Aurin lay in the guest room staring at the ceiling. He still couldn’t believe that Dolissile had pushed through the cosmic powers of Mindadam. After all of his Minakai before the cybernetic dolphin had fallen, he had started to give up hope, but it had happened. His mind was reeling and he couldn’t sleep as he played the events over and over in his mind.

Deciding that he was wasting his time lying in bed, he got up, threw on his clothes, and headed outside. He wandered over to the makeshift shed where his Minakai were sleeping. Aurin sat down beside Dolissile who was sleeping on the ground motionless with his eyes open.

“Are you awake?” he asked the dolphin.

Dolissile careened his body slightly to confirm to his tamer that he was.

“Good,” said Aurin. “I think I know what it is that we missed in the battle.”

Dolissile let out a low, mechanical groan, careful not to awaken the other Minakai sleeping.

“Alright,” he said. “The first thing is the ability to teleport. We’ve seen it with Minakai like Panchi and its ability to whirl warp, haven’t we? It’s just a matter of trying to pre-empt where the next attack will come from. The second a cosmic elemental begins to teleport it’s made itself vulnerable if we know its destination.”

Dolissile made no noise, simply staring unblinkingly at Aurin.

“The other thing I’ve considered is that when Mindadam froze objects in place, it tended to do it in one direction. If a cosmic elemental can be bombarded from multiple sides at multiple times, then it has to split its concentration, and concentration seems to be the key to its power.”

Shamtile stirred, slumped over to Aurin and slapped him on the back of the head. He shook his fist and then wandered back over to his spot, curling up and going back to sleep.

“Sorry, Dolissile, I’ll let you get some rest too. Great job today, you made me proud to be your tamer.”

Dolissile emitted an uncharacteristically enthusiastic groan, but he kept it quiet to avoid waking his teammates.

Aurin wandered to the back door, brushed the snow off himself and head back inside. To his surprise, Tobias was sitting in the corner, reading a book.

“Can’t sleep either?” asked Aurin.

Tobias closed his book over, keeping one finger inside to track his page. “I heard you go outside so I thought there was no point sitting in my room alone. I often have trouble sleeping, so it’s nothing unusual for me. I think it’s because my mind is always going a thousand miles per second. Almost as fast as your Dolissile, eh?”

“What are you reading?” asked Aurin, pointing to Tobias’s book.

Tobias turned it around and showed Aurin the front cover. On Evolution and Lost Minakai. “It’s a good read,” he said. “It was written by a Minakai scholar called Dr Frank Howard. He dedicated his life to studying evolution and this is the first of five books he wrote on the matter, most of the time in between books was spent studying further.”

“Have you met him?”

“No, no,” said Tobias, shaking his head. “He died nearly ten years before I was born, but I bet there was more knowledge in his head than he could ever have put in his books. I’ve heard from a reliable source that he was working on a sixth book before he died, but it was incomplete.”

Aurin walked over and sat down in the chair beside Tobias. “Do you know about the lost evolution of Cubtem?” he asked.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Leofang, yes,” he said. “One of its fangs is in a museum in Ludonia. It’s been studied more than you can imagine, yet still the secret to Cubtem’s lost evolution couldn’t be cracked…”

“Until Frederick.”

“Until Frederick,” nodded Tobias. “When Lord Kensington first told me, I couldn’t believe it. I spoke to my friend Clarke, who I believe you met, and he was able to confirm it to me. I wanted to ask you directly about the Leofang, but I was waiting for you to bring it up.” Tobias leaned forwards. “What was it like to fight an extinct Minakai?”

“Strange,” said Aurin. “I was caught a bit off guard, if I’m honest. It didn’t help that its owner, Frederick, has been a thorn in my side since I arrived in Hazelton nearly two years ago. Knowing that he found a way to unlock a lost evolution is almost…insulting? I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but perhaps it is. In any case, it's an impressive species.”

“How so?”

“It packs more of a punch than Leonite, who is already a strong Minakai, but it is without a doubt slower. That’s not to say Leofang is slow, but it’s certainly slower than the Leonite branch of the family.”

“Curious,” muttered Tobias. “What I find most interesting about a lost evolution being brought back is that it’s now no longer a lost evolution. It simply joins the pack of rare evolutions, even though the evolution method is unknown.”

“There are other unknown evolution methods?”

“I’m sure that there are hundreds of them.”

“What about other rare methods?”

“Now that’s something I’m much more qualified to speak on. If we take Microbot as an example, you can evolve it in two common ways. A Solar Shard will unlock four elemental evolutions, yes? Flambot, Steambot, Aerobot and Golebot. How about a Lunar Shard?”

“Treebot, Shockbot, Glacibot and Macrobot, right?”

“That’s right. That covers eight of the elements, so how about the Astral Shard? Well, that gives us the neutral elemental evolution, Savabot. None of these three shards are exceptionally rare, you find them often enough in monster towers, but you can buy them on the open market without hassle too.”

“Now we come to the rare one, the Cosmic Shard, right?” asked Aurin, nodding towards the pearlescent shard that Tobias had stored in a glass display cabinet a few feet away.

“Indeed. A Cosmic Shard is a very rare find in the tower, so rare that they can go for thousands of ounces of silver, depending on the supply available, of course. If you give a Cosmic Shard to a Microbot, it becomes Etherbot. This is one of those rare forms, it’s one that’s known to exist, but the method of obtaining it is difficult because of the rarity of the item required.”

“But are there items other than shards that can trigger an evolution?”

“There are,” said Tobias. “This is where things get interesting because this is often where the lost or undiscovered species typically end up being found. These items possess similar traits to shards, but you may never realise what they’re intended for. The key here is that they must be used alongside an evolutionary shard.”

“And you think one of these items is what is needed to evolve Cubtem into Leofang instead of Leonite?”

“Yes, I’m certain of it. Perhaps it’s how the species has bred that’s made it lose Leofang as a default evolution and this item performs…how would you put it, a course correction? Unlocks a latent genetic memory?”

Aurin sat pondering this for a moment while Tobias leaned back in his chair, staring into space. It was clear that he was also deep in thought, perhaps going over the same thoughts that were constantly circling around in his head.

Aurin finally dared to speak. “If you ask Frederick how he obtained a Leofang, he will no doubt keep it secret. He would certainly never tell me.”

“I’m not expecting you to find out,” said Tobias, shaking his head. “Do not misconstrue my intentions for bringing you here and training you. It’s not because I want you to do this legwork for me. If it was, I would have asked directly.”

“But, if I had a way of finding out, I would. It’s the least I could do considering how helpful you’ve been to me. You don’t owe me anything, but I certainly owe you.”

“You don’t owe me. If I can’t pass my knowledge down to someone from the next generation, what’s the point of having that knowledge?”

Tobias looked at the clock that ticked away in the background. “We should probably both get some sleep, it’s another day of hard training tomorrow and you’ll be heading home at the end of the week. Let’s make the best of these opportunities while we’ve got them.”

“I’ll sleep if you do,” joked Aurin.

“I’ll try my best,” laughed Tobias, standing up. “I mean it, Aurin. You don’t owe me anything. Don’t go putting yourself in harm’s way just to find out about Leofang.”

“I won’t,” said Aurin, “but if I do find out, then you’ll be the first to know.”

“I appreciate that,” said Tobias before slinking off to his room.

Aurin pushed himself from the chair and wandered back into the guest room, where he flopped onto the bed fully clothed. How could be possibly sleep knowing that there were many more Minakai possessing rare evolutions? He was determined now that he would learn more about them and unlock their powers for himself.