Chapter 328

The creature that Ai had hoped would remain a small, eternally youthful wolf had transformed into a giant three-meter-tall beast, despite retaining its appearance aside from its fur color.

This was the result of Tatsuro, instead of merely providing the necessary Magical Power, mixing in a small amount of Dragon Force and a trace of Divine Power out of strange curiosity.

While wondering what to do, the fluffiness was quite satisfactory, so Tatsuro and Ai clung to its large legs or lay on its back, enjoying it while thinking this might be acceptable as is—yet they investigated whether there was a solution.

Surprisingly, a solution was found.

Due to exposure to powers beyond its capacity, namely Divine Power and Dragon Force, the creature gained an additional skill slot and an expanded range of learnable skills.

Among them was Body Contraction, a skill possessed by giant species.

Since the creature was newly born, it could still undergo significant enhancement modifications, and this skill was successfully added.

“Alright, Body Contraction!”

“Yip yip!”

“It worked! It’s shrinking!”

Although there was no Body Strengthening Compression that would make it stronger the more it shrank, using Body Contraction allowed it to maintain the same strength as its original size, successfully transforming it into the planned 30-centimeter mini size.

“Yay! So cute!”

“It’s definitely a good dog—er, wolf.”

“Gau!”

“Yip yip!”

Ai, in high spirits, held Athena in her right arm and the wolf cub in her left.

Since it had been told Ai wasn’t an enemy, it stayed calm, barking while nestled in her arms.

To Tatsuro, the two creatures looked like a large cat and a Shiba Inu puppy, and he couldn’t help but smile as he petted their heads.

Both seemed delighted, so adorable that Ai and Tatsuro took pictures with their Smartphones.

“In this form, we could probably let it play in the garden even back in Japan.”

“It might become the neighborhood idol!”

“Gau!”

“Yip yip!”

The scene of the lively newborn wolf cub—not a puppy—and Athena watching it fondly warmed their hearts. However, perhaps because the wolf cub wasn’t used to Body Contraction, it felt restrictive and reverted to its original size.

“Huh? It got big again. Didn’t like being small?”

“Whine…”

“It seems to consume a bit of Ki, and since it’s not used to it, staying small all the time might be tough.”

“I see. I forgot it’s still level 1, even though it’s so big. But show me your small form again sometime, okay?”

“Yip yip!”

“It says okay.”

With the size issue settled for now, Tatsuro and Ai leaned against the sitting wolf cub, feeling its fluffiness with their whole bodies, while Athena remained happily in Ai’s arms. They decided to move on to the next phase.

“Next up is Magic Egg Forging.”

“Ooh, smells like some mad scientist vibes!”

“We’re already plenty mad, messing with body sizes and enhancements. Let’s see… Hmm, got it, got it.”

“What’s ‘got it’?”

Ai looked curious, so Tatsuro briefly explained what he’d just learned about Magic Egg Forging.

According to his findings, Magic Eggs have quality grades that vary by the type of Magical Beast, and the key to creating the strongest Magical Beast lies in balancing these grades uniformly.

To explain further, for example, an Imomu’s Magic Egg is grade 1. The Magic Eggs of a queen bee Bipris or a queen ant Armare are grade 2. A Giant Fire Salamander’s Magic Egg is grade 4, showing differences by species.

As an example of ignoring grade uniformity, if a grade 1 Imomu egg and a grade 4 Giant Fire Salamander egg were fused, the resulting egg would become a degraded Magic Egg, turning into an extremely low-quality Magical Beast imitation with a grade of 0.5 or 0.1.

This happens with high probability even with a difference of just one grade or when fusing high-grade eggs like 5 and 6, so it’s best to avoid using precious Magic Eggs this way.

On the other hand, as an example of maintaining grade uniformity, fusing a grade 2 Bipris egg with a grade 2 Armare egg would, depending on compatibility, reliably increase the grade, transforming it into a higher-tier Magic Egg.

By the way, humans capable of Dispel Magic or Tame Contract can easily discern these grades.

“So, with what we have, combining the bee and ant eggs would be best, right?”

