Chapter 136: Pet Creation Ticket

Up in the Void, Red immediately swapped his camera feed to the western border.

Inside the fused-glass cavern of the Whispering Canyons, Iron-Scale still held the fourth fragment. The chaotic runes etched into the dark stone pulsed with a low-frequency hum, radiating the suffocating psychic pressure of Soul Erosion.

[ Contain the radiation, ] Red commanded the Kobold Inquisitor. [ The ambient frequency will rot the minds of the new laborers before they even reach the foundries. ]

Iron-Scale did not hesitate. He dropped the dark stone onto the glass floor and raised his heavy Star-Iron scythe. With a series of brutal, calculated swings, the Inquisitor cleaved thick slabs of armor from the dead Pre-Calamity arachnid’s carapace. He dragged the heavy metal plating over to the massive alchemical resin web that hung from the ceiling.

Using the highly durable Star-Iron as a base, Iron-Scale wrapped the fragment entirely in thick layers of the hardened, magic-resistant resin, effectively sealing the dark stone inside a crude but functional quarantine box. The suffocating psychic pressure in the cavern instantly vanished, allowing the dwarven guide and the Lizard-men to finally gasp for air and climb to their feet.

[ Summon the aerial couriers, ] Red instructed.

Iron-Scale stepped out of the cavern and marched back into the canyon. He raised a scaled hand to the sky and let out a sharp, echoing hiss. Moments later, the heavy beating of wings filled the gorge.

A dozen avian-hybrids descended from the clouds, their feathered wings kicking up clouds of ash as they landed nervously on the cracked earth. They bowed their heads, terrified of the towering Lizard-men and the ruthless Inquisitor.

Iron-Scale kicked the heavy, resin-sealed lockbox across the dirt until it stopped at the feet of the lead avian.

“The Ka-Lam-Tee demands immediate extraction,” Iron-Scale hissed, tapping the blunt end of his scythe against the rock. “You will carry this vault directly to the central temple at the Bastion. If the seal breaks, or if you drop it into the ash plains, the Spiral will harvest your wings for the bio-vats.”

The avian-hybrids scrambled to obey. Four of the strongest couriers dug their talons into the crude Star-Iron handles Iron-Scale had hammered into the box.

With a synchronized, straining flap of their massive wings, they lifted the heavy payload off the ground and launched themselves into the western sky, angling their flight path directly toward the heart of Red’s industrial empire.

Red watched the blips representing the avian squad cross his map interface. Four pieces of the server-wiping puzzle were secured. Now, he just needed to figure out how to bait out the fifth.

While the avian couriers hauled the resin-sealed lockbox across the continental map, Red shifted his attention away from the western grid. The extraction flight would take hours to reach the Bastion. He had a brief window to process a massive, unused asset gathering digital dust in his inventory.

Red tapped the glass of his primary screen, navigating through the complex sub-menus of his Architect interface. He isolated the glowing golden icon of the [Pet Creation Ticket] and dragged it into the center of the Void terminal.

[ SYSTEMIC PET CREATION INITIATED. ]

[ GENERATING BASE INCUBATOR… ]

A perfectly smooth, featureless white egg materialized on the digital pedestal floating in front of him. Red possessed no sliders, no class selection menus, and no custom genetic sculpting tools. The game engine did not allow him to build a companion from scratch. It merely provided a randomized, blank-slate vessel waiting to be influenced by the environment.

Red had no intention of letting the system dictate the outcome with standard parameters.

He opened his inventory and extracted the [Pre-Calamity Genesis Geode] he had secured from the Southern Vault. He dragged the translucent, plasma-filled stone directly over the featureless egg and dropped it.

[ CATALYST APPLIED: PRE-CALAMITY GENESIS GEODE. ]

[ INFUSING ANCIENT LINEAGE TRAITS… ]

[ RANDOMIZING GENETIC PATHWAY… ]

The geode shattered into a cloud of swirling, primordial plasma that immediately bled into the white shell. The egg violently darkened, shifting from pristine white to the deep, light-absorbing black of the Pre-Calamity stones. Jagged, glowing emerald veins spread across its surface, pulsing with a heavy, ancient heartbeat that echoed faintly through the Void instance’s audio feed.

Red pulled up the egg’s underlying code. Standard systemic pets required months, sometimes years, to incubate, hatch, and level up to a usable combat state.

Red did not have years to wait for a vanguard beast to mature.

He scanned the status block carefully and found the exact loophole he needed.

Status: Gestating. Soul: Unformed.

A smile tugged at the corner of Red’s mouth. Because the creature inside the shell had not technically been born yet, the game engine did not recognize it as an independent living entity. It possessed no active soul or willpower to resist external manipulation. It was, purely by systemic definition, raw organic material.

That meant it was entirely subject to his SSS-Rank trait.

Red opened his Overseer commands. He targeted the pulsing, black egg and engaged his [100x Multiplier]. He didn’t just trigger it once to accelerate the incubation. He selected the trait, input five consecutive charges, and slammed his hand down on the activation key.

[ SSS-RANK TRAIT ACTIVATED: 100x MULTIPLIER ]

[ CHARGES EXPENDED: 5 ]

[ WARNING: APPLYING 500x MULTIPLIER EXCEEDS SAFE BIOLOGICAL THRESHOLDS. ]

The Void instance violently shuddered.

The digital pedestal cracked under the sheer, localized pressure. The egg rapidly expanded in size, its smooth surface hardening into thick, overlapping scales of crystallized Star-Iron. The emerald veins flared with blinding intensity as the 500x multiplier forced a half-millennium of biological evolution, stat accumulation, and latent ability growth into a span of seconds.

The game engine struggled to render the rapid influx of ancient data, throwing a cascade of red error prompts across the screen.

[ CRITICAL BIOLOGICAL ANOMALY DETECTED. ]

[ GESTATION CYCLE ACCELERATED BY 500x. ]

[ BASE STAT POTENTIAL MULTIPLIED BY 500x. ]

[ PRE-CALAMITY TRAITS HYPER-MUTATED. ]

[ WARNING: INCUBATOR INTEGRITY FAILING. HATCHING IMMINENT. ]

The massive, iron-scaled egg began to violently vibrate on the cracked pedestal. Deep, echoing fractures webbed across the shell as whatever hyper-mutated, ancient apex predator Red had just forged desperately clawed its way toward the surface.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep