The next morning, Lorent woke up as usual, guided by his biological clock. Even though he hadn’t properly rested in days due to caring for the claw wolf about to give birth, Lorent still couldn’t sleep in.
In the backyard of Lorent’s house, there were nearly a hundred cages containing a variety of small magical beasts. Some of them had been caught by Lorent himself in the wild, while others were acquired from adventurers. Most, however, were intermediate breeds he had cultivated over the years — creatures that lacked the intelligence and tameness unique to magical pets, which Lorent referred to as "sub-magical beasts." These sub-magical beasts were essential on the path to breeding true magical pets.
Even though their numbers were increasing, Lorent had no choice but to use every protective measure possible to keep them in confined spaces. Releasing these artificially bred sub-magical beasts back into the wild could lead to unpredictable consequences, so from birth to death, they would remain here.
Having such a large number of creatures packed together made the daily chores of cleaning and feeding an exhausting task. Lorent's mother usually worked in the kitchens of the Knight Academy to help with household expenses, and Silam rarely came home, as he lived at the Knight Academy. Being the only one left, Lorent naturally took on the responsibility of looking after this whole bunch of otherwise useless pets, while also handling household chores and preparing meals for his tired mother when she came back at night.
However, today was a little easier for Lorent, with Silam around. As a knight apprentice, Silam had woken up early for morning training in the yard. By the time Lorent, yawning with his hair looking like a bird's nest and barely able to open his eyes, appeared in the backyard, Silam had already finished his practice.
Silam had propped his apprentice knight sword against the wall and was busy sweeping most of the cages with a broom. Lorent had placed the cages on raised wooden racks to make cleaning easier. As for feeding, Lorent naturally didn’t have the means to provide costly meat every day, so he substituted with a nutrient potion suitable for small magical beasts. After all, the potion was cheap and convenient. Lorent’s approach to these creatures was simple: survival was all that mattered.
After every breeding session, they would receive additional nourishment, and after laying eggs, there would be appropriate "postpartum care." As long as they could continue to fulfill their breeding duties, there was no need to treat them too well. On the contrary, giving them too much energy might provoke them to resist. Lorent considered himself quite decent to these creatures. At least over the years, the retired breeding animals he sold always received the “healthy and lively” label, and most of the time, they sold for a much higher price than what he had originally paid for them.
With this kind of turnover, Lorent had managed to make some profit from breeding magical beasts over the years, enough to support himself without needing to spend any family money. However, in the eyes of outsiders, Lorent was seen as an immature spendthrift. Fourteen years old, and not only did he stay home without working, but he also spent money breeding useless magical creatures.
Nonetheless, both Ruth and Silam supported Lorent’s decision. Even though they didn’t fully understand the purpose of his work, they still backed him through their actions. Ruth had given up half of their little house for Lorent to tinker with his potions, and Silam didn’t hesitate to spend all his saved academic credits — which he had planned to use for a new helmet — the moment he saw the claw wolf.
Seeing that Silam had already started cleaning, Lorent filled the simple automatic water dispensers with some nutrient solution and returned to the house. Skillfully cracking an unfertilized egg from some unknown magical beast into a pan, Lorent divided his homemade noodles into two portions and tossed them into the pot.
In this world, the staple food for most commoners was black bread, a rough loaf made of wheat flour mixed with husks and other indigestible fibers. If you were unlucky, you might even bite into some pebbles, and the taste was nothing to speak of. Lorent, however, was a picky eater who was particular about his food, so once he was old enough to do things on his own, he started experimenting in the kitchen, making noodles, steamed buns, and other foods.
At this moment, he boiled a handful of noodles, added the egg, sprinkled in a couple of greens, and served up a steaming bowl of breakfast noodles. Silam sat with his bowl, immensely satisfied. Although the food at the Knight Academy cafeteria was cheap and filling, it couldn’t compare to the taste of his big brother's cooking — even their mother’s cooking didn’t come close. Though, their mother insisted that her cooking was the best.
“By the way, why are you suddenly off? Didn’t you say last week that you were about to have exams?” Lorent asked while pushing the vegetables from his bowl to his brother’s.
“We’re on break. The school said we’ve finished all the theoretical knowledge for the apprentice stage, and now we just need to advance to a First Stage Knight within a year to complete the first phase of our studies.”
“So you got kicked out of school? No advancement, no coming back?” Lorent teased.
A vein popped on Silam’s forehead as he replied tersely, “Generally speaking, we call this a ‘free advancement period,’ not getting kicked out of school.”
“What if you don’t advance within the time limit?” Lorent asked as Silam's chopsticks paused for a moment.
“There are only two options then: either pay back all the support provided by the Knight Academy and drop out, or serve as a guard somewhere according to the academy’s arrangement for a certain period of time.”
