Taming is thirty percent strength, fifty percent sincerity, and the remaining bits are related to luck. A tamed beast doesn’t bow its head out of fear but out of respect, which is why its loyalty is unwavering. A tamer that loses its beast’s loyalty is an abomination that should be destroyed.

~Cernunnos, Lord of the Wild Things

The Taniwha dove into the ground, and Nuk sprang into action. He charged forth, and its powerful legs bent as it sprang forward and leaped over the hole. The width was at least twenty meters, but Nuk cleared it with little issue.

Roughly gauging the distance and angle, Crow hopped off Nuk’s back. The others moved forward another thirty or forty meters before stopping and taking up positions.

“Just follow the plan,” Crow ordered and pressed his hands to the ground. Vines erupted from every part of his flesh below his neck. They punched through his clothes, shredding them before burrowing into the ground. Slowly Crow was pushed higher and higher into the air while the vines wove into a thick trunk and cocooned him inside. Only then did he finally summon a Druid Circle around himself. Since he was at the conflux of the vines raging across the surface, smothering rocks and grasping onto trees, he hoped the circle would augment his Blood Thorns. He sensed unusual fluctuations within the circle, but his main goal was achieved.

He knew he’d succeeded based on how fast the ground cover spread. Crow wasn’t sure where this eel beast would surface, so he spread his influence as much as his Source allowed. Once every surface within thirty meters of him was covered, blood-red thorns appeared along the length of hundreds of vines, allowing them to dig into various surfaces.

Aine watched on in shock. Ahote had already seen what Crow could do with these things, so he wasn’t as surprised. However, he couldn’t pay much attention because of his severe wounds. This time he admired Crow’s ability and its destructive nature. All of them knew its main weakness was an abundance of Wood Mana and dirt. While he could fire off vines from his body, that was very limited in its practicality.

On top of all that, Crow had experimented with his Ghostly Aura. His skill in combining the Blood Vines with the aura was still not efficient. He could make a singular vine Ghost through objects if he focused heavily on it. However, the strain was greater than if he had personally phased through something.

If he wanted to combine those abilities, he’d have to redesign them. The only good thing he discovered was that Auras and Circles augmented each other. It’d take time to redesign his Aura setup because he found a method of combining them with three-dimensional shapes. The problem was discovering the appropriate meridians and acupoints in his body to accomplish it. Sadly, even his comprehension required a lot of trial and error.

“It’s coming!” Crow shouted, feeling the vibrations in the ground from the thousands of hair-like vines he sent below. They were so fine it was like creating a spiderweb inside the soil. There wasn’t a significant mana expenditure, so those threads were easily torn through without triggering the beast’s danger sense.

Crow used Sage’s Mind to calculate the exit point and found his estimate was slightly off target. Activating his vines, they spread out away from the central point of where it’d exit and then wove together, creating a net-like ground cover. The empty space in the center was only about ten meters wide, but the exit hole would be nearly twenty. This was also something Crow calculated because he didn’t want to stop it from rising, just arrest it.

The Taniwha erupted from the ground faster than it could move across the surface. It didn’t realize the danger of the vine mesh until its body was halfway out. One of the reasons he left a gap in the center of his trap was because this thing had a mouth full of vicious teeth.

Sweat beaded Crow’s forehead as he deftly controlled his vines and allowed them to thin out the more the beast stretched them. He couldn’t afford to let any of them snap at this point, or all their effort would be for naught. Once it was mostly out of the ground, he stopped making the vines thinner and instead reinforced them to become thick bindings. Thorns dug into the beast’s flesh while others were still getting dragged from the dirt, stone, and trees, causing much destruction in the area. The only thing Crow cared about at this point was keeping the beast locked down.

Crow didn’t want to use the blood synergy ability, but he was left with no choice. He was overdrawing his mana, draining his vitality, so he needed to restore himself. It was a vicious cycle that could cause him permanent harm. It was never a good idea to overdraw his Source, but in this case, this mythical beast’s vitality was more potent than his own. The risk wasn’t as bad as he made it sound because it wouldn’t cripple him. But it was similar to breaking a bone; it’d take precious time to mend.

“Aine!” Crow roared. Despite how well he laid the mesh of vines, the mucus-covered eel was slippier than a loach. If it continued to writhe, even with the thorns dug in, it might be able to escape. If it dove, they were all in big trouble. The scariest part in Crow’s estimation was that it seemed like it could expand and contract its body at will.

Aine was up in a tree thirty meters from him. She had an affinity for three elements, but the dominant element for her was Stone Mana. Her bow was loaded with heavy arrows with a round stone as the tip. These were something special that Crow had designed for her long ago—well, not that special. They used an uncommon stone that was easily molded by someone with a high affinity, like Aine’s. The trick here was that she could turn them into various tips as required or, in this case—

Thump!

The arrow landed inside the circular gill hole, and the rock tip expanded, plugging the hole. It’d remain there for as long as she had mana. Knowing time was short, she quickly shifted position and fired another two arrows because the first one missed its target. The second one filled the other gill hole.

“Ahote!” Aine shouted, her task completed.

Nuk charged toward the Taniwha and jumped onto the eel’s monstrous head. To weaken its resolve to resist, Nuk kept slapping his paw down onto the beast below it. The wet, meaty slaps weren’t pleasant to hear, and Crow could see Aine turning pale from the sound. Crow had no idea if gross sounds could trigger a woman’s morning sickness, but Aine looked like she was about to pop.