“Yeah. Plus, they have similar traits, so their compatibility might be good. Wanna give it a try?”

“Can it still gather honey after fusing?”

“We can just duplicate both and keep backups.”

“You can duplicate the eggs?”

“Yeah, seems like it.”

With that, they used two of their daily accumulating duplication points to copy one of each Magic Egg, placing the duplicates in front of them.

Activating Magic Egg Forging and holding their hands over the eggs, the two eggs turned liquid, merged, and quickly transformed into a single reddish-orange Magic Egg.

When Tatsuro analyzed it with Dispel Magic, the fusion of two grade 2 eggs resulted in a grade 4 egg, effectively equivalent to a Giant Fire Salamander’s Magic Egg.

“A two-rank jump. Their compatibility must’ve been great.”

“So it’s like a Giant Fire Salamander, meaning it’s an insect as strong as a sub-dragon, right?”

“Kinda exciting.”

“Gau gau!”

“Yip yip!”

Perhaps catching their excitement, Athena and the wolf cub grew animated.

Tatsuro duplicated the egg in the Infinite Item Field, took it out again, and placed it in the Strengthened Modification Ranch to project its state if hatched normally via the simulator.

Its form resembled a giant hornet. Its body was red with black stripes, about three meters long.

Its front legs had two sharp hooked claws, while the other four resembled beast legs.

At its rear, centered around a retractable Oviposition tube, six thick Poison Stingers protruded.

Upon closer inspection, what looked like fine fur covering its body was actually rock-hard Poison Stingers that would pierce and poison anything that touched them.

“It’s like… more mobile than the bee or ant, and it’s evolved to be aggressively combat-ready.”

“Hmm, not cute. Can it make honey?”

“Uh… in this form, it doesn’t seem to.”

“What? I was hoping for stronger, tastier honey!”

“Well, we can leave that to regular queen bees—wait, hold on. Now that I think about it, I think the worker bees were the ones making honey…”

Recalling when he used Level Eater on the bees, Tatsuro remembered that the Honey Generation skill belonged to the worker bees, not the queen.

Digging deeper with the simulator, he discovered that among the skills of the worker bees produced in large numbers by the ant-bee queen (a temporary name Tatsuro gave it), there was a skill called Superior Honey Generation that sounded quite promising.

“Superior Honey… slurp. Tatsuro! I wanna eat that!”

“Is that good enough for you, Ai?”

“…What do you mean?”

To Ai’s questioning look, as she mimed adjusting nonexistent glasses, Tatsuro pointed out the possibilities shown by the simulator.

“What I’m using isn’t just a ranch for storing Magical Beasts. It’s a Strengthened Modification Ranch, you know? Are you satisfied with just Superior Honey?”

“—Huh!? No way, no way, no way—really!?”

“Exactly, Ai-kun. If we tweak it to specialize in honey production… we can make its offspring have Supreme Honey Generation!!”

“Supreme…!? That one! Definitely go for that one!!”

“Leave it to me! The finest honey for you, courtesy of the Hasami Beekeeping Farm—opening soon!”

Originally, this Magical Beast could be enhanced to combat specialization using the full capabilities of the Strengthened Modification Ranch, potentially surpassing even the Insectoid Dragon Shubelg Fungus.

If it could be tamed, one might spend their entire fortune to obtain it.

But to the two of them, it was just a honey-producing bee. If a regular Tamer were nearby, they’d likely shed tears of regret.

“Let’s do this. Alright, tweak this here, do that there… And for the leftover parts, let’s add some self-defense skills. Done.”

“Bring it on!”

The worker bees produced by the ant-bee queen were enhanced to specialize in honey production as much as possible, with minimal attack skills and parameters added for self-defense.

Even so, the queen alone was strong enough to hunt most Magical Beasts.

Having fine-tuned it perfectly this time, Tatsuro was careful not to mess it up like with the wolf cub, so he infused it with regular Magical Power.

As expected, the Magical Beast appeared in the flower-filled space projected on the ranch’s Monitor, just as the simulator predicted.

