Chapter 480

Polar Bear—named by Ai: Shirota.

It somehow sounded like the surname of someone who looked like a big eater, but based on the patterns up to now, he had expected it to turn out this way, so it was settled without issue.

Even if he gave it a more elaborate name, Tatsuro himself would not be able to remember all of them anyway, so it could not be helped.

It was fine as long as he treated it with affection when interacting with it.

And so, for the time being, he had the polar bear Shirota rest inside the Strengthened Modification Ranch while collecting all the scattered claw-shaped iridescent crystals in the area, before moving on to the original goal of creating the panda.

“First, let’s set this Grade 6 magical egg into the Strengthened Modification Ranch.”

He activated the simulator and displayed the bear with golden crystals growing on it.

“It seems like for the subspecies, anything goes color-wise except for the iridescent crystals. For now, I’ll remove the crystals through remodeling.”

“Otherwise, it’d be painful when you hug it.”

Normally, that would be the selling point of this magical beast, but Tatsuro completely treated the crystals growing on its back as a nuisance and removed them through remodeling.

Then, when he tried to change it to the panda’s characteristic coloring, his hand stopped.

“Huh? I remember the eyes and forelegs were black, but what about the rest of the pattern?”

“I have some photos~”

“Oh, thanks.”

Ai showed him several illustrations and photos of pandas stored in her smartphone.

While looking at them, the body fur was based on white, with black around the eyes, from the forelegs to the back, ears, and both hind legs, and it completely turned into a panda pattern.

However—.

“The tail was white... right?”

“Eh? Wasn’t it black?”

“Eh?”

They checked all the panda images in the smartphone’s photo folder, but there was not a single photo showing the butt.

So the two of them played rock-paper-scissors to decide white or black, and since Ai won, the tail color became black.

The real panda’s tail is white, though...

“All right, next is whether to make it an adult panda or a baby panda—”

“Baby panda for me! Big ones are nice too, but the destructive power of a baby panda is insane!!”

“Then like with Mame-ta, make it eternal child style. Something like this?”

“Looking forward to it~”

The others who had not seen it yet decided to enjoy the surprise after it was made, so they did not participate in the remodeling and just watched from the side.

Sai and Aika too, wondering what kind of fluffy creature would come out, flapped the wings on their backs and looked on with sparkling eyes, unable to settle down.

So, to meet their expectations, Tatsuro applied the enhancements as quickly as possible and selected the skills, and among them he discovered what seemed to be a derivative of the original bear’s Rock Spit.

“Oh, this smells like a pretty good deal.”

“Let’s see, let’s see?”

“This one here—”

It was the skill Golden Crystal Spit that shoots golden crystals from its mouth.

However, it was a rare skill with high acquisition difficulty, and it seemed to consume quite a bit of capacity for bestowal.

So if he gave it this, he would not be able to bestow basic and obvious skills like Scratch as initial skills.

“Hmm~ but we’re not taking it into battle anyway, and it’s not like it won’t be able to learn anything later, right? So isn’t it fine? A panda that spits out gold crystals sounds interesting too.”

“That’s true. Though the fact that it spits instead of lays eggs is a bit concerning... Well, there are still plenty of gold crystals, but they have high utility value, so why not.”

Not only as gems, but they were also excellent as materials for weapons and armor.

Shirota’s iridescent crystals were probably higher in value, but if there was an environment where they could be produced in unlimited quantities, it would be better to secure them.

In the future, when producing food products and such to imitate merchants, having gold crystals that are easier to hand over than iridescent crystals should be useful for negotiations.

And so, he bestowed Golden Crystal Spit, and then bestowed simple skills like Scratch, Bite, Smell, etc., before moving on to hatching.

“Do it normally this time!”

“...Y-yeah. I’ll do it normally this time.”

“That pause is suspicious~”

“I’m definitely holding back this time. Since I even looked up the black and white positions, I wouldn’t want them to change.”

For a moment, the idea of adding something again crossed his mind, but since Ai had warned him, he decided to create it in its current style without using divine power.

Without thinking about anything in particular, he poured in his magical power all at once, and the hatching finished after absorbing a magical power amount appropriate for Grade 6.

“Now then, the appearance of the panda, an animal super popular even in our world—!”

After making a grandiose announcement, Tatsuro summoned a baby panda (Modoki) in front of everyone.

“Kyaa~ It’s so round and cute~!”

“Peewee~♪”

“Neigh!”

