After that heart-stopping scene, the Water Devil Beast's panel, which had flashed past moments earlier, crossed Luo Yu's mind.
Although the evolution had failed, the Water Devil Beast had briefly taken shape.
Luo Yu had gotten a clear look at its data.
There was a lot worth digging into in the information this time.
[Species]: Water Devil Beast [Sex]: None [Attribute]: Water [Species level]: lower monarch species [Life level]: Level 5 [Species abilities]: Ink Sea Raging Tide, Shapeshifting at Will [Individual talents]: 1. Dominion (advanced talent: a born leader, whose bloodline has a certain suppressive effect on weaker members of the same species.) 2. Big Eater (ordinary talent: possesses an appetite exceeding that of ordinary individuals.) 3. Vitality (ordinary talent: more vigorous than others of the same species.)
"July!"
"Go get my notebook and pen for me."
Luo Yu called out to him.
The little penguin's gaze shifted between the Ink Fish and Luo Yu for a moment. Then he headed toward the research institute, none the wiser, waddling along with a swagger that would make him unrecognizable to his own family.
The data this time is worth a closer look, Luo Yu murmured to himself.
First, the Water Devil Beast had gained a [Sex] field, which had never appeared for other mutated beasts.
Sex was either male or female, yet the Water Devil Beast was listed as having "no sex," which seemed to be what made it special.
That suggested that the Water Devil Beast probably couldn't reproduce normally.
On closer thought, that made sense. The Water Devil Beast had evolved through the fusion of a group of Ink Fish, both male and female. Once they fused, their sex would surely be hard to define.
But it was also possible that the Water Devil Beast could reproduce on its own, without relying on a mate. Of course, whether it actually could was not something Luo Yu could know yet.
He continued his analysis.
[Species level]: lower monarch species
There wasn't much to say about that.
After all, it had evolved from the fusion of a group of weak Ink Fish. That it could transform into a monarch species at all was already a miracle of life.
[Life level]: Level 5
This... was interesting too.
Ordinary evolution only raised "species level," not "life level."
Whatever level a creature was before evolution, it remained at that level afterward.
However, ordinary evolution involved only a single individual. There were few precedents for this sort of fusion evolution.
A group of level 1 Ink Fish had undergone a massive rise in life level after fusing and evolving... and that was despite the Ink Fish being malnourished and numbering just under a hundred.
Did that mean that if each Ink Fish had a higher base level, and there were more of them, their level after evolution might rise even further?
[Species abilities]: Ink Sea Raging Tide, Shapeshifting at Will
As for the Water Devil Beast's skills... Ink Spray had become Ink Sea Raging Tide and Shapeshifting at Will...
As the name suggested, Luo Yu thought Ink Sea Raging Tide was probably a higher-tier version of Ink Spray, spraying ink in a form like tides and waves, with greater impact, a larger scale, and more destructive power.
As for Shapeshifting at Will... Luo Yu had a rough guess based on the Water Devil Beast's evolutionary characteristics.
The Ink Fish had undergone "elementalization" while evolving!
Before evolving, they had all turned into a kind of ink. In that form, they had gathered together to make up a new individual.
Did that mean Ink Fish and Water Devil Beasts... had the ability to "elementalize"? Could they turn themselves into "ink"?
If so, Shapeshifting at Will was most likely a skill similar to "elementalization." After all, elements had no fixed form and could freely combine into any shape.
Luo Yu guessed that the evolved Water Devil Beast had a good chance of mastering this "elementalization" ability, turning itself into ink and recombining to take on other forms.
"The most important thing is... the talents."
"After evolution, the talents of all the Ink Fish didn't stack up to give the Water Devil Beast dozens of talents. It only kept three..."
"It did keep Dominion, though. Which raises the question: if a group of Ink Fish can evolve into a Water Devil Beast, can a group of Water Devil Beasts undergo a 'second-stage evolution' into a new species?"
"Besides that..."
Luo Yu had never actually seen three talents coexist in a mutated beast. The most he had seen was two, and now a mutated beast had finally broken that pattern.
Although he still couldn't make a definitive judgment, Luo Yu already believed that the higher the species level, the more talents it could carry, and the stronger those talents could be.
A common species could most likely carry no more than two talents... and without some special fortuitous encounter, an advanced talent was the limit.
