Chapter 191: Seed

Jaxir studied the second magic circle on the Beast Taming Compendium, following the overlapping rings until he started to understand why it had opened up so much sooner than the lessons in the other two books.

This formation wasn’t meant to tame anything, and it didn’t give the contracted creature a new ability either. Its job was to tell the Conjurer exactly what they had already captured, and where that creature could go next.

Name: Evolutionary Appraisal

Type: Beast Compendium Formation

[Analyze a contracted creature’s Abilities and reveal their available progression paths.]

[Identify materials and conditions compatible with advancement to the contracted creature’s next standard.]

[Accuracy and depth depend on the user’s comprehension of the formation, the contracted creature, and its bloodline.]

Jaxir’s interest sharpened when he reached the second line.

Knowing what a creature needed to advance solved one of the biggest problems he could think of with beast taming. Finding some powerful monster was one thing. Blindly feeding it treasures and hoping something good happened, on the other hand, sounded like a fantastic way to burn money.

If this formation could tell him exactly what a contracted beast needed, then the Compendium was doing a lot more than just giving him a convenient place to keep them.

His attention moved to the page holding the Black Gem Alpha.

The wolf was still curled up in the dark space, the Progenitor Black Gem Heart pulsing through its changing body while the evolution timer kept counting down beside it.

Jaxir activated Evolutionary Appraisal and aimed the formation at the wolf. He was hoping to see what materials would eventually push its newly purified bloodline all the way up to the Grand Archmage standard.

Golden lines spread across the page and sank into the Alpha’s image.

Then they stopped.

Jaxir frowned and pushed more attention through the formation. All he got back was a dense mess of half-formed information that fell apart every time he tried to separate one part from another.

He could tell the wolf had several possible paths for advancement, and that its Black Gem bloodline was changing in ways the formation could read. However, anything to do with reaching Grand Archmage was buried far beyond his current understanding.

The problem wasn’t the circle. It was him.

"Of course it is."

Jaxir rubbed his forehead as the failed formation faded from the page.

"Why would the second lesson of a Legendary Legacy immediately tell me how to make a beyond-Grand Archmage beast?"

He needed something simpler. He sat there for a few moments before an old reward finally came back to him.

The Willow Dungeon had given him three Class Secrets. Only the Hex reward had been useful to him right away, with the Nerve Sap Formula eventually becoming the poison he used against Maelis.

As for the other two? Those had stayed locked because of his Path.

Jaxir opened his Inventory and pulled out a small seed.

Name: Treant Seed

Grade: Epic

Level: 15

Type: Class Secret

Path: Conjure

Description: Life answers most readily to that which nourishes it.

[Bind this seed to the user’s mana and feed it compatible natural Mana to cultivate a Treant Companion.]

[The Treant’s growth, characteristics and Abilities will be influenced by the types and qualities of Mana supplied throughout its development.]

[Only one Treant cultivated through this Class Secret may exist at a time.]

[Unavailable]

Jaxir rolled the seed between his fingers and looked back at the first magic circle in the Beast Compendium.

The Class Secret was still unavailable to his Hex Path, exactly as it had been when he first got it. However, the Compendium’s taming formation didn’t seem to care much about that restriction.

As far as the book was concerned, the seed held a compatible life just waiting to become a contracted companion.

He set the Treant Seed over the first formation and sent the minimum 10 MP through it, just like he had with the Black Gem Alpha.

The response was immediate. The magic circle wrapped around the seed, pulled it beneath the page, and opened a second contract space next to the wolf’s.

A short timer appeared underneath.

[Growth Time: 00:03:00]

Jaxir watched the seed split open inside the page, hair-thin roots pushing outward and drinking in the mana around them.

A tiny trunk rose up from the center, and branches unfolded from it. Every minute that passed added more bark, thicker roots, and a crown of narrow green leaves.

When the last few seconds ran out, a creature that barely came up to Jaxir’s knee was standing in the contract space.

It looked like someone had taken one of the great willows from the dungeon and shrunk it down until it was almost harmless.

The Junior Willow Treant had a squat wooden body on thick, root-like legs. Two branch arms hung at its sides, and willow leaves draped down around its head.

The Compendium marked it as Common. But after failing to read something with Grand Archmage potential, that was exactly what Jaxir wanted.

If he couldn’t understand this one, then he had much bigger problems.

He turned back to Evolutionary Appraisal and activated it again.

The formation sank into the Junior Willow Treant. For a moment, Jaxir thought the huge difference in standard would make the result automatic.

Instead, the information came back almost as useless as before. He got fragmented impressions of water, wood, natural mana, growth, and several paths that fell apart before he could understand what connected them.

His mouth flattened.

"Alright, what am I missing?"

This time, he studied the formation instead of pouring more mana into it, tracing the section that linked his own awareness to the contracted creature.

The circle wasn’t going to scan the Treant and hand him an answer. It expected Jaxir to tune the formation toward whatever he wanted to understand, using his own knowledge as the starting point.

He had been treating it like Bestial Appraisal. In reality, it worked a lot more like Attune.

Jaxir closed his eyes and went back to the Willow Dungeon in his memory, running through everything he’d learned fighting the Drowned Willow Witch.

Its roots had done more than anchor it in place. They had read changes in the lake and regulated how both water and mana moved through its body.

Most of its strongest attacks hadn’t come from brute force, either. They had relied on guiding what already existed around it.

Bind had disrupted that flow. Fracture had widened the imbalance. Then, Wither had taken advantage once Jaxir understood what the creature was actually doing.

He remembered the water beams, the leaves and wind moving to defend it, and how the whole creature had behaved more like one connected mana network than a collection of separate limbs.

The Junior Willow Treant in front of him was far weaker and much less developed. Even so, that foundation should still be in there somewhere.

Roots, water, natural mana, growth.

Jaxir opened his eyes.

This time, he didn’t just activate Evolutionary Appraisal and wait for the formation to explain the Treant to him.

He guided each section as it formed, tuning the inner rings toward the roots first, then following the mana up through the trunk, branches, and leaves. Whenever the formation ran into something he didn’t understand, he adjusted it using what he’d learned from the Willow Witch, instead of forcing his way through.

The response changed almost immediately.

The information stopped breaking apart and started settling into clear sections. New lines formed between traits Jaxir hadn’t even realized were connected.

The Junior Willow Treant brightened inside its page as the formation made one final rotation around it.

Jaxir leaned in as a status screen finally began to unfold above the Compendium.

His eyes narrowed as he started reading.