Chapter 754: The Soul Of The Beast Goddess

He pressed it.

THUUUUM!

The bedrock under the Keep groaned with a deep ringing concussion that rattled every floorboard in the room.

A blinding flood of pure golden upgrade mana burst out of Silas’s chest... the light was so thick that it looked like molten sunlight pouring across the rug, and it swallowed all twelve beast eggs in a roaring swirling storm of radiant power.

VUUUUUUM!

The eggs began to change right in front of their eyes...

CRACKLE-SNAP!

The azure shell of the Thunder Drakeling exploded with thick violent arcs of violet lightning as ancient runes burned themselves into its surface and thunder rumbled inside the bedroom.

Beside it, the black shell of the Abyssal Shadow-Stalker caved in on itself with a hollow whump and wrapped itself in a vortex of pitch-black smoke that bent the light around it.

The Magma-Core Behemoth’s egg burst into brilliant golden flames that pulsed like the core of a volcano, while the Void-Winged Roc’s emerald shell swelled several inches larger and threw out tiny cyclones of spatial wind that set the curtains whipping.

The eight other eggs didn’t sit still either... One sprouted a crown of thorny green ridges... One went silver and cold as moonlight... One shimmered with heat like desert sand at noon... One sweated cold seawater onto the wool... One grew a pair of glowing nubs like the tips of antlers... One turned heavy and dark as bedrock and sank half an inch into the rug... One flickered in and out of sight like a moth wing in a candle’s glow and the one at the front of the row clad itself in thick interlocking plates of deep shimmering sapphire-steel, with pale silver-blue frost running along every seam and breathing crisp winter vapor into the room.

SKREEEEEE!

Sunny leaped off Rika’s head and hovered in the air on frantically flapping golden wings, squawking in wild delight as the shower of golden sparks washed over his feathers.

Reina fell straight backward onto her rear with a loud thud and threw her hands up to shield her face with her gray eyes as wide as saucers as she stared into the blinding storm.

’It’s not my first time seeing this but I’ll always be surprised...’ Reina thought, her heart hammering like a drum. ’The life inside those shells... it’s jumping across ranks like they’re nothing! They feel like ancient kings waking up inside stone!’

Beside her, Rika stood completely frozen with her small hands trembling at her sides and the roaring golden vortex reflected in her emerald eyes.

’Incredible...’ she thought, her ancient soul shaking. ’He isn’t just pouring power into them... He’s rebuilding their bloodlines from the root! He’s lifting their ceilings into the realm of legends in a single breath... Even in the golden age of the beast realms, an ascension like this would’ve taken a hundred years of bathing an egg in starlight and Master does it with a wave of his hand!’

The light climbed higher and higher, the windows rattled in their frames, the bed’s furs blew flat and the whole Keep seemed to hold its breath as well.

FLASH!

With one final deafening chime like a silver bell struck by a hammer, the golden vortex collapsed inward!

The light vanished and left the twelve eggs resting peacefully on the rug.

They were completely unrecognizable.

...Every shell was bigger and heavier now, and each one thrummed with a slow thunderous heartbeat that pulsed up through the floorboards every few seconds.

PING!

A new window unfolded in front of Silas’s eyes, listing them one after another in glowing gold.

[Upgrade Complete!]

[Thunder Drakeling → Stormcrown Thunder Drake (SSS-Rank)]

[Abyssal Shadow-Stalker → Abyss Stalker (SSS-Rank)]

[Magma-Core Behemoth → Worldlin Magma Behemoth (SSS-Rank)]

[Void-Winged Roc → Skyrend Void Roc (SSS-Rank)]

[Rare Egg → Frostbastion Glacier Kirin (SSS-Rank)]

[Rare Egg → Thornback Hydra (SSS-Rank)]

[Rare Egg → Lunar Fang Moon Wolf (SSS-Rank)]

[Rare Egg → Sunscale Desert Basilisk (SSS-Rank)]

[Rare Egg → Deeptide Leviathan Serpent (SSS-Rank)]

[Rare Egg → Starhorn Celestial Stag (SSS-Rank)]

[Rare Egg → Quakehorn Titan Rhino (SSS-Rank)]

[Rare Egg → Duskwing Phantom Moth (SSS-Rank)]

Silas let out a long satisfied breath as the gold rings in his eyes glowed.