“Oh,” Lorent replied casually while eating. Silam had only been at the Knight Academy for about seven months, during which the academy had provided a small house at a very low rent for their family. Silam also received a full set of apprentice knight gear, and their mother had obtained a job in the academy kitchen. Along with the food subsidy, tuition, book fees, and accommodation costs, Lorent estimated it would take at least 30,000 to 50,000 gold coins to "redeem" his brother if he failed to advance. Until yesterday, that was an astronomical sum.
Even when their father was alive, and their family could barely be considered middle-class, they had never seen that much money in their savings. But when Lorent thought about the eggs in his room, he felt at ease.
“So, you’re basically on vacation, right? That’s great. When my batch of crystal ice-flame hounds hatch, you’ll be able to help out,” Lorent said.
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“Aren’t you worried I might not advance?” Silam stirred his noodles absent-mindedly, suddenly losing his appetite and feeling a bit down. After all, he was just a twelve-year-old kid. Even though children in this world matured quickly and were usually working to support themselves by the age of twelve or thirteen — some even started families by fourteen or fifteen, and by twenty had at least two kids — he still felt uneasy.
It was because of this societal expectation that people thought Lorent, still at home at fourteen, was aimless and undisciplined. Silam felt a small pang of sadness, thinking that his brother didn't care about his future.
“Don’t worry, I believe you have the talent to advance to a First Stage Knight,” Lorent said, reaching out to ruffle his brother’s soft blonde hair, which looked dim and forlorn like a dejected puppy. “And even if you don’t advance for some reason, we’ll just change plans. I’ll buy a big estate, open my pet store, and you and Mom can work there if you want, or do whatever else you like. Your brother can take care of you both.”
“Pfft, who wants you to take care of them? Don’t forget, I’m the one supporting you right now!” Silam’s mood improved, and he couldn’t help but boast a little.
Lorent laughed and playfully patted his brother on the head.
For the next two days, Lorent practically lived in his room, as if he were hatching the eggs himself. Apart from essential activities like eating and sleeping, he rarely left the house. Although the bestiary indicated that the crystal ice-flame hound’s incubation period was three to five days, there was always the chance one might hatch early. This was his first batch of magical pets, and Lorent couldn’t allow for any mistakes.
It was at dawn on the fourth day when a half-asleep Lorent was startled awake by a faint cracking sound. He’d been dreaming of baby puppies hatching from eggs every night, so at first, he thought it was just another dream. But when he turned his head and saw a gently wobbling egg in his makeshift nursery area, Lorent became instantly alert.
He sprang up, crouched beside the egg, and stared at it without blinking. The egg swayed lightly back and forth, and if you listened closely, you could hear a faint scratching sound from inside.
Before long, a tiny, wet paw broke through the eggshell. The little paw paused in the air, then retracted back inside, and soon a small, black nose poked through the crack in the shell. After some more tearing and biting, the egg, which had been poked through and through by the little paw, finally gave way. A tiny, wet, gray-furred puppy emerged from the shell.
“Yip! Yip! Yip!” came the soft cries of the puppy as it wobbled its way out of the eggshell, its eyes — already free from any membrane — curiously staring at the lovestruck Lorent. Even though its limbs were still soft and weak, it tried hard to crawl toward Lorent.
With eyes glowing with excitement, Lorent reached out his hand, gently lifting the wet puppy into his palm. The tiny creature flailed its short limbs awkwardly, experiencing for the first time what it felt like to be off the ground. Lorent’s slender, well-defined fingers tickled the pup’s chin, and he beamed at the little one, which only continued to complain with adorable yips.
He even pried open the puppy’s soft mouth, feeling its tiny, sharp teeth just starting to form. The pup’s discontented cries grew louder, but it showed none of the aggression typical of magical beasts. Gently setting the squirming little one back beside the eggshell, Lorent watched as it sniffed around its own shell while yipping softly.
After a thorough evaluation, the puppy seemed to decide that its eggshell was delicious, and began to lick it, holding it in its front paws as it crunched on the shell. Lorent, glancing at the pup enjoying its first meal, quickly grabbed the nutrient powder he had prepared for the newborns and mixed it up.
The tiny crystal ice-flame hound had a hearty appetite, finishing off its entire eggshell and then gulping down a bowl of warm porridge before curling up and falling asleep. As the puppy drifted off, Lorent’s excitement gradually faded, and he eventually fell asleep on his bed, his eyes fixed on the tiny wagging tail of the sleeping puppy.
The next morning, Lorent was woken up by the puppy’s licks. In just one night, the pup had visibly grown stronger, and now not only could it run around the room, but it could also jump up to half a meter high to wake Lorent. Lorent scooped up the fluffy pup, which was energetically wagging its bushy tail, and habitually glanced at the remaining eggs beside him.
That one look made him shiver. The egg from which the first pup had hatched had already been completely eaten, but now there were two more empty shells.
Lorent, unable to find the newborn pups anywhere in the room, anxiously pushed the door open. Outside, Silam was struggling to keep the two yipping pups from running all over the place.