This allowed communication with the ranch’s Magical Beasts like a video call.

“Produce lots of babies and make tons of honey!”

“Bzzz!”

The ant-bee queen signaled agreement and began preparing for Oviposition in the ranch, so Tatsuro turned off the Monitor.

“Can we actually eat the honey made from stuff inside the otherworldly ranch?”

“Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem. The necessary food and environment are automatically generated by absorbing my Magical Power and supplied when the Magical Beast needs it, but we can’t directly bring those out. However, substances processed and created by the Magical Beasts inside can be brought out if instructed.”

“It’s like a portable beekeeping farm! And it runs on Magical Power. If we find other Magical Beasts that can make food, we gotta catch them!”

“Definitely. Plant-based Magical Beasts might have something like that. Once we return to Earth and take it easy, it’d be fun to go on a food-hunting adventure. Back to the topic, it’s still in Oviposition mode, so we can’t get it yet, but in a few days, we should have a ton of Supreme Honey. Let’s have a honey party with Leah then.”

“That sounds awesome! I’m so excited. Hehe, I wonder what Supreme Honey tastes like~♪”

After playing with the overjoyed Ai, Athena the tiger, and the wolf cub (named “Mame” by Ai for its Shiba Inu-like appearance), they decided to conduct one final experiment for the day.

“I wanted to try a bit more, but let’s wrap it up with this.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

For the experiment, Tatsuro took out forty Imomu hearts and brains, which had been left unused in storage.

The somewhat gruesome sight made them avert their eyes, but Mame sniffed curiously and tried to eat them, so Tatsuro hurriedly sent it back to the ranch.

“That was close… Feeding Mame something like this is a no-go…”

“Good call, Tatsuro.”

After nodding at each other, they decided to quickly get rid of the unpleasant sight.

Using Magic Egg Forging, Tatsuro created four Imomu Magic Eggs.

“So what’s the plan? You wanna make an Imomu Papa too?”

“No, this time they’re fusion materials.”

“Fusion? With what?”

“With other Imomu eggs.”

“Huh? Can you do that?”

“They’re the same Magical Beast, so their grades are identical. In terms of quality uniformity, they’re the best match. But since I don’t know what’ll happen, let’s experiment with these first. We’ve got plenty of Imomu corpses, and they’re everywhere, so supply’s easy.”

With that, Tatsuro took two grade 1 Imomu eggs and fused them into one using Magic Egg Forging.

Checking the grade immediately, he found…

“It’s kinda higher, but not quite… Like a grade 1.2?”

“Even with the exact same species, it strengthens it, but the compatibility’s a bit off, huh?”

The quality was slightly better than grade 1 but not quite grade 2—a rather ambiguous Magic Egg.

Checking what it would look like if hatched using the Strengthened Modification Ranch’s simulator showed no discernible difference.

“Well, it’s possible this only happens with Imomu, but let’s keep it in mind. Next up.”

Tatsuro fused another pair of unused Imomu Magic Eggs, producing another grade 1.2 egg.

Since the result was the same, he moved forward without much thought.

“Now, let’s try fusing these grade 1.2 eggs.”

“Fusing the fused ones, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m curious if it’s possible and what’ll happen.”

Fusing the eggs made from two Imomu eggs, he checked the grade again, finding it had risen to 1.4.

“It went up a bit more. If we keep fusing infinitely, maybe we could get an Imomu to grade 5 from the start.”

“But would we even need that?”

“Hmm. If we raised it to a Shubelg Fungus level, it’d be pretty strong. But if you ask if I want to go through that trouble, I’d say no.”

“Right?”

For a regular Tamer, it’d be worth any effort, but for Tatsuro and Ai’s strength, it was questionable.

Instead of making something like that, Tatsuro had another Magical Beast in mind.

(I have a level 10 dungeon boss dragon’s Magic Stone. And its brain. If I fused about ten of those, what kind of Magical Beast would I get?)

Deciding to consult with Leah about it later, Tatsuro tucked the thought away for now.

As the night grew late, they snuggled up and headed to their Mobile Home’s bedroom to rest for tomorrow.