This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Kain hadn't given up on investigating the Lumifin's evolutionary form ever since the previous Simulations. However, he didn't want to waste any more GP on simulations when he wasn't sure about how to increase the faint line pattern covering the Lumifin to the rest of its body.

However, when he was taking his sweet time going through the Ashenclaw inventory and pretending to mull over each item, there was one item that did stop him in his tracks—Opal Glow Lotus.

The Opal Glow Lotus is a breathtaking flower with broad, gracefully layered petals that shimmer with an ethereal, pearly white glow. Its hues blend together soft shades of white, pink, and blue, creating a mesmerizing, shifting glow as light dances across its surface.

The petals are smooth and translucent with a constant dewy quality, making it ideal for infusing a subtle, moonlit dewy glow to the skin when smeared on.

The lotus is a white-grade spiritual flower that has very little value in increasing the strength of a spiritual creature or human. It has only one known purpose, to improve the quality of the skin when used over time. It is a common ingredient in at-home skin masks and beauty regimens for housewives across the nation.

However, it was this useless light-attribute flower that stopped Kain in his tracks in the inventory. As he stared at it for close to an hour, he finally figured out in what way it resembled the faint lines on the Lumifin, and the identity of those lines, a concept that he hadn't come across since he was on Earth in his past life—the Golden Ratio.

Kain suspected that the lines, if he were to measure their proportions, would adhere to the golden ratio like this flower. Therefore, in order to increase the coverage of such lines, he may need to focus on these seemingly useless but beautiful spiritual plants that adhere to this ratio—and the closer the plant adheres to this ratio the better.

This cosmetic ingredient, out of all the plants that Kain's seen so far, most perfectly adheres to this ratio. Moreover, it is extremely cheap compared to most evolutionary ingredients, meaning that it perfectly suits Kain's needs for an evolutionary form that targets the masses.

Kain could easily buy some on his own, but most are gathered in the western and southern regions where there are a lot more bodies of water, therefore it can be weeks or even months before he receives his order. None of the other red-grade or orange-grade materials were particularly desirable for him at this point, so he went with the extremely cheap but plentiful box of lotuses.

When Kain indicated that he wanted the entire box of Opal Glow Lotuses, Alaina was confused and a slightly judgmental glint appeared in her eye.

"Based on how you usually look, I didn't think you were the type to take such careful care of your appearance. However, since it's not particularly valuable, you can take the whole box"

'Excuse me?!' Kain decided not to even acknowledge the insulting statement. Instead he just stepped forward to retrieve the box containing dozens of the flower, likely her mother's stock for several months.

'Your mother will likely be pissed at you giving away all of them to me, since this is probably her personal stash that she just stored here…but dealing with the fallout is your problem' Kain thought happily at the coming retribution. Unfortunately, he won't be around to see it.

After putting away the flowers, Kain left Moonstone City and headed back to Dark Moon College.

He spent the remainder of the week attending classes and visiting Barret to test out the preservation of the beer.

Additionally, learning from Moonstone City, Kain visited all of the livestock owners in Dark Moon City to see if they had any retired elderly orange-grade and above spiritual creatures he could use to complete his hunting mission.

Fortunately, because he only wanted to kill them to complete the mission and feed Bea, they were mostly all receptive to the arrangement.

Unfortunately, because the scale of the livestock industry is so much smaller than Moonstone City, after scouring the whole city, Kain only managed to obtain 8 old spiritual creatures, and it'd likely be a long time before he could get another one from them.

Additionally, due to the spiritual power in them after generations of taming and a reduction in their capabilities, the spiritual power they contained was not much better than red-grade spiritual creatures and Kain still had to supplement Bea's meals with the brains yellow and brains green-grade supplied by the school.

'Sigh…I thought I'd finally found a way to hack the missions and get Bea a steady supply of fresh food. Maybe once I get the business up and running, and I have more money, I can consider starting my own livestock farm or shipping a steady supply of living spiritual creatures from across the empire for her to eat and finish the missions.'

However, with the increased amount of GP Kain was able to do several simulations on the Lumifin, not only with the Opal Glow Lotus, but also with other spiritual materials that closely match the golden ratio, including weak white-grade ones and more powerful-orange grade ones, to see if the evolutionary form will change.