Lorent breathed a sigh of relief. “Phew, you scared me. I thought those two ran off somewhere else.” After all, the backyard was filled with various magical beasts. Even a flame-tailed rat, which an ordinary person could handle, could easily kill a soft, vulnerable puppy if there were enough of them.
“I heard noises coming from your room this morning, so I checked it out. These two little troublemakers were scratching at the door, making quite a ruckus, and yet you didn’t wake up,” Silam said as he blocked one of the pups from dashing toward the front door. “And as soon as I opened the door, they bolted out. I…”
“It’s fine; actually, it's great. You stay here and watch the three of them while I go wash up and prepare their breakfast,” Lorent said, grabbing the pup trailing at his feet by the scruff and placing it in Silam’s reluctant arms.
Silam: Surrounded by puppies and utterly at a loss.
Lorent went to the simple bathroom they had set up at home and washed his face with ice-cold water. He then prepared bowls of nutrient porridge for the three pups, mixing in the crushed eggshells of the two pups that had hatched earlier in the morning. The eggshells contained the nutrients needed for their early growth, and even if newborn magical beasts in the wild had no other food, they could rely on their eggshells until their teeth and claws hardened.
Watching the three plump little pups wagging their tails as they ate from their bowls, Lorent and Silam finally had time to sit down and eat.
“Bro, this is amazing!” Silam exclaimed, dipping the white bread Lorent had made earlier into the thick soup, but his eyes stayed glued to the three pups sitting beside the dining table. “With how friendly and cute they are, if you take them out, the girls at school would go crazy!” Silam said excitedly.
Children from poor families mature quickly, and Silam's first reaction upon seeing the pups was to see their monetary value. For ordinary people struggling to get by, having meat twice a year was a luxury. But for the upper-class nobles, a gentle, obedient, and beautiful pet was a status symbol that could fetch a price high enough to sustain a family for an entire year.
“They wouldn’t even blink at paying five hundred gold coins for one of these!” Silam said excitedly.
“Five hundred gold coins? That’s nowhere near enough to buy a crystal ice-flame hound,” Lorent replied with a faint smile, his expression unconsciously tinged with a sense of superiority.
Silam had seen that look on his brother’s face many times and was used to it by now, but upon hearing Lorent's words, he was shocked and widened his eyes.
“No way, bro! Five hundred gold coins!” he emphasized, doubting Lorent might have heard "silver" or "copper" instead. One piece of black bread, the tough and tasteless staple food, cost one copper coin, and it took a hundred copper coins to make a silver coin. A bottle of Uncle Aine’s specially brewed cold medicine was worth one silver coin, and it took a hundred silver coins to make a gold coin. The little house rented by the Knight Academy for Lorent's family, about 500 square meters, only cost two gold coins per year. A house of this size would cost around 100,000 gold coins to buy outright.
Silam calculated that the whole batch of twelve pups, if each sold for 500 gold coins, would bring in 6,000 gold coins. With that kind of money, their family could live quite luxuriously — not noble-level luxury, but certainly well above average. And, with the upcoming New Year, he might even be able to get his apprentice armor repaired by a blacksmith.
“Silam, set your sights higher. My treasures here won’t be leaving my hands for less than 50,000 gold coins,” Lorent said confidently.
Silam stared blankly at Lorent, stunned. “Bro, are you... crazy? 50,000 gold coins! One of our senior Fourth Stage Knights spent over six months in the Black Forest and only brought back a little over 10,000 gold coins...”
Hearing this, Lorent thoughtfully rested his chin on his hands. “So, if you put it that way, maybe 50,000 is a bit too cheap.”
Silam: “???” What do I do if my brother has gone completely mad?!
“Don’t look at me like that. A Fourth Stage Knight can’t even guarantee they can defeat a Fifth Stage magical beast, right?” Lorent asked.
“Of course not. For professionals, each stage is a world of difference. Fifty apprentice knights together might not even be able to handle a single First Stage Knight. All those cross-rank battle heroes are just legends told by bards,” Silam said. “And for a Fifth Stage magical beast, even a knight of the same rank would have a tough time dealing with it.”
“There you have it. The crystal ice-flame hound is a B-grade magical pet, and I believe it can rival Fifth to Seventh Stage magical beasts when it matures,” Lorent explained. “Even if you consider it as a Fifth Stage magical beast, a tame one that can help professionals in battle — isn’t that worth 50,000 gold coins?”
“A Fifth Stage magical beast?” Silam looked at the three little creatures beside him, who were happily munching away, in surprise. “If they really are what you say, or even if they just inherit the claw wolf’s combat strength but are gentle toward humans, that alone would give them the abilities of a Second Stage magical beast!”
His eyes lit up as he suddenly realized the potential of the pups. “A magical beast that can have emotions and won’t attack people!”
“Speaking of which, I almost forgot. These little ones were born from a claw wolf...”
“Silam, just wait and see. These little creatures will bring about a change like nothing this world has ever seen.”