"Dominion?!"
"This talent..."
Dominion was an advanced talent. A born leader, whose bloodline could exert a certain suppressive effect on weaker members of its own species...
It didn't seem like much. After all, many mutant beast species had leaders like that.
For instance, the queen in a swarm of bees.
Or the "wolf king" that could appear in a pack of wolves.
And then there were orcas, ants, lions...
This talent actually had some value in other species, but on an Ink Fish, it seemed a bit like chicken ribs.
Ink Fish had next to no intelligence. Even if the leader stood out as more intelligent than the others, how could it command a bunch of idiots for subordinates?
But the moment Luo Yu saw the talent, his keen instincts as a biologist told him it was no simple matter.
A leader...
Could be seen as the core of a group.
And Ink Fish evolved by fusing together...
"Could the evolution of Ink Fish have something to do with the Dominion talent?"
Surely he couldn't have found the key to Ink Fish evolution this quickly?
Many scholars had studied how to make Ink Fish evolve, but all their efforts had ended in failure.
So Luo Yu had long suspected that the vast majority of Ink Fish simply lacked the aptitude to evolve.
Only Ink Fish with a particular talent were qualified to complete the evolution.
It was just that he had encountered too few individual Ink Fish before, so he hadn't known what that crucial talent was.
But now, he suddenly felt that the Dominion talent was somewhat similar to the one he had imagined.
Come to think of it, perhaps this was how it worked: for Ink Fish to evolve into the Water Devil Beast, an Ink Fish with the Dominion talent had to serve as the central core, coordinating the group to complete the evolution!
Otherwise, how could a "rabble" with almost no intelligence turn from creatures at the bottom of the food chain into a powerful monarch species Devil Beast? Surely they needed someone to lead them.
Of course, Luo Yu was only making a wild, irresponsible guess.
Ink Fish with the Dominion talent might have nothing to do with evolution, but research was all about making bold guesses and trying things boldly.
"Then there's another question. Assuming an Ink Fish with the Dominion talent is the key to an Ink Fish school's evolution..."
"Why didn't these Ink Fish evolve when the major breeder Wang Defa was raising them?"
Suppose it was the core of the evolution. The fact that it hadn't managed to complete the evolution with the surrounding school in all this time suggested that the talent probably wasn't the only condition.
Sure enough, either Ink Fish with the Dominion talent had nothing to do with evolution, or the talent was only one of the conditions.
"If there are other conditions, what could they be?"
Luo Yu rubbed his chin and took another careful look at the school of Ink Fish.
A few minutes later, he suddenly paused.
"A born leader, whose bloodline can exert a certain suppressive effect on weaker members of its own species... But what if the others aren't weaker than it?"
"This Ink Fish with the Dominion talent is only level 1, and the other two thousand-plus Ink Fish here are all level 1 too."
"They're the same level!"
"This Dominion Ink Fish looks completely ordinary in its development. Even some Ink Fish with ordinary talents are bigger than it. After all, some ordinary talents, like 'Thick Skin and Tough Flesh,' 'Strongman,' and 'Agility,' let these Ink Fish develop extremely well."
"By comparison, the Dominion Ink Fish has no advantage in its development."
"There are hardly any individuals in this pond 'weaker' than it. It actually looks more like one of the weaker ones."
"So even if it has the aptitude to be a leader, the individuals around it are all stronger and sturdier. It can't command them at all."
Luo Yu now had an idea. If the Water Devil Beast evolved with an Ink Fish with the Dominion talent as its central core, was it possible that the Dominion Ink Fish actually needed to be the boss of its school?
There couldn't be any individuals around it stronger than it was.
Otherwise, if it wasn't even the boss of the school, what gave it the right to become the central core of the evolution? Why would Ink Fish stronger than it submit and make it their core?
Even if it had the aptitude to be a leader, talent was one thing and reality another. Nature was cruel, and strength still reigned supreme.
In an actual one-on-one fight, this Ink Fish with the Dominion talent might get beaten badly by an Ink Fish with an ordinary talent.
"Let's give it a try."
Luo Yu found a dip net and began to intervene, scooping the Ink Fish with the Dominion talent out on its own and putting it in an empty pond he had set aside.
Then he searched for other malnourished Ink Fish that were even less developed than it and put them in with it, making it the best-developed Ink Fish in a pond containing dozens of them.
The Dominion Ink Fish, which had been practically invisible in its original school, immediately began to act more boldly in its new environment.
That was just how living creatures were: surrounded by individuals stronger than themselves, they acted timid and meek.
Surrounded by those weaker than themselves, they began to show off.
But Luo Yu watched for a long time, and nothing else changed. On second thought, that made sense... Evolution couldn't be that easy.
"Assuming all my earlier guesses are right, what other conditions are needed for evolution?"
Luo Yu thought for a moment. Generally speaking, ritual evolution required an external stimulus.
For example, the Golden Carp challenged a waterfall rich in water-type energy, transforming its spirit and thereby elevating its level of life.
So under what circumstances would a school of Ink Fish be forced to come together and evolve into a stronger individual???