A monarch species, on the other hand, had a chance of carrying three or even four talents, and perhaps a much greater chance of possessing a top-tier talent than a common species.
It made sense when he thought about it. A higher species level meant a more perfect evolution, and only a more perfect life-form was worthy of possessing more talents.
As a biologist, Luo Yu recorded as much of the Water Devil Beast's data as he could, making all sorts of conjectures about it.
Beside him, July, who had handed him the notebook and pen, scratched his head. He hadn't expected the Ink Fish to be so formidable!
He felt that he might have trouble fishing up the enormous creature from earlier... even though the Honey Water Bee had already stung him and given him Raptor's Power.
"But the most crucial thing is still..."
Although Luo Yu considered all of the above important, he was still more concerned with the pattern by which the Water Devil Beast inherited talents.
"This Water Devil Beast evolved from the fusion of 81 Ink Fish."
"The individual talents of those 81 Ink Fish were a mixed bag."
"But Big Eater was the most common talent, with 11 of them having it."
"Vitality came next, with nine."
They were a group of malnourished individuals, after all. Food was limited at the farm, so those with Big Eater had probably been hungry all the time, affecting their development. Those with Vitality were full of vigor, and if they didn't know to rest, they would burn through their stamina faster. If they didn't replenish their nutrition in time, their development would suffer too.
So those two talents were the most common among the malnourished individuals Luo Yu had picked out.
And after this group of Ink Fish evolved... it had retained only those two talents.
The other ordinary talents, present in varying numbers, seemed to have been swallowed up in the course of evolution, ruthlessly eliminated and turned into nourishment for it.
"Does this also mean that whichever individual talents are more common among the Ink Fish are the ones the Water Devil Beast will most likely inherit after evolution?"
"Of the 81 Ink Fish, 11 had Big Eater and nine had Vitality, with Dominion at the core. So the three talents after evolution were Dominion, Big Eater, and Vitality."
"Then if I used a different batch, with 40 of the 81 Ink Fish having Ice Element Affinity and 40 having Eight-Sword Style, would the talents after evolution be Dominion, Ice Element Affinity, and Eight-Sword Style?"
At that thought, Luo Yu felt that the Water Devil Beast had limitless potential!
DIY customized evolution?
Whatever talents he wanted the evolved Water Devil Beast to have... all he had to do was tinker with the "school of fish" and adjust the proportion of talents in it.
As a beastmaster and a breeder, what could be more thrilling than customizing an evolved form himself?
"Come to think of it, if enough of them have the same talent, could that talent level up after evolution?"
"Out of 101 Ink Fish, one has Dominion and 100 have Thick Skin and Tough Flesh. Surely the talent can't still be an ordinary defensive talent after evolution, can it?"
"Could the 100 Thick Skin and Tough Flesh talents also evolve and transform into a higher-level defensive talent?"
"Then, if I gathered hundreds of individuals with the same advanced talent and had them fuse and evolve together, could that give rise to a top-tier talent?"
Luo Yu felt as though he had found the true way to raise Ink Fish and Water Devil Beasts.
A school of fish with a jumble of talents that evolved by chance would probably only produce a Water Devil Beast that barely qualified as a monarch, with potential at the bottom of the monarch species.
But if he raised one his way, rigorously selecting every Ink Fish that made up the Water Devil Beast for its talent, the result would probably be a true king of the sea with limitless potential.
And then there was another point worth studying later: the maximum number of Ink Fish that could evolve and combine into one Water Devil Beast. The potential of a Water Devil Beast evolved from 100 Ink Fish surely couldn't be compared with one evolved from 1,000. Luo Yu reckoned there would be a limit, but he would have to test it gradually.
"What a shame, what a shame!!!"
Luo Yu sighed. He had analyzed so much, yet he couldn't contract one himself.
They were a monarch species, and he really wanted to contract a whole bunch of them.
When the time came, with the sea so vast, where couldn't he go?
If only beastmasters could contract an unlimited number of pet beasts.
Unfortunately, under normal circumstances, each person could only contract one pet beast.
Luo Yu refused to give up... It would probably take a long time to raise the Water Devil Beast he wanted. After all, he needed to gather too many individuals with high-grade talents. During that time, he had to gain another contract slot.
He quickly returned to the research institute's library and began looking through the materials for a way to increase his number of contracts...