path for the crystal ice-flame hound, Lorent had access to another B-grade path, three C-grade paths, two D-grade paths, two E-grade paths, and one A-grade path.

In all these paths, Lorent was either stuck at the final step or the penultimate one, mainly because some of the higher-grade magical beasts were beyond his reach.

Even the claw wolf had been a cheap, wounded creature bought by Silam from the academy’s trade platform with his contribution points.

These advanced magical beasts weren’t just a matter of money; they were rarely listed on the Adventurer’s Guild's public trading platforms. Most of the time, they were sold on private platforms accessible only to mages, knights, and clerics—far out of reach for ordinary people.

Casting one more glance at the eggs of the crystal ice-flame hound by his bedside, Lorent peacefully drifted off to sleep.