“It’s quite charming and cute, isn’t it~”

“Fluffy~!”

“Cute...”

“I-it’s cute, isn’t it... Even though it’s just a bear with patterns, why does it make me want to hug it so much?”

On the sandy beach, lying on its back and wiggling its four short limbs toward Tatsuro, the baby panda about 40 centimeters long made even Leela and Ishtar, who had otherworldly sensibilities, unconsciously turn their feet toward it.

“Normal bear cubs are cute too, but somehow this black-and-white body fits perfectly, or something like that.”

“Hey hey, can I hug it? It’s okay, right?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“Me too, me too~”

“I’ll let you hug it in order, so wait, okay?”

“Yeees~”

Ai was the first to scoop up the panda lying on its back and hug it tightly to her chest.

Since Tatsuro had told it in advance that they were not enemies, the panda accepted it without fear.

Sai and Aika, who had obediently replied, lined up behind Ai since they were told it was in order.

“C-could I touch it too?”

“Me too.”

They reached out to the baby panda being docilely held in Ai’s arms, at first just poking a little, then gradually more boldly stroking its belly and head.

Looking at their expressions, the corners of their eyes were completely lowered and their mouths were grinning; it seemed both of them had completely fallen captive to the panda’s charm.

“As expected of pandas... They captivate even clear elf and true dragon women... This is like a zoo—no, in this case a magical beast park. If we opened something like that, it would probably be a huge success.”

“Hmm~, something like this might be fine, but if we showed it to Sota or the Crocodile Squad or Shube-ta or Kiyoko-san, it would probably cause a huge panic.”

“Well, realistically thinking about management and such, it seems like a lot of trouble, and weird customers might come, so it does seem bothersome.”

An upper species of magical beast that could even be used in the phrase “Dragon species and children will appear!!”

Furthermore, if they could safely view magic king species candidates and such, it would indeed prosper, but accepting an unspecified number of humans seemed troublesome in terms of preparations and so on.

It might be good to do it someday when they had free time, but that was not now.

And so, in order, Aika, Sai hugged the panda, and then Leela and Ishtar as well.

Watching such a scene, Tatsuro started thinking that it might be cute to have even more.

When he conveyed the idea to everyone, it was unanimously approved.

For now, ten in total would be good, so he duplicated and took out the remaining nine magical eggs.

He remodeled them the same way, adjusted the male-female ratio to half and half, and hatched them.

Thus, a paradise was created there with ten baby pandas (Modoki) with black tails running around.

When Tatsuro started walking, the ten baby pandas all moved their small short four legs at once and chased after him, which was extremely adorable.

Even Tatsuro, who had been holding back, felt his heart flutter at that and picked up the two closest ones at the same time to hug them.

“What is this ridiculously cute creature... It might be the cutest creature after Ai...”

“Wan wan!”

“Ohh, sorry sorry. Mame-ta is just as cute! ...Though it got pretty big because of me.”

To Mame-ta, who looked like a giant child Shiba Inu and pushed its head against Tatsuro’s back as if saying “What about me?”, Tatsuro put down the baby pandas, apologized while hugging its big head and fluffing it.

As it started to look like a kind of petting zoo, Nana and Leah, who had come to check on things while resting, joined in, and they even called Shachi-ta, and everyone doted on the mascot monsters.

During that time, Tatsuro also snuggled with Ai, sitting cross-legged side by side on the sandy beach with baby pandas on their laps and thinking.

Today’s main event was creating humanoid retainers with systems installed that could cooperate with Gramps.

(Furthermore, it’s also for the celestial demon tribe creation and the overlapping skill experiment with Jeanne and Nana’s skills, so we need to secure the materials for that as a major premise. In that case... it seems better to use materials close to human shape.)

If they wanted ones born in humanoid form, it would be good to mix in Monster Human Tribe Creation to increase the probability.

Mixing in various other things would likely produce things like the oni warrior ghost—Musashi—that are hard to show in public, so that was rejected.

(So for this time’s skills, it’s my Celestial Demon Tribe Creation and Monster Human Tribe Creation. Along with Jeanne’s Celestial Tribe Creation and Nana’s Demon Tribe Creation mixed in, that’s decided.)

Once the direction was set, next was deciding what materials to prepare for each.

Since Tatsuro’s celestial demon tribe creation and Jeanne and Nana’s skills were to be used in pairs, the materials could be lumped together, but since they were doing it anyway, rather than skimping on the number of materials, he wanted to aim for the max value for each.

