Osho and Gale watched in fascination as Bedrock ate the rest of the Brown Allacite, as before their eyes, a layer of the brown material appeared on his skin like, well, a second skin.
When he finished, he burped with satisfaction and sat down. Osho lingered before moving forward and picked up Bedrock from the table.
"What did you do?" He asked curiously as he felt at his skin and fur. It was still flexible, but when Osho exerted a bit of force, he immediately knew that he wasn't going to break through unless he used an attack to do so.
Bedrock tilted his head before making some high-pitched noises, Osho nodding along as he understood most of it.
'Interesting, so he can ingest ores and minerals to digest them, and when he does so, his body takes on their properties.' He summarized inwardly.
That was... already pretty broken.
If there was one thing humanity placed a lot of value on, it was rare earth materials.
Sure, rare herbs and the like were nice, but more often than not, they could only be used by people/beasts who either had a specific Affinity, or were strong enough to make use of them.
However, rare metals, rocks, minerals, and so on, could be used a lot more broadly compared to the former. Especially when it came to benefitting a large number of people indirectly.
Take the Blossom Citadel for example. Its walls were made from the ore extracted from the Black Rock Chain, said ore is very durable and has high Mana conductivity, making it great for defending, and this wall has saved the lives of numerous humans for decades simply by existing.
Another example would be the Brown Allacite Bedrock had ingested. Like Osho mused, it's a dense material primarily used in heavy machinery due to its weight and durability. Said heavy machinery helps in construction or terraforming locations for human use.
All of this was to say that Bedrock's ability, this specific one, was already incredibly potent, and Osho's mind was spinning as he started thinking of different materials the gorilla could ingest to improve himself.
'Something to increase Mana conductivity will be necessary for sure. I should also get something that helps with absorbing kinetic energy and/or has high magic resistance...' His thoughts churned, but he quickly caught himself.
'Chill, we don't know all the details of this ability yet, we can't get ahead of ourselves.' He chastised himself gently and looked at Bedrock who had once more made his way on his shoulder.
Gale looked less annoyed now. He still was, but now he seemed more curious than anything. He gave Bedrock a few experimental pecks on his skin that now looked more rocky than anything else.
What was interesting was that despite the rough exterior, Bedrock's movements didn't seem impeded in the slightest, and he could still move around flexibly.
Osho really wanted to just set Bedrock down and start running tests on him as his ability was truly too intriguing, but he held himself back.
"You wanna explore the place?" He asked with a smile, and Bedrock immediately nodded with enthusiasm.
Bedrock was intriguing, yes, but more than that, he was Osho's beast, and he didn't intend to reduce him to a test subject. All of that would come soon, but for now, he was more interested in spending time with the little bugger.
'Also, it will give him and Gale a chance to hang out.' He thought as he shed his lab coat, gloves, and facemask before putting everything he'd used in their rightful place and cleaned where he needed to.
Throughout, he just spent the time talking to Bedrock about random things concerning himself and Gale. The gorilla couldn't understand anything, but the perk of having a bond with a creature was the ability to directly transmit your intent to them, so even if Bedrock couldn't understand his words, he could understand the intent behind them.
Soon enough, Osho left the lab with a bird on his head and a baby gorilla on his shoulder, and the two beasts kept making their respective sounds at each other as they started bickering. As for what?
Well, now that Osho was thinking about it, the two of them were pretty opposite from each other. Gale was flexible and floaty while Bedrock, from what he'd shown so far, had a pretty steadfast mindset, and was weirdly calm for a newborn, and their argument was essentially which was better between rocks and wind.
Gale argued that earth was too rigid and didn't allow for enough flexibility, making it difficult to shape freely and was slow.
Bedrock argued that wind was simply too loose, and the effort that had to go into making it adequately threatening was almost not worth it as a decent defense could render it harmless. Moreover, earth was naturally good when it came to defense, something wind wasn't as good at.
Osho more or less listened with both amusement and intrigue, the amusement was obvious, but the intrigue? Well, beasts were simply better than humans when to came to magic and its uses, so hearing them argue about the core concepts behind their respective affinities was a bit enlightening as it gave Osho the chance to see how they viewed certain things separately from him.
'Oh yeah, I just remembered I technically have the earth Affinity now.' Osho tilted his head as they continued to move around the residence, exploring places even Osho and Gale hadn't explored before, and to his delight, there was indeed a training room a floor below the lab which was, unsurprisingly, very large and contained pretty much all one would need to train as a beast tamer and more, with it catering to different types of beasts and being large enough to house very large beasts, making it more than suitable.
However, as they explored, he noticed something odd as they continued to move around the residence and explore.
'Bedrock is... very smart.' Osho frowned as the more they bickered. Despite having been hatched a bit under an hour ago, he was arguing with terminologies that, while not overly complex, were certainly out of the range of a creature that JUST spawned. Moreover, he was displaying weirdly human gestures a lot. He'd nod or shake his head whenever Gale said something he did or didn't agree with, gesture with his hands, or even try to make examples.
Without a doubt, he was smarter than Gale when he first hatched too, which was a curious thing indeed. He was about to bring it up when he froze. He was just about to enter the living room again, but he noticed something that made him pause, his face turning impassive.
The two beasts immediately stopped bickering as they turned to Osho with confusion. Through their bond, they felt his emotions go weirdly still, and they saw him briefly rub a spot on his back before he turned the corner.
'Huh??' Gale thought with confusion as a figure sat in the living room.
It was a male with pale skin, a stark contrast to Osho's dark skin. His hair was dark as night and was set in a bowl cut, which shouldn't have worked, but it did.
He wore a large, oversized black sweater with a big white star in the center, the sleeves being longer than his arms as their ends kinda just flopped around loosely.
Below his eye was a black star-shaped mark, and his irises themselves were pitch black as well, giving him a pretty interesting appearance.
Then there was the fact that he was young. In fact, he didn't seem to be older than 13 or 14, which was very odd as how could a child be in a college ?
As soon as Osho turned the corner, the boy turned to him with a big smile on his face and dropped a pillow he'd been holding.
"There you are! I thought you weren't gonna show up. I was almost getting ready to leave." He said with glee, his childish behavior enough to disarm most people.
Osho was not disarmed.
"Why are you here?" He asked simply, his arms folded, and the boy pretty much deflated at that.
"Aw, why so mean? I personally came to see you and you're giving me the cold shoulder. That's not how you treat your brother after years you know?" The source of thɪs content is NoveI-Fire.ɴet
The word 'brother' made Osho's eye twitch, they couldn't look any more different.
Still, Osho didn't relent.
"You didn't answer my question." He said flatly, and the boy sighed as he flopped onto the sofa.
"Ugh, fine." He faced Osho, his smile still there, but there was an odd darkness in his eyes.
"I mean it when I said I simply wanted to visit you, it truly has been a while. But more than that, I wanted to see what you've been up to. You've been creating quite the waves recently despite cutting contact with the rest of us." He sat up, his smile turning sharp.
"So, tell me, what have you been up to, Wandering Star? Or should I say..." He tilted his head, and Osho's eyes narrowed.