He also used a couple of the simulations to try different attributed spiritual plants that match the golden ratio.

Finally, Kain developed a set of rules for the Lumifin's evolution and only needed to start the process of proving that it works in reality and filing the patent.

The first rule was that the materials used must be of the water and/or light attribute. Any other attributes will cause the evolution to unquestionably fail.

The second rule was that rather than the spiritual power in the material what is more important is how closely it aligns with the golden ratio. A material that doesn't closely align with the golden ratio with result in failure. The degree to which a material matches the sequence can be graded on a scale from 0 to 1—something Kain called the Golden Score.

The third rule was that no matter what materials were used, the total Golden Score must exceed 1. If multiple materials need to be used to match this requirement, then materials used to stabilize the evolution must be used and the chances of failure increase. That is why it is best to use only 1 to 2 materials with a higher golden score.

From all of the ones Kain has studied so far and had Vera calculate a Golden Score for—it's wonderful having an assistant to do the grunt work—the best material in terms of score and cost is undoubtedly the Opal Glow Lotus with an impressive score of 0.97, meaning only 2 of the cheap flowers were needed to succeed at the evolution.

Additionally, since they are the same material and low in spiritual power, a stabilizer isn't as necessary and an evolution can be attempted with a 97% success rate if the beast-tamer doesn't want to splurge on a stabilizer.

Finally, no matter what materials are used for evolution, as long as the evolution is successful the evolutionary form will be the same:

--------------

Species: Gilded Serafin

The Gilded Serafin is the evolutionary form of the Lumifin, perfectly embodying the balance and beauty of the golden ratio. Its body is adorned with intricate spiral patterns that follow this mathematical principle, creating a beautiful visual harmony.

The creature glows with a soft, ethereal light that reflects its emotions, resulting in a stunning display of colors that shift and dance across its surface. Its mesmerizing beauty will mesmerize other spiritual creatures and humans alike.

Quality: Silver

Type: Fish

Attribute: Water, Light

A-Ethereal Charm: With the combination of the Gilded Serafin's appearance as well as a calming glow, it can enthrall nearby creatures and make enemies temporarily unwilling to attack. The effective time is 5 minutes for spiritual creatures at the same level, and 1 minute for those one level higher.

Spiritual creatures beneath the Serafin in strength will be enthralled until the Serafin runs out of spiritual power.

B-Luminous Mirage: The Gilded Serafin can manipulate light to create a dazzling illusion that mimics its surroundings, making it difficult for enemies to pinpoint its location. This skill enhances its stealth and allows it to evade threats effectively.

C-Spiral Torpedo: A swirling vortex of water can be launched at opponents. The strength of the skill, and whether it has the strength of a water balloon or sharp lance, is highly dependent on the skill proficiency of the user.

----------------------

When Kain first saw the evolutionary form, he was more than satisfied. Silver-quality was even higher than he'd hoped for considering it was originally only a black-iron quality spiritual creature and white-grade spiritual plants were used for the evolution. Plus it has an A-level skill that will allow safety from higher level creatures for one minute.

It perfectly met all of Kain's requirements for a spiritual creature that would target the masses. Plus, its beautiful appearance will make it even more popular, not only with low-level beast-tamers but powerful people who'd want to collect it as a pet.

Finally, since neither group would likely expect it to ever reach a level above orange-grade, they won't be put off by the lack of a known evolutionary form. Most beast-tamers level D and under will likely never pass being a 2-star beast-tamer in their life.

After all, while the affinity rating is more so a prediction of the creatures that can be contracted, being bound to more powerful spiritual creatures would definitely help with condensing each star. For example, now that Eve had broken through to orange-grade, Kain will have a much easier time at condensing his next star due to the feedback from her.

However, Kain does not plan to leave them high and dry. Since it is the first evolutionary form developed by him, and the species will likely be associated with him forever, Kain planned to take responsibility and develop the Lumifin until the end. That way it'd also provide some hope for even the lower-level beast-tamers to one day reach the middle-level of 4-stars and above.