In that case, 10 for Tatsuro’s celestial demon tribe creation, 10 for Jeanne’s celestial tribe creation, 10 for Nana’s demon tribe creation, for a total of 30 materials just for that.

Furthermore, with 10 consumed for monster human tribe creation, the total number of materials to prepare this time was 40.

Based on the tendency so far, if he prepared the highest quality for all of them, even if the appearance was easy to show in public or not, he should be able to create magical beasts—humans—with systems installed.

“What would be good materials from the magical beasts we’ve fought so far that seem effective for monster human tribe?”

The monster human tribe material recipe was human bone, human heart, human brain, human hair—four types, but to be precise, as long as it was humanoid, even a magical beast’s bones, heart, brain, or hair would adapt, so the range was surprisingly wide.

So Tatsuro, who could not decide immediately, asked everyone for opinions.

Among the various suggestions that came up, including even using Tatsuro and the others’ hair, Ishtar suddenly remembered and nominated a certain magical beast as a candidate.

“Now that you mention it, what about the materials from that magical beast?”

“Which one do you mean by that magical beast?”

“You know, the ridiculously huge one I first fought together with Tatsuro and the others.”

“Ah~, that slightly gross mummy, huh.”

“‘Slightly’?”

While thinking that Ai’s standard for “slightly” was off, Tatsuro thought about that magical beast.

It was a false god species magical beast they fought on the Dragon Continent, a mummy giant that was unmistakably just thin skin attached to bones.

It was an undead type, but as long as it was humanoid, that was not a problem, as they had already experimented with skeleton magical beasts created by the monster ship—Nagato’s skill when trying to gather more humanoid bones.

The quality as a material was extremely high, and it could be said to be the highest peak humanoid bone material Tatsuro currently had.

However—.

“That one was pretty damaged by the attacks when we defeated it... For now, I’ll try to restore it as much as possible with restoration magic and decide after seeing the condition.”

“That sounds good.”

Even Leah, whose cheeks had gone loose from playing with the baby pandas, answered with a serious face at that moment.

And so, Tatsuro placed the corpse of the false god species giant mummy—all the parts he could recover—onto a large platform made with earth magic.

Then he exercised Restoration Magic using the highest quality energy of divine-dragon magical power.

“Whoa, this is amazing! It’s on a completely different level compared to when I just mixed in divine power.”

With normal restoration magic, about 90 percent of the material to restore was usually missing to fully restore it.

In that sense, this mummy was almost completely destroyed. He had carefully collected even down to bone powder, but many parts had disappeared.

So he had estimated that even with restoration magic, he would not be able to restore even a quarter of it.

But what do you know? In front of Tatsuro’s eyes, it was being restored visibly, and it seemed like he could definitely restore half.

However, the lower body part that had been completely sacrificed and turned into a cow with a skill from the beginning seemed impossible.

“Will it all go like this?”

But just as he thought the upper body could all be done—the restoration effect started to weaken, and in the end it stopped at about half plus a little from the nearly total destruction state.

“Even so, this should be plenty as a material, right?”

“It’s originally a large material, and now we’ve made something clearly understandable from it, so wanting more would be asking too much.”

“Yeah. In that case, for the monster human tribe creation, I’ll use this guy’s materials.

After all, bones seem to have higher material value than hair.”

And so, it was decided that for monster human tribe creation, they would use 10 materials from the upper body of the false god species giant mummy, which was less than half destroyed.

That left the materials for celestial tribe creation, demon tribe creation, and celestial demon tribe creation, but for those, Tatsuro already had it decided in his mind.

“I’m thinking of preparing 30 archangel materials. Angel corpses can be treated as holy materials, and if I turn them undead with necro dragon arts, they can be used as evil materials too, so there shouldn’t be any problem material-wise.”

“Eh? Is that how it works? For demon tribe materials, there’s also arachne celestial demon and such.”

“If I include that one... um... it seems like the personality would turn bad, right?”

“Ah...”

Everyone except Ishtar, who did not quite understand, looked up at the sky with distant eyes.

But Tatsuro’s words were convincing enough for the other members, and the materials for this time were decided as 30 archangels and 10 false god species mummies.

“Well then, shall we get to the preparations?”

“Neigh~!”

“Yes!”

As soon as Tatsuro spoke, Jeanne and Nana did True Form.

Tatsuro also swapped the return stone on his staff for a new one and restarted it, and they began the preparations for today’s main event.