Luo Yu snapped his fingers.
A crisis!!!
Only a crisis could bring a group of weak creatures together.
In the wild, it was very common for a school of fish to encounter a crisis. In that situation, a school with a strong leader was the most likely to unite, fuse and evolve, and resist the danger!
"My father by a stroke of luck, Luo Shui, seems to have tried using a crisis before to see if he could make a school evolve."
"But in the end, that failed too."
"It was only natural that it failed. After all, none of the Ink Fish at the research institute had the aptitude to evolve."
"So, with an Ink Fish that has the Dominion talent, and with its life fluctuations now making it unquestionably the boss of the group, can the crisis experiment succeed?"
Would an extreme environment cause some change in the school?
Luo Yu's heart pounded as he felt he had grasped the key.
Should he... create a crisis for these fish himself and see what happened??
If they evolved successfully, he'd strike it rich.
That was a monarch species. Many medium-sized islands had no reliable way to produce one.
"Go."
Luo Yu called July over and told him to jump into the pond and put some pressure on the Ink Fish.
However...
July immediately began to drown. The Ink Fish hadn't even attacked before he was flailing about.
"Damn."
"Goo goo gah gah!!" The little penguin was terribly aggrieved. Floating in the pond, he began heating the water... entering his voice-changing phase.
But the pond was too big. It didn't do a damn thing.
"I'd better do it myself."
Luo Yu helplessly rubbed his temples.
He immediately found a wooden stick, jumped into the pond, and began driving the Ink Fish around with it, one blow stirring up a thousand waves.
Provoked, the Ink Fish began spraying ink in resistance. It had some force behind it, but the physiques of a bunch of underdeveloped Ink Fish were no match for Luo Yu's.
Did they think he'd taken all those injections for nothing?
Strength!
Defense!
All five senses!
Luo Yu's physique was now no inferior to that of some apprentice beast tamers with strength or defense talents.
The ink and water striking him weren't enough to stop his assault.
"Are you tickling me? Evolve if you've got the guts!" Luo Yu's eyes had gone red with battle.
The next moment.
Time seemed to freeze.
An utterly shocking sight unfolded. After the school fell into chaos, it seemed to awaken some quality in them. The Ink Fish stopped spraying ink, and their bodies bizarrely transformed into black ink, converging on one of their number!
It was none other than the Dominion Ink Fish.
On the bank, the little penguin watched with wide eyes, unable to understand what Luo Yu had done.
Luo Yu was surprised too. He actually hadn't held out much hope; it had all been a wild experiment to pass the time.
After all, experiments were about trying more things.
But...
A direct hit on the first try?
Did it have to happen like this?
The stick slipped from Luo Yu's hand as he stared, dumbfounded.
"Wait!!" He suddenly realized something.
Wasn't the Water Devil Beast very vicious?
Otherwise, why would it have Devil Beast in its name? Surely it couldn't just be because it sounded like "water and ink."
He could beat Ink Fish, but a Water Devil Beast...
"July, save me!"
July didn't understand what was happening, but he immediately cast his fishing rod and quickly pulled Luo Yu ashore from the middle of the pond.
At that moment.
Ink was gathering frantically in the pond, completely engulfing the Ink Fish with the Dominion talent and leaving only a mass of deep black rolling like waves!
At that spot, the ink kept compressing and solidifying, its outline gradually lengthening until, at last, a huge body slowly took shape!
A giant octopus that... didn't seem all that big, and whose body was even a little deformed? It looked different from the Water Devil Beast he'd read about.
"Woo!!!!!"
As if it had gathered all the Ink Fish's anger from moments before, the "Water Devil Beast" fixed its scarlet eyes on Luo Yu.
But the next moment, the Water Devil Beast suddenly froze. It fell apart with a splash, as if its body had come undone, dropping back into the pond like raindrops... and scattering.
Luo Yu froze too.
Had... the evolution failed?
He hadn't pressed "B" to cancel the evolution.
Looking at the Ink Fish that had returned to their original forms, Luo Yu fell into thought.
Failed evolution... It did seem that such things could happen during evolution.
Take the Wind-Entwining Pupa, the evolved form of the Wind-Entwining Worm. By rights, it should normally evolve into a Gale Butterfly at level 11, but in reality, things weren't so simple.
Occasionally, there were cases of failed "hatching," when a Gale Butterfly wrapped in insect silk failed to break free of its cocoon, causing its evolution to fail.
But that rarely happened, and most cases were because the individual about to evolve had some kind of defect...
Luo Yu looked at the Ink Fish in the pond and understood.
Their "defect" was that their levels were too low. Every one of them was underdeveloped!
Although his guess had been right and they had successfully evolved into a Water Devil Beast because of their common enemy, each individual was too weak to bear the immense power of evolution. As a result, they had scattered back into their original forms after only an instant.
"In other words, if they're going to evolve, the average level of the Ink Fish school can't be too low either..."
It was just as well they'd failed... Luo Yu had only just remembered that he had this one Dominion Ink Fish. If the evolution had succeeded, where would he find another?
"Breeding. I absolutely have to breed it like crazy!"