I looked into Fina’s energy and tried to identify them. Similar to Julia, she also had the same gold and bloody red energy fighting for supremacy. However, a pink one of an unknown element joined the fray and overpowered the other two.
Probably due to having three of them, the corrosion wasn’t as bad or as fast as Julia’s. It’s not yet urgent, but if we don’t do anything, it could still endanger her life.
“Uh! Arrrgh!”
Fina kept twisting around, seemingly in extreme pain; however, I needed time to prepare before I could fix her current state.
Based on what the voice said, she was no longer a tamer but a monster. This means the only way to put her under a contract is by taming her. However, there’s one problem with that, and that is that I lack the mental energy to tame her.
Currently, I have no leeway with mental energy after taming Igni, who was barely able to fit in my capacity. If I want to quickly gain more mental energy, then I can only ask the three of them to evolve.
I quickly took out the essence crystals that I had been saving inside my storage ring. Then, I passed one to Ember, Fang, and Igni, making them turn to me in confusion.
I scanned each of their faces before I spoke.
“Use this large essence crystal and evolve right now. I need more mental energy to help Fina. Please.”
Hearing my words, although still confused, the girls nodded.
“If that’s what master wishes.”
Ember was the first to absorb the essence crystal. As a slime, originally, she excelled in energy absorption the most. She gripped the essence crystal tightly and let off a sizzling sound as it melted.
Then Ember suddenly released a brief flash of light, confirming a successful evolution. Now, Ember is finally a fifth-stage Viscountess of Infinite Changes.
Ember looked at her body, but nothing much changed. I guess the only change would be the density of energy inside her body, which more than doubled.
As I was looking at her, I felt the feedback from her evolution modify my body. My head started clearing up, signifying an increase in mental capacity. Furthermore, I gained knowledge of Ember’s [Subspace Storage] which she suddenly mastered after getting a boost from evolution.
Although I felt happy to finally have the skill that I wanted ever since, by the side, Fang finished absorbing her essence crystal next. She was quickly covered in a flash of white light before fading, similar to Ember.
However, unlike Ember, Fang’s appearance changed quite a bit. Her hair, which reached just below her shoulder blades before, now reaches up to her tailbone. She looked at her body with her reddish-purple eyes, which became sharper than before, while her claws got nerfed and became a lot more human-like.
To add icing on the cake, her presence became more blurry, as if she would disappear if one didn’t pay attention to her. Her passive stealth became even more powerful. Now, Fang is a fifth-stage Viscountess of Shadowless Death.
Her feedback came to me, and I felt my body improving rapidly, but no skill was added to my repertoire. It was harder to master skills above the basic level, after all, so training them to mastery should take time.
I turned to Igni, who was having a harder time absorbing the essence crystal. She seemed unaccustomed to using the crystal, as I could see some strands of energy leaking out and dissipating in the air.
“Igni, focus. Take deep breaths and imagine that you, yourself, are a black hole absorbing everything around you.”
Ember, who also noticed that Igni was having slight trouble, quickly gave her advice. When Igni followed Ember’s advice and closed her eyes, the leaking energy became significantly smaller than before. 𝒃𝙚𝙤𝙫𝒆𝒍．𝙘𝒐𝙢
Suddenly, Igni’s body shone, indicating that she was undergoing evolution. After the brief moment that she glowed, now that she’s a sixth-stage Countess of Burning Rage, her appearance has changed greatly.
Before, her horn was curved gently outwards, but now it seemed to be greatly bending inwards to the center of her forehead and pointing diagonally upward. On her forehead, mysterious red lines appeared, like some sort of tattoo.
Not only that, but her fiery red hair turned silvery white from the center of her head to about a foot along her long hair, gently graduating to the same red hue as previously. At the center of her head, a small circular “something” appeared, like a halo, gently rotating as it floated.
Her arms, legs, neck, and back, previously covered sparsely in scales, became completely void of them, appearing almost human-like. Her rack, unlike before, was now at the same level as Ember’s, almost bursting out of her current dress.
Her eyes flickered as if surprised by how drastically her appearance had changed. Well, there’s a belief that says that the tamed monster’s appearance after evolution was influenced by the tamer’s thoughts, so I guess the drastic change in her appearance could be my fault.
As I was entertaining such thoughts, I suddenly felt the wave of feedback from her evolution washing over me. Unlike Ember and Fang, who couldn’t use most of the energy of the essence crystal, only a small portion was returned by Igni to me. I guess it’s still worth it, given that her energy similarly had a significant increase.
As I was catching up with the changes in my body, the system’s robotic voice echoed inside my head.
[Pre-requisites achieved! Unlocking new features… Success. Total features unlocked: 7/20]
Information about the new features that were unlocked flooded my mind. I closed my eyes, slowly digesting the information, before sighing.
All three were passive. The first one was “Mental Capacity Increase,” which doubles my mental capacity. The next one was “Power Boost,” which just passively increases my physical properties. And the last was “Resonance,” which powers up all my tamed monsters every time I gain more power.
With how much my mental capacity has increased, there should be no problem with doing a contract with Fina.