He looked over at Reina, who was still sitting wide-eyed on the floor, and pointed down at the glowing cluster with his left hand.

"Pick one, Reina," Silas said, his voice sounding relaxed and warm. "Rika’s getting the other eleven, but one of these is yours..."

Reina froze.

Her gray eyes darted from Silas to the pulsing rune-marked eggs and then up to Rika.

Beside her, Rika blinked and her eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise as she looked between Silas and the tamer.

"M-Me...?" Reina stammered, pointing a trembling finger at her own chest. "Lord Silas... you want me to pick one of these?! These are very powerful! I’m just a tamer who cleans wolf pens!"

"You’re the Beast Tamer of Blessed Land," Silas said firmly, stepping forward and offering her his hand to help her up. "You raised the royal spiders, and you work yourself to the bone for this valley every single day... You’ve earned it so pick the one that calls to you, You’re going to learn everything about bonding with it from Rika."

Reina took his hand and found her feet on the rug, her chest heaving with emotion.

Slowly, she walked over to the glowing clutch.

Her gray eyes passed over the crackling lightning of the Stormcrown Thunder Drake and the howling wind of the Skyrend Void Roc, and came to rest on an egg in the front row.

...The Frostbastion Glacier Kirin.

It was covered in thick interlocking plates of deep shimmering sapphire-steel that gleamed like polished armor.

Along every seam a slow steady pulse of pale silver-blue frost mana glowed and cooled the air around its base into crisp sparkling vapor.

Reina dropped to her knees and gently laid both palms against the cold metallic shell.

THUMP-THUMP!

A deep heartbeat pulsed under her hands, answering her touch with an eager gentle hum that made the hair on her arms stand on end.

"This one," Reina whispered, her eyes shining with tears of pure wonder. "It feels like a glacier waking up under the sun. It’s calling to me, Lord Silas..."

She pulled the heavy egg into her lap and cradled it against her chest like a newborn, then looked up at Silas with deep unshakable gratitude.

"Thank you, Lord Silas," she choked out. "Thank you so much. I swear I’ll protect this life with everything I have..."

Rika immediately stepped forward with her small hands planted firmly on her hips and a proud teacherly glint sparking in her emerald eyes.

"Master," she said, tilting her head toward Silas, "can I give a lesson now?"

Silas smiled and stepped back toward the wardrobe, folding his arms over his chest. "Go right ahead... The floor’s yours."

Rika turned to Reina, and her small frame radiated ancient authority that demanded every scrap of attention in the room.

"Listen closely," she began, in that layered voice that sounded like bells ringing over stones. "Most handlers think bringing a beast into the world takes machines... Incubators, heat stones, mana vats. That’s the easy path, and the beasts that come from it see their tamer as nothing more than the one who brings the meat."

She pointed one small slender finger straight at the sapphire-steel egg in Reina’s arms.

"The better path," she went on, her eyes flashing with faint golden embers, "is the soul-hearth... Once your spirit is strong enough, you don’t set the egg on a stand. You pull it into your own soul... You bathe it in your own life, your breath, your will and when the beast finally breaks its shell inside your soul, it doesn’t just know your face... It knows you, all the way down to the essence of your being."

Rika took a deep breath.

"That’s why using your soul to nurture your beast egg is always the better way."

Reina clutched the cold egg tighter against her chest, and her brow furrowed in complete bewilderment.

"Into my soul...?" She asked, sounding hushed and disbelieving. "Lady Rika... how is that even possible?! How can a heavy egg go inside a living spirit?!"

Rika’s lips curved into an enormous knowing grin, the wicked confident smirk of a very old goddess.

"Watch," she whispered.

She turned her eyes on the eleven SSS-Rank eggs resting on the rug.

VUUUUUUM!

The world itself unraveled like spun silk as Silas felt the solid oak floorboards vanish from under his boots in an instant.

WHOOOOOOSH!

A dizzying weightless lurch grabbed his gut and flipped his stomach into his throat as if he’d stepped off the edge of a five-thousand-foot cliff.

