Soon, Lucian stood deep within the underground construct of his villa, halting before a bronze-colored gate tucked away inside a secluded room.
Facing the impenetrable metal barrier, he casually waved his right hand. A concentrated silver ray of elemental energy erupted from his body, shooting forward to lock itself perfectly into an intricate, geometric groove present on the door's surface.
A sharp, mechanical *click* vibrated through the, sounding exactly like a key turning inside a complex lock. The heavy bronze gate groaned aloud, slowly sliding aside to reveal the expanse of his Basement Laboratory.
Stepping over, the dim light illuminated neatly arranged items across various obsidian tables and reinforced glass cylinders were massive carcasses and preserved blood samples of high-level beasts juxtaposed seamlessly alongside several preserved human bodies and other odd, mutated specimens.
"A.I. Chip, prepare the stabilizing sequence for the Bloodline Transformation Potion," he commanded smoothly, "It is essential to make all necessary preparations before we execute the core integration."
[Beep! Task: Bloodline Transformation Potion alignment initialized...Status: Core matrix active. Ambient containment fields operational.]
The moment the prompt cleared, a vast explosion of dense, ink-black shadow particles erupted outward from his skin, completely enveloping his physical frame.
Within the dark vortex, his long white hair oddly began to darken into a midnight shade, and his outer skin began to gently vaporize into trails of dark mist.
As the illusion dissolved entirely, it revealed the familiar figure of Leylin Farlier, complete with his natural pitch-black hair and bottomless, abyss-like eyes.
Leylin walked toward the far end of the laboratory, stopping before a massive, empty glass cultivation tank that was intricately connected to a myriad of advanced alchemical tubes, pressure gauges, and equipment.
He gently pressed his pale palm against the freezing glass, his pupils flashing with a azure light, as he muttered under his breath:
"The time has finally come!"
A full two years had already passed since Leylin's meeting at the Greg family mansion in Linthin Town.
After effortlessly earning their following and making all the necessary adjustments for his identity with the direct backing of the main family's head, Leylin invested into analyzing and understanding the current turbulent and chaotic state of the Felineca Empire.
In the end, Leylin speculated it would be suspicious and strange for a powerhouse of his staggering caliber to accept a basic teacher position at a Royal Academy.
To bypass any unnecessary troubles and confusion from his new followers, he had instructed the Greg family to officially recommend another follower of Leylin to the board of directors—Lucian Alister, an identity that functioned as nothing more than Leylin operating in disguise.
Throughout his long residency in this territory, Leylin had dedicated his time to investigating the mechanics behind the 'Beast World's' natural law suppression.
Magi were intelligent beings. At the absolute apex of their history, their civilization had dominated even the vast astral world and conquered multiple cosmic planes; their innate ability to analyze foreign laws and innovate counter-methods was beyond natural order.
Leylin had chosen to first break down the structure of the local Spirit Aura, subsequently utilizing those algorithms to completely remove the environmental suppression throttling his body.
Granted, even while operating under the weight of the world's natural law penalty, an entity of his caliber was someone few on this planet could ever dare to cross; even the strongest master currently residing within the academy was no more significant than an unremarkable ant before him.
Through his experiences in this world and his assessments of the surrounding powerhouses' dispositions, Leylin determined the exact scaling of the local factions.
Within the borders of the Felineca Empire, the coveted Lieutenant Stage—which directly corresponded to the power metrics of a Peak Rank 1 Magus, it represented the absolute top-class tier of military strength available to the crown.
To the immense masses of wandering Beast Tamers and minor Noble families, achieving the Lieutenant Stage was viewed as an unachievable realm of god-like power.
In fact, to even be considered one of the Great Noble families or secure the hereditary political position of a Duke within the Felineca Empire, a clan was required to possess at least one active Lieutenant-stage Beast Tamer anchoring their lineage.
To Leylin's estimation, probably only the secretive Royal Family itself possessed an ancestor who successfully surpassed that baseline, reaching the legendary Captain Stage which aligned with a standard Rank 2 Magus.
However, this was merely the power distribution of a single, isolated Empire. Through his parsing of the library's archives, Leylin discovered that the macro-political layout of the Beast World was divided into three massive, distinct organizational categories:
1. The Kingdoms
The lowest and most abundant tier, numbering in the hundreds across the continents. Every passing year, dozens of new kingdoms were violently created through rebellion, while dozens of old ones were ruthlessly destroyed by war.
The sheer frequency of these border shifts occurred far too often to actually write home about, representing the chaotic underbelly of the world.
2. The Empires
These sovereign entities stood at a superior level compared to the lesser kingdoms. Across the entire global map, there existed only a few dozen of these grand Empires, meaning the rise or fall of any single one was treated as an earth-shattering piece of international news.
In truth, an Empire is very rarely subjected to total destruction; at worst, if its core lineage degraded, it would simply lose its high-tier military strength and slide gracefully down the ladder to function as a stronger-than-normal kingdom.
According to their strength, population density, and natural resource control, all Kingdoms and Empires across the globe were categorized into three divisions:
Barren-Grade: Low-tier territories characterized by dry elements, low spirit aura yields, less habitual to powerful beasts and weak, unstable lineages.
Ascendant-Grade: Mid-tier sovereign nations possessing consolidated trade networks and a stable population of high-tier tamers.
Apex-Grade: The absolute peak of the national tier. The Felineca Empire itself was officially distinguished as an Apex-Grade Empire, standing firmly at the very summit of the Empire division.
