Chapter 187: Progenitor Black Gem Heart

Jaxir slipped his fingers beneath the black gemstone heart and pulled it free of the page.

He was surprised by how heavy it was. The thing was no bigger than his fist, but it sat in his palm like a stone.

The carved veins across its surface pulsed once after it left the Beast Taming Compendium, sending a faint vibration into his fingers. Then, a status screen unfolded above it.

He had expected another specialized tool for beast tamers. What he got, though, was a lot more important.

Name: Progenitor Black Gem Heart

Grade: Legendary

[Transform any compatible wolf-type creature into a Mage-standard Black Gem Wolf.]

[If consumed by a Black Gem Wolf that has already reached the Mage standard, purify and elevate its ancestral bloodline, granting the potential to reach the Grand Archmage standard.]

[Purified Black Gem bloodlines may pass their Black Gem ancestry to offspring born with other wolf species. Offspring born from sufficiently powerful bloodlines possess a small chance of inheriting a Black Gem bloodline surpassing that of the parent.]

Jaxir read the last line twice, then looked over at the Black Gem Alpha. Suddenly, this whole ridiculous quest made a little more sense.

The Mage Conjurer God hadn’t been trying to conjure another member of the race out of thin air. All those sacrifices hadn’t been meant to rebuild an extinct population overnight, either.

He had made a way for the last Black Gem to stop being the last one.

The heart could turn an ordinary compatible wolf into a Mage-standard Black Gem. However, that part barely mattered for the creature sitting in front of Jaxir.

The Alpha was already a Mage. That meant eating the heart would purify its bloodline instead, giving it a path toward Grand Archmage and changing what it could pass down.

If it eventually found another wolf species it could have offspring with, at least some of those pups could carry the Black Gem bloodline forward.

The last part of the description was even more poignant. If its partner had a strong enough bloodline, one of those pups might be born with a Black Gem bloodline stronger than the Alpha’s own.

In other words, the race wouldn’t just limp along in a weakened form, slowly diluting itself into whatever wolves were left in the world. Under the right circumstances, it could actually come back stronger than before.

Jaxir chuckled and rolled the heart across his palm.

"Alright, little guy."

At some point while Jaxir was reading, the Black Gem Alpha had climbed onto all four paws. Whatever exhaustion it had left from the fight had vanished the second the heart came out of the Compendium.

Its eyes were glued to the gemstone in Jaxir’s hand, and its tail swept across the cavern floor hard enough to scatter loose bits of crystal.

If wolves could drool over magical bloodline treasures, this one looked about 5 seconds away from embarrassing itself.

Jaxir tossed the heart toward it.

The Alpha moved so fast that Jaxir barely saw its jaws snap shut around the gemstone. By the time it landed, it was a couple of meters closer to him.

There was no swallowing motion and no lump traveling down its throat. Even so, the heart was completely gone from between its teeth.

Black light flickered once under the gemstone coat along its neck before sinking deeper into its body.

Jaxir waited for something dramatic to happen.

Instead, the wolf walked over and shoved the side of its head into his ribs.

"What?"

Jaxir braced himself against the sudden weight and looked down at it. The Alpha nudged him again, then turned its head toward the Beast Taming Compendium.

It did the same thing once more. Jaxir followed its gaze, and that was when he noticed the first teaching page had started to glow.

"Oh..."

He pulled the Compendium into his lap and looked over the magic circle filling the first page. He understood what it was for almost as soon as mana began moving through the lines.

Unlike the Construct and Reality teachings, this circle wasn’t asking him to build something out of nothing. It was a taming formation, meant to establish a bond and pull the chosen beast into the Compendium’s spatial pages.

The amount of mana it needed wasn’t fixed, either.

Jaxir could put in anything from 10 MP all the way up to 10,000. How much it actually took depended on how completely the target had submitted before the formation was activated.

Forcing an unwilling beast into the Compendium would mean flooding the circle with enough mana to crush whatever resistance it had left. Though, even the full 10,000 MP might not be enough. A willing creature, on the other hand, took almost nothing.

Jaxir looked at the Black Gem Alpha. It was still practically pressing its nose against the page.

"Alright, alright, I get it."

He fed 10 MP into the circle.

Golden lines spread across the page and climbed into the air around the Black Gem Alpha, forming several rotating rings that tightened around its body. It didn’t resist even a little.

The wolf lifted its head and let out a long howl as its gemstone coat broke apart into black light. Then, the whole creature rushed inward and disappeared into the open Compendium.

Jaxir felt the new connection settle into the book right after, then a page turned by itself.

The Black Gem Alpha appeared on it, a detailed image lying in a dark field. However, the black light moving beneath its coat had already started to change.

The Progenitor Black Gem Heart floated where its chest should have been, sending slow pulses through the rest of its body.

A timer appeared beneath the image.

[Evolution Time: 12:00:00]

Jaxir leaned closer. Was the wolf seriously going to spend half a day stuck in the book after bugging him to put it there?

Before he could complain, the numbers flickered and rapidly dropped, while the Beast Taming Compendium gave off a faint golden glow around the page.

The timer stopped again at a much more reasonable number.

[Evolution Time: 01:00:00]

"That’s more like it."

Jaxir wasn’t sure if the reduction came from the Legendary Compendium, the Mage Conjurer God’s Legacy, or some interaction between the two. Either way, he wasn’t about to argue with 11 hours disappearing for free.

The Alpha looked peaceful in the page. For once, Jaxir could leave the creature alone without wondering if it was quietly brooding over the pointlessness of existence.

He started to close the book. But then another page moved.

Jaxir paused as the sheet under his hand pulled itself free and flipped over without any help from him.

The Construct Compendium had refused to show him anything new until he pushed the Mana Repeater Turret all the way up to the Mage standard. He had assumed the Beast Taming Compendium would follow the same annoying rule.

Instead, a second magic circle was already spreading across the new page.

Jaxir slowly raised an eyebrow.

It seemed the Beast Taming Compendium didn’t care about him mastering the first lesson before showing him the second.

The new formation was denser than the taming circle he’d just used, with several overlapping rings and unfamiliar symbols arranged around an empty center.

Jaxir leaned in as the last lines lit up.

"Well, that’s interesting."