...The stone walls, the wardrobe, the windows and the whole Keep dissolved into a vast swirling sea of warm radiant orange light that stretched out forever.

"Whoa!" Silas gasped, his hands shooting out on instinct to grab at empty air.

He didn’t plunge into an abyss at all... His boots caught on some invisible buoyant current, and he floated.

He steadied himself, and his dark blue eyes went wide in breathless awe.

He was hanging in the middle of an impossibly vast dimension. Beside him Reina let out a strangled squeak, clutching her sapphire egg with both arms as she floated upright with her legs kicking awkwardly in the warm orange air.

It was breathtaking.

An endless sun-drenched expanse of warm amber clouds drifted like glowing islands under a sky of liquid gold.

Huge sweeping currents of spiritual mana, thick and fragrant like honeyed incense, flowed through the space in lazy rivers that ran on past any horizon.

There were no walls, no ceiling and no edges... It felt bigger than all of Central City many times over, and it held the calm endless silence of a newborn world.

Floating three feet in front of them, with Sunny perched comfortably on her drifting black hair, was Rika.

"Welcome," she said, her voice echoing across the endless space with crystal clarity. "This is my soul."

Silas turned his head and took in the staggering size of it. Even with his Mythic Gold Core, the sheer volume of this place felt too big to understand.

"It’s huge, Rika," he murmured with wonder in his voice. "This feels like a whole world tucked behind your ribs."

Rika looked out across the glowing amber expanse, and a quiet sad pride touched her small face.

"It grew this big because of what it used to hold, Master," she said softly, gesturing at the empty radiant sky. "Long ago I didn’t walk around with a handful of companions... I carried a whole army of beasts in here. Hundreds of thousands of them nested in these clouds, and every breath they took pushed the edges of my soul a little further out."

Her emerald eyes darkened, and a brief cold shadow crossed her face as she looked down at her small pale hands.

"But Thor and the other deities killed most of them," she murmured, her voice tight with old sorrow. "And this sky has been hollow and quiet ever since..."

She took a long deep breath, pushed the old grief aside and straightened her back as her eyes blazed into molten gold.

SKREEEEEE!

Sunny squawked from her crown and loosed a brilliant wave of golden embers into the amber air.

Down in the glowing clouds beneath their feet, the eleven SSS-Rank eggs, now pulled here into her soul, began to stir...

RUMBLE!

They rose out of the mist one after another.

The Stormcrown Thunder Drake came first, trailing chains of violet lightning that cracked like whips through the clouds.

Then the Abyss Stalker, swallowing the golden light in a wake of pure velvet dark... the Worldlin Magma Behemoth rose roaring like a small sun and shed droplets of liquid fire that hissed into steam... the Skyrend Void Roc tore upward in a howling emerald gale... the Thornback Hydra spilled green vines of light behind it.

’More... All of you come...’

The Lunar Fang Moon Wolf glowed cold and silver... the Sunscale Desert Basilisk shimmered with blazing heat... the Deeptide Leviathan Serpent dragged a ribbon of glittering seawater through the sky... the Starhorn Celestial Stag scattered stardust... the Quakehorn Titan Rhino rumbled like a landslide and the Duskwing Phantom Moth flickered in and out of sight like a dream.

They didn’t stay together.

All eleven eggs burst into motion at once and swept into a huge radiant spiral that wheeled around Silas, Reina and Rika like eleven tiny planets tracing their orbits.

...Lightning, flame, shadow, wind, vine, moonlight, sand, sea, stardust, stone and dusk looped through the soul space in a dazzling helix of color, faster and faster, until the whole sky was laced with blazing trails.

The wind whipped through Silas’s dark hair and snapped his jacket against his ribs.

The eggs circled tighter and faster with their eleven heartbeats drawing closer together, falling into step, until they all beat as one huge thundering rhythm that made the entire dimension shudder with life.

THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!

Reina stared with wide glistening eyes, completely paralyzed by the swirling constellation, clutching her egg to her chest.

In the middle of it all, Rika turned to face them with her small divine form bathed in the light of her reborn army, and her voice rang out across the sky.

"Look closely, Reina. This isn’t storage... A soul isn’t a box made of wood and iron... It’s the living hearth of who you are."