Bond Master

The Cultivation Blueprint

Sergeant Corvina didn't leave Ren Barrett to enjoy his silence for long. Before her heavy military boots had even finished echoing down the carpeted corridor of the second floor, she had unzipped her tactical pack and deposited a towering stack of dense, leather-bound encyclopedias directly onto his metal desk.

These weren't the thin, cartoonish introductory booklets issued to the common first-year student intake block on their first day; these were heavy, official academy grimoires bound in thick hide, their pages smelling deeply of aged parchment, dried preservative herbs, and stale ink.

Every single volume was dedicated exclusively to the study of high-tier magical beasts, detailing their complex biological traits, dietary requirements, evolutionary constraints, and native habitat preferences.

"I will leave these references in your custody for the remainder of the afternoon, Barrett, and I expect to see a completed analytical brief when I return to your quarters tomorrow morning," Corvina had instructed with a rare, fleeting smile that didn't quite reach her sharp, calculating eyes. "What I require from you today is a comprehensive, logically sound care and feeding blueprint tailored specifically to your companion hound.

You must justify every single dietary allocation using the historical data verified within these texts. If your proposed cultivation matrix proves exceptional and demonstrates a clear, systemic understanding of beast development, I will use my authority to secure advanced resource stipends from the academic board. At the very least, I can guarantee a consistent supply of that refined, mana-infused monster blood. The logistics department maintains a massive surplus of that catalyst to provide instant physical vitality boosts to our frontline vanguard warriors."

With those final instructions, the sergeant departed, leaving Ren entirely alone with the massive repository of beast lore.

Ren dragged a chair out onto his sprawling, expanded balcony greenhouse, setting the heavy volumes down on the weathered timber table of the gazebo. As he began flipping through the primary compendiums, he quickly realized a fundamental flaw in the academic approach.

These textbooks weren't written from the perspective of an elite breeder or a nurturing master looking to accelerate a creature's growth; they were compiled almost entirely from the pragmatic, cold journals of frontier hunters and military scouts. At best, the logs merely noted what a wild creature typically preyed upon in the wilderness or defined the specific geographic coordinates where its packs were known to migrate.

It was information designed to help a soldier track, evade, or skin a monster—not a guide to forcing its biological maturation ahead of schedule to survive an ultra-competitive academy ranking system.

Fortunately, Ren didn't need to reinvent the nation's entire ecological framework to satisfy Corvina's assignment. He only needed to draft a logical, highly specific care manifesto for Grim to secure the necessary marks for the day's curriculum. And unlike every other struggling student in his first-year student class who had to guess the internal desires of their elemental spells or martial auras, Ren possessed an absolute cheat code.

He closed his eyes, extending his consciousness down into the dark, iron-pillared vault of his mind, tapping lightly on the vibrant soul-tether connecting him to his companion. Wake up, lazy bones, Ren projected, a warmth entering his thoughts. Let's talk about your future. What specific materials do you feel would actively accelerate your development? Is there something we can acquire for you to eat, or a resource we can keep inside the vault to force your growth matrix to expand?

The Volden Shackle-Hound pup stirred within the mental sanctuary, stretching his powerful, bone-plated limbs and letting out a phantom yawn that vibrated directly against Ren’s own psyche. Grim’s immediate, telepathic response wasn't a collection of articulated human words, but a rapid, visceral wave of raw sensory cravings.

[Meat. Raw, blood-rich marrow. More of that burning crimson nectar from the severe uniform-woman. And... those blue clusters hanging from the vines right beside your hand. Let me taste those. I want them.]

Ren opened his eyes, his gaze shifting away from the dense hunter logs to look toward the thick, tangled web of emerald vines wrapping around the cedar pillars of the gazebo. Hanging from the stems were clusters of heavy, indigo-tinted berries that glistened under the magical ambient light of the greenhouse. He reached into his coat pocket, pulling out the abridged notebook left behind by the suite's mysterious previous occupant—the eccentric senior who had cultivated this hidden sanctuary.

He flipped through the worn, handwritten pages until his fingers locked onto the relevant entry:

{Mountain Gooseberries}

• Categorization: Utility Flora / Minor Mana Catalyst.

• Characteristics: Highly flavorful, sweet-and-sour berries favored by both human cultivators and standard mammalian beasts. Frequently utilized by frontier trappers to construct high-potency monster bait due to their pungent, sweet aroma.

• Nutritional Yield: Negligible for direct physical reinforcement.

However, the skin of the berry contains a highly concentrated, volatile ambient Mana profile. Ideal for refining low-tier spiritual focusing elixirs or basic mana-recovery salves. Even in a pure, undiluted concentrate, its restorative properties cannot match a standard academic draft, but its aromatic pull is unmatched.

Ren read the description twice, a calculating smile touching his lips. He stood up, walked to the edge of the lattice, and carefully plucked three of the plump, vibrant berries from the vine. Returning to the gazebo, he channeled his intent through the chain brand on his arm, dropping the fruit directly down into the Confinement Vault.

You can have exactly three of these a day, Grim, Ren warned his companion firmly, monitoring the pup’s sudden, ecstatic bounding inside his mind. This is an unverified catalyst, not your primary sustenance. If you overindulge on sweet junk food when your vault is already stocked with premium, nutrient-dense Aurochs meat, you'll ruin your metabolic stabilization and get sick.

The Shackle-Hound pup didn't care about structural warnings.

He lunged at the falling berries, catching them with an audible snap of his jaws. Instead of swallowing them whole, Grim exhibited a highly unusual, instinctive behavior: he used his heavy, ivory-white claws to deliberately crush the indigo flesh of the fruit, smearing the fragrant, sticky juices all over the raw cuts of monster meat resting on his stone dais. Once the high-mana aroma had fully permeated the flesh, the hound began tearing into his meal with a renewed, ravenous ferocity, his bone-plated jaws crushing through the fibers with double his previous intensity.