Ahote’s actions caught most of Crow’s attention because he used climbing anchors to secure himself to the side of the Taniwha’s head. The position put him in front of one of its eyes, but he wasn’t sure if there was any significance to the side he chose.

Maybe, because of the danger, the beast’s color changed. It was no longer black but whitish-pink and looked more like a grub. Once that happened, Crow could feel the thorns dug into its flesh, slowly sliding out. The situation was slipping out of their control, and he hoped the taming process was as fast as stated.

Ahote chanted something that sounded like the growls of a thousand beasts. A deep sound reverberated over the area, and Crow felt his Soul shaking. Ahote wasn’t paying attention to anything else, trusting that his companions could keep the beast contained. His eyes bore into the beast, communicating with it at a primal level.

Beastlords didn’t condone forced bonding, but sometimes some beasts were too dangerous to ignore. In those cases, they had to decide to force the bond or kill it. Especially if a lot of lives were at risk. One of the largest towns on this floor was only fifty kilometers away. It didn’t require much intelligence to see that this thing was heading directly for it.

A contract extracted from mana appeared in Ahote’s hand. This was part of their cultivation techniques and was something Crow had witnessed in the past. However, the power of that contract was beyond anything he’d ever felt before. Crow knew that Ahote had opened his bloodline power which was why he had the title of Tamer. But he didn’t realize how powerful the talent was until now.

Watching from the side, he knew that Ahote wasn’t forcing the bond. The contract eroded the beast’s resolve, and it was barely struggling now. Most of its willpower had been reduced. The most alarming part was that the eel was shrinking in size at a visible rate.

Ahote was still chanting some garbled-sounding incantation, and the contract was glowing brighter and brighter. The Taniwha freaked Aine and Crow out because it suddenly cried out, sounding like a newborn baby. They knew it wasn’t actually crying, but that haunting sound was hard to shake. Crow was even wondering if it was some sort of Soul attack.

With one last shout, the Beastlord slapped the contract to the thing’s forehead, and a bright light bathed the area. It felt as if time had stopped for the briefest of moments.

Pop. Pop. Pop. The three anchors came free, and Ahote stumbled back only to be caught by Nuk, who gently jumped off the eel and placed Ahote on the ground.

“You can release her,” the Beastlord said weakly.

Crow retracted the thorns and watched as the rainbow-hued eel shrank to about three meters long. It wiggled its way over to Ahote before wrapping itself around his body like a playful minx.

“Hello, little sister,” Ahote chuckled. “I’ll call you Satinka, Sati for short. You okay with that?”

The Taniwha’s head swerved around his body until it came face to face with Ahote. Looking into the Beastlord’s eyes, Sati gently nodded. Watching the byplay between them, Crow came to realize he really was witnessing the birth of something amazing. Only when the two were together did he recognize that Ahote didn’t bind Sati to him alone. It was unclear what was happening until Aine approached.

The golden ring in Crow’s eyes lit up as he watched the bond between Sati and Aine grow. Even seeing it all happen before him, he didn’t understand any of it. Never had he heard of a Beastlord being able to tame in this way. It was almost like the two were sharing the bond with Sati, but ownership was definitely under Aine.

Sati moved and wrapped itself around Aine while avoiding her stomach. The Taniwha nuzzled itself against her cheek, and both of them seemed to fade from Crow’s normal vision. However, they couldn’t escape his Silver-Eyed Crow ability.

“Did it lose its monstrosity trait after taming it?” Crow asked out of curiosity.

“No,” Ahote said, patting Sati’s head. “It is something it can control, similar to a dragon. She is powerful; we couldn’t have pulled that off without your help. I’m just not sure how to repay you.”

“Forget it,” Crow waved him off. “Family doesn’t keep score.”

“Sati, say hello to brother Crow,” Aine said, walking toward him.

“Sorry about the thorns,” Crow muttered, seeing that she was bleeding in multiple places. However, Satinka didn’t seem to mind and appeared extremely playful. It made him wonder if capturing it in that way was even necessary. He assumed it was a rampaging beast, but seeing how docile it was now, he couldn’t picture it.

“Don’t be fooled. It would have definitely killed everyone,” Ahote said, seeing the sorrow on Crow’s face. “Until it bonded with me, it only saw us as food, and its intelligence was limited. I’ve never seen a beast gain so much intelligence after a taming. She is very unusual.”

“Is your Spirit strong enough to control it?”

“My Soul is still recovering, which is why I used Aine as its master. We are linked through our child, and we officially bonded as partners after your talk. It’s a special ritual Beastlords have, but I can only do it once in my life. A Beastlord doesn’t bond with their mate unless they are absolutely sure about their spouse. A Beastlord’s marriage bond shares our Soul’s capacity for taming, and it doesn’t matter who has the contract—the beasts are under both of our control,” Ahote explained. “I need you to never mention that because it is an enormous secret among our people. However, because you consider me family, I will treat you as family. Just don’t ask me to share the method because that is something I cannot do.”

“It’s not something I’d ever ask, but thanks for explaining,” Crow smiled at the two playing with Sati and didn’t realize how much his nonsense had affected them. After the taming, they reached the stairs ascending to the sixth floor without any more delays.