While its actual internal ranking was not highest when compared to rival Apex-Grade nations, it possessed its own unique military strengths.
3. The Four Great Dynasties
The absolute highest and most terrifyingly fearsome existences anchoring the entire Beast World.
These monolithic, world-ruling factions had stood completely undisputed above the global paradigm ever since the primordial era of the Almighty Gods, venerated in local lore as the 'Ancient Ancestors' had officially come to an end.
Leylin's pupils glinted with a dark, calculating intensity as he reviewed the world's leyline data.
Leylin is convinced that the highly disturbed and increasingly turbulent state of the Kingdoms and Empire were not just local dispute.
Rather, it was a result of malicious involvement of one or two of these Dynasties pulling the strings from the shadows.
Also through his research, Leylin discovered the probable reason for gap in strength between a Normal Beast Tamer and a True Beast Tamer.
This dynamic mirrored Leylin's own nature as a Warlock; his ancient bloodline allowed him to naturally suppress standard Magi of the same rank, even without factoring in his Spirit Knight physical capabilities.
True Beast Tamers possessed a similar advantage over regular practitioners, giving them a much higher combat ceiling.
The deeper Leylin dug into these records, the more interested he became in unravelling the underlying laws of this world. He took a keen interest in the native beasts, specifically their primary source of strength: their bloodline.
The bloodlines of these creatures stemmed from powerful ancient ancestors. Every beast possessed an innate ability or spell that fully developed once they reached the Sergeant level.
This process resembled how an official Magus forms an innate spell within their consciousness when using high-grade meditation techniques to advance to Rank 1.
To exploit these bloodlines, True Beast Tamers practiced unique meditation methods known as Cultivation Techniques.
These techniques, which were strictly guarded by noble clans and high-class factions, allowed practitioners to cultivate their Spirit Aura and expand the volume of their spirit realm.
At the peak of the Corporal stage(Level 3 Acolyte), the practitioner reached a hard developmental wall.
To break through this bottleneck and reach the Sergeant stage, the Tamer had to physically and spiritually merge with their contracted beast.
This merger was the exact reason why a Sergeant-stage True Beast Tamer could directly wield the innate abilities and spells of their beasts. The integration also stimulated their biology, increasing their physical attributes by a massive margin.
To become a True Beast Tamer, an individual required access to these cultivation techniques, high innate talent, abundant resources, and deep affinity with their beast.
For noble-born descendants, the process was straightforward; as long as an offspring was not entirely worthless, a clan possessed enough wealth and ability to push them into becoming at least a mediocre True Beast Tamer.
For individuals born without a noble background, achieving success in this system was exceptionally difficult, but a defined pathway still existed through contribution and servitude.
Great families, noble clans, and the Royal Family routinely enrolled talented commoners to expand their factions. If a commoner was smart enough, they could earn a low-grade cultivation technique by performing well at a prestigious academy.
Others chose to work directly for noble households or joined the imperial army, where physical strength and military merits could be used to claim a technique.
Rare occasions involved stumbling across a dead tamer's inheritance or encountering lucky opportunity in the wild.
These public distribution methods were the only way for wandering Beast Tamers to climb the social ladder. Naturally, the cultivation techniques available to them were low-level, flawed, and inferior to the true inheritances held by the high nobility.
Because these public methods posed no real threat to their dominance, the noble clans never bothered to stop their distribution.
Over time, these low-tier methods became common knowledge among wandering tamers, who simply had no other choice if they wished to advance.
After mapping out this entire social and magical framework, Leylin decided to utilize a dual strategy to collect the maximum amount of knowledge with the lowest amount of personal risk.
First, he established himself within the Rose Petal Royal Academy as an instructor. By making a deal with the Principal and gaining Greg family allegiance.
Leylin gained unhindered access to the library of a major empire's top institution. His rapport with Principal eventually provided him with the necessary authorization to enter the academy's secret and forbidden document vaults.
While many faculty members remained deeply suspicious of his unmapped origins, and several senior teachers were visibly angered by his rapid promotion, none of them dared to openly cross the Principal's edict just to offend a talented young scholar who was presumably backed by a formidable hidden power.
The only exception to this compliance was the bitter professor, Wright Reel.
Second, while Leylin managed operations within the academy campus under his disguise, he quietly deployed his trusted summons to reap the benefits of the ongoing military skirmishes at the empire's borders.
The Vanguard of Requiem and the Black Horrall Snake covertly stalked the battlefields, monitoring the small clashes between the regional armies.
Following Leylin's breakthrough to a Rank 3 Warlock, his internal spiritual force pool was large enough to maintain these summoned entities for an indefinite duration, constantly supplying energy through his soul-bound devouring connection.
Both the Vanguard and the Black Horrall Snake were Rank 2 entities. At their level they could roam across the empire's frontier territories without any issue, carefully avoiding known high-danger zones.
Even if a local powerhouse managed to detect and destroy them, it meant nothing to Leylin; they were merely summons that could be re-created at will.
Over the past several months, these two creatures had systematically captured dozens of mid to high tier Beast Tamers and wild beasts from the border zones, delivering them directly to Leylin's laboratory for dissection and analysis. This steady supply of fresh specimens allowed him to unravel the secrets of the Spirit Aura.
Deep inside the vault, the ambient energy fields stabilized around the alchemical tank as a clean mechanical voice chimed within his mind.
[Beep! Preparation complete.]