Chapter 350

Chapter 350

Lorant found this phenomenon quite intriguing.

Whether it's a secondary beast or a beast, they seem to lack much protective instinct towards the beast eggs they lay.

Although there is an instinct to keep them close and not let them be taken away, if they are not removed, within a few days, these beasts will cruelly consume the beast eggs they have laid.

Yes, they don't even attempt to hatch these beast eggs, but at some point, as if realizing something, they will just eat them.

This was a problem Lorant discovered due to negligence at the Beast Tower.

However, if what they are carrying inside is a secondary beast, this situation does not occur. They treat the eggs inside them as their own offspring, just like normal beasts.

Lorant speculated that this was a self-protection mechanism of the beasts.

Even with their simple intelligence, they have an instinct to distinguish between themselves and the beast pets.

This, in a way, serves as solid evidence of a significant difference between beasts and beast pets.

Despite the Beast Tower's extensive research, they haven't been able to determine the reason behind this.

After its eggs were taken, the secondary beast was only briefly annoyed before quickly calming down, lying on the branch and happily enjoying its snack.

Lorant ignored the now calm cicada-winged beast, turning instead to examine the bract branch, which looked no different from a normal branch.

The attentive Kong Seventeen swiftly handed a small mithril dagger to Lorant.

Lorant took it and skillfully sliced the entire bract branch vertically from top to bottom with ease.

Once split open, the bract branch revealed its true form layer by layer.

Peeling back the tightly wrapped layers of thick, woody leaves, Lorant soon reached the innermost 'wood core'.

Even with several bract layers still intact, Lorant could clearly see the shapes of the beast eggs within the wood core.

The nearly four-meter-long bract trunk was packed from end to end with grape-sized eggs.

The beast eggs were perfectly sized to fill the hollow center of the bract trunk, their neatly arranged shapes visible through the outline of the wood core.

Lorant didn't squeeze out all the eggs or peel open the last layer of leaves.

He carefully coiled the long 'egg strip' into a circular plate shape, as the outer hard leaves had been peeled away, leaving the innermost layer soft and unsupported.

He then carefully placed the plate of beast eggs into a barrel lined with fine 'dry colorful jade grass', the sizes matching perfectly.

After adding a layer of beast eggs, he placed another layer of dry colorful jade grass, then took a string of beast eggs from a cicada-winged beast's cage, coiled it, and placed it on top.

After repeating this process several times, the beast eggs finally filled the entire barrel.

Then Lorant poured a thick, paste-like potion made from beast blood and brain matter into the barrel, filling it completely.

Just like pickling some kind of vegetable, the beast eggs were processed in this way.

After some time of fermentation, these beast eggs would mature into fully developed beast eggs, ready to hatch new beast pets, the "Blood-eyed Black Crows".

Lorant was quite eager for these C-grade beasts with auxiliary abilities.

Although they haven't been born yet, Lorant has already thought of many places where they could be useful.

In the following days, Lorant waited patiently in the monster pet shop for the birth of the Blood-eyed Black Ravens.

According to his speculation, these monster pets would hatch in about a week, so he was willing to wait a bit longer in the shop.

During this time, Lorant was always running around, whether it was to the orc tribe or collecting various materials in the desert, or participating in various events in the Black Gold Fir territory and the city of Holland, which had made Lorant feel a bit restless.

Now, staying in the monster pet shop felt somewhat like a return to normalcy.

However, staying in the shop, Lorant made some new discoveries.

The breeding of Dream Weavers was ongoing, following the plan Lorant had set, steadily breeding batch after batch of Dream Weavers. So far, the third wave of Dream Weavers had started to hatch, and these little ones had caused quite a stir outside.

But among them, there was one monster egg from the second batch that was quite special. Its siblings had all grown into cute little white fluff balls, but it remained a stubborn monster egg.

Although there were no problems, it just refused to hatch.

This made Lorant discover this somewhat special little one while checking the hatching status of the monster pets.

