This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange - Chapter 592

Chapter 592: Chapter 592: An Unwelcome Evolution
Time passed and Kain felt utterly helpless. The hiss of Aegis fighting against, and potentially even absorb this Abyssal energy didn’t fade.

If anything it grew.

In contrast to the Abyssal contamination Kain had been exposed to in the past, whatever this relic had thrown at Aegis was far more aggressive than anything Kain had come across in the past.

Kain kept his hands pressed to Aegis’ stone body, spiritual energy pouring uselessly through the link. His bond felt jammed, locked behind a wall of incompatible force. It was useless for the most part, but Kain needed to feel as though he was helping in some way.

Chunks of obsidian-like stone flaked off Aegis’ body—each one crumbling into ash before it even hit the ground. The pieces weren’t breaking. They were shedding and dissolving, as if the material Aegis had once been was no longer a fit for what he was becoming.

The golem staggered upright, limbs twitching. He let out a guttural grinding noise—something that sounded halfway between a groan and a death rattle.

More stone shed off.

And still the process continued.

Kain stepped back, breath tight. “Aegis…?”

The golem’s silhouette, once towering—easily two stories tall at its peak—had now shrunk to nearly half its height. Where Aegis had once been broad and mountain-like, the shape left behind was narrower, more defined. There was something dangerously precise in the way his joints reformed. Rather than his previous bulky and inflexible frame, it had the intricate design of numerous muscles of a living human.

His appearance no longer looked like a natural stone golem. It looked like a futuristic weapon.

Even his colouring had changed again.

His original multicoloured brown-tan-orange stone had already changed after he’d mutated upon exposure to Abyssal energy in a past relic. It took on a solid dark tinge that appeared black in some lighting, but upon closer inspection was a rich, dark brown. But now it wasn’t an illusion, Aegis was a solid pitch black.

But not a normal black one could feasibly find as a shade of paint..

It was a black so deep it devoured the light around it. Matte. Dead. As if light itself gave up trying to reflect off its surface.

And his eyes. His warm amber eyes that gave him his normally kind giant appearance.

They wouldn’t settle. They flickered, unstable between their original amber, then a demonic red, an eerie gold, and then an inhuman violet. The latter three especially chilling since they were the exact shades Kain had witnessed on the Abyssal creatures in the past—althoguh Kain wasn’t yet sure what the different colours sympbolized for Abyssals—only knowing that the red eyes were exclusive to the low level abyssal, and has they grew stronger that red faded to gold and then purple once they became on the level of a demigod.

And Aegis’ eyes were shifting beween all three colours. Again and again.

Kain felt a sudden chill, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. The entire room dimmed, as if someone had draped a black veil over the world. He blinked. The stone walls, the Vespid guards, even Queen—everything looked two shades darker, the color leaching out of the surroundings.

It wasn’t just Aegis changing.

He was affecting the environment.

Then—just as suddenly—

Light.

A pulse. Gentle. Expanding outward like a ripple on water.

Kain shielded his eyes with a reflexive curse as the chamber flooded with brilliance. Not harsh like lightning. Nor the sterile artificial lighting he’d often find in his laboratories.

It was an ethereal, almost holy pure white. And as an evolutionary planner, a light Kain was quite familiar with.

When his eyes adjusted to the repeated changes in lighting, he dropped his arm and looked over at Aegis.

It was the light of evolution.

A sigh escaped Kain, but contrary to what one would expect, it was not a sigh of relif at finally evolving Aegis, or any other sign of happiness.

Because Kain wasn’t happy.

Indeed, Aegis was the contract he originally entered this relic in the hopes of finding a suitable evolutionary base material. Kain had tested some materials he’d collected for Aegis—including a rare stone he’d obtained from the last time he’d entered a trial relic that had gravitational properties. But after Aegis had mutated and picked up the Abyssal secondary attribute, none of the evolutionary forms produced using the simulator exceeded a rating of 2-stars.

So now, watching his most pressing task be accomplished why didn’t Kain feel relief?

He crossed his arms, scowling.

Maybe any other student would be thrilled. They’d see the relic’s intervention as divine providence, a once-in-a-lifetime blessing. Most would trust the relic to choose a worthy form. Most didn’t have any choices to begin with.

But Kain wasn’t most students.

He didn’t just gratefully accept any evolutionary form was lucky enough to be granted. When it came to his contracts’ evolutions, he planned meticulously. He ran simulations. He had access to an entire planet’s worth of resources others couldn’t ever hope to have. He didn’t rely on something as abstract as luck, he forced the world to give him the best option possible.

And now?

Now that control had been stolen.

This evolution wasn’t chosen. It wasn’t strategized. It wasn’t his.

And worst of all—if it went wrong, if Aegis’s form was unfavourable—there might be no fixing it.

A permanent regression that may have ruined Aegis’ potential permanently.

Kain’s fists tightened at his sides. Now he could only hope for the best.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Don’t screw this up…”

The light continued to grow. Beams of raw spiritual force radiated from the fissures in Aegis’s outer layer, every pulse measured and deliberate.

Stone groaned.

And slowly, steadily, the last remnants of his old self peeled away—leaving something new in its place.

Once the transformation was complete, the blinding light began to fade away.

Kain watched, silent, still uncertain if what would emerge would be his loyal guardian… or something else entirely.

Without even waiting for the light to fully fade to get a good look at Aegis’ new appearance Kain called up the System window for his contract, solely paying attention to the System Rating:

“One…two…three…five? Five-stars!”

Right before Kain’s eyes was the best outcome he could have hoped for:

System Rating: ★★★★★ (5-stars)