The reason why Kong Yi didn't pay much attention to this matter was that every batch of monster eggs would have one or two unlucky ones that didn't complete the incubation process and wouldn't actually hatch. However, such monster eggs needed to go through a very thorough confirmation process and had to be approved by Lorant to confirm that there was no possibility of hatching before they could be disposed of. Therefore, this unhatched Dream Weaver monster egg was kept.

Lorant was all too familiar with this situation!

Before hatching, Baby was just such a monster egg!

This means that, if luck is on their side, a new ghost spider will be born from this monster egg!

Lorant knows the abilities of ghost spiders all too well, and having one more would be a significant addition to the monster pet shop.

But given Baby's resistance to having a ghost spider companion, Lorant naturally couldn't keep this little one by his side.

Each type of monster pet has a different level of acceptance towards its own kind and other types of monster pets.

For example, Wulu Shells don't like to stay with their companions, but they won't be too resistant to short-term contact, while Light-wing Butterflies prefer to move in small groups of three to five, neither liking to be alone nor to live in excessively large groups.

Baby has a strong aversion to its own kind, so strong that Lorant feels this child can't even accept having a companion around.

Even that night, after Lorant brought the monster egg back to the room, the little one kept hissing and growling at the egg, looking like it wanted to swipe at it and break it.

Lorant was taken aback by Baby's intense reaction and quickly held the little one firmly in his hand, while taking the monster egg to find Silem.

"Brother? What is this?" Silem opened the door with a messy head, looking puzzled at his brother's expression: "Why are you giving me a monster egg at night? I can't hatch it!"

Lorant, with his left hand firmly holding the flailing Baby like a mouse, handed the portable incubator containing the monster egg to Silem with his right hand.

"This is your birthday present for this year!"

Silem looked dumbfounded at what Lorant handed him, "Birthday present? What is it?" He asked somewhat cluelessly, staring at the smooth monster egg.

"If all goes well, this monster egg can hatch into a pet just like Baby," Lorant said casually. "Haven't you always been envious of Baby? Now you have a chance to have one."

"A ghost spider?!" Silem looked at the incubator in his hands with surprise, carefully holding it with both hands and hugging it to his chest, afraid that any careless move might drop this precious monster egg and cause an accident.

That's a ghost spider! An A-level monster pet, Silem had been envious for a long time. If he could have one, wouldn't he be able to roam freely in the Black Forest!

With just one look at Silem, Lorant knew what the boy he had raised from childhood was thinking.

"If you think having a ghost spider means you can take on dangerous tasks, I'll make sure you can't leave the monster pet shop until you become a level ten practitioner," the shop owner said with a cold, ruthless smile, seeing Silem's suddenly frightened eyes, he cruelly curled his lips.

"The ghost spider is to protect your safety, understand?"

Silem immediately straightened his back and nodded repeatedly.

He believed his older brother was fully capable of following through on his words. Though it sounded a bit intimidating, he couldn't be sure if his brother was merely trying to frighten him...

Back when the external deterrence of the beast pet shop was insufficient, Lorant had indeed considered keeping everyone in his family within the protective range of the shop. During that time, Ruth and Martha hardly went out, worried about causing trouble for Lorant, and Silem himself never took on any external tasks at the academy, focusing solely on being a diligent student.

Deep down, Silem believed that, given his brother's overprotective and controlling nature, the threat might have been genuine.

Moreover, this was a ghost spider!

Although Lorant had mentioned that he would later find an A-Level pet for everyone in the family to contract with, and Silem had never been worried about that, compared to the Holy Light Peacock, Silem naturally preferred the ghost spider.

As a knight who aspired to fight, he naturally desired to gain more strength.

Silem had gained a relatively clear understanding of his practitioner abilities.

He did have some talent, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to enter the academy, but in the Knight Academy, he had seen too many geniuses. Although he didn't want to admit it, the gap between them was difficult to bridge through hard work alone.

This was a deeply disheartening realization. The achievements of practitioners were almost predetermined from birth within a certain range.

If you worked hard enough, you could reach the top of that range, but if you were lazy, you would remain at the bottom.

But to break through this inherent limitation?

Sorry, that was almost completely impossible.

Practitioners were a group of individuals who had to confront harsh realities.