Chapter Twelve: Insight
The light faded slowly, and the cocoon dissolved with it, unraveling into the same fine green-and-gold motes from which it had been spun.
And in its place hovered a bee unlike anything Elias had ever raised.
Gone was the small, humble shape of an Amberwing worker. In its stead drifted a magnificent creature the size of a human head, regal and luminous and impossibly beautiful. Its wings were grander now, broad sweeps of amber traced through with intricate veins of gold. Its furry body shimmered in deep greens and warm golds, and with every slow beat of those great wings, soft specks of green and golden light spilled from it to drift gently down through the air, as though it trailed a quiet rain of springtime wherever it flew.
For a long moment, the whole family simply stared, struck silent by the sight of it.
It had worked. It had actually, truly worked.
And then, in the midst of Elias’s wonder, the wheel appeared in his mind.
He recognized it at once—the same wheel of fortune from before, surfacing now as his reward. But this was no mere consolidation of small knowledge. This was the successful discovery of an entirely new evolution path, a feat that rewrote what the world believed possible for the lowliest of spirit beasts. And the wheel reflected it.
It was different this time. The broad white slice was gone entirely. In its place: green claimed half the wheel, a full fifty percent; blue took forty; a slender band of purple made up nine-point-nine; and there, almost too thin to see, a single hairline sliver of pure gold—one-tenth of one percent.
The wheel began to spin.
It blurred, the colors smearing into a ring of light, slowing by reluctant degrees—and then, against all odds, against odds of a thousand to one, it clicked to a stop on that impossible sliver of gold.
Elias’s breath caught.
Light bloomed behind his eyes, and with it came knowledge—for the prize, this time, was no mere week of cultivation.
It was a talent. An entirely new talent, granted whole and complete, settling into his soul alongside the one he’d been born with. Elias stood frozen, reeling, scarcely able to believe it—a second talent, when most people lived and died with one. But before the shock could fully take hold, the understanding of it rose unbidden in his mind, clear and certain:
[Insight of Friendship]
Effects:
- Shows the status of any object or creature.
- Can only view those with whom a close connection is shared.
- The closer the connection, the more information is revealed.
- The greater the difference in rank, the closer the connection must be to view it.
Almost without thinking, he turned his gaze to Floria.
And her status unfolded before him.
Name: Floria
Race: Lifebloom Bee Queen
Type: Insect
Attributes: Wood, Life
Current Rank: Commander Rank 1
Potential Rank: Lord Rank 3
Mood: Serene — newly awakened, content, and quietly devoted to her contractor
Description: A regal queen of life and growth, evolved from a humble Amberwing Bee. Wherever she travels, flowers bloom brighter, and the air itself feels more alive. Proud and dignified by nature, yet bound to her contractor by a sincere and willing heart.
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Skills:
- Hive Mind — Lv5
- Pheromone Sovereignty — Lv4
- Reproduction — Lv1
- Royal Command — Lv1
- Life Absorption — Lv4
- Life Storage — Lv4
- Life Amplification — Lv2
- Verdant Blessing — Lv2
- Symbiotic Bond — Lv3
A Lifebloom Bee Queen. Commander rank already, fresh out of the cocoon—and a Potential Rank of Lord. From a creature that, scarcely a season ago, had been so weak that scholars argued whether it counted as a spirit beast at all. The numbers in front of him weren’t just good. They were staggering. He’d known, in theory, that the evolution would elevate her. Seeing the proof laid bare was something else entirely.
And the skills—Verdant Blessing, Life Amplification, Symbiotic Bond. Healing, growth, nurture, life itself. His father had gambled a contract slot on faith, and faith had repaid him with a queen.
Elias might have stood there, lost in the glowing columns of her status, for a great deal longer—if Kyle hadn’t bodily shaken him out of it.
“Cool,” Kyle breathed, eyes enormous, gripping his little brother by both shoulders and giving him a good rattle. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen an evolution! Elias—Elias, are you seeing this? Look at her! She’s huge!”
“I’m—yes, Kyle, I’m looking, I have eyes—stop shaking me—”
“The little guy actually did it!” Kyle whooped, releasing Elias only to throw both arms triumphantly into the air. “My genius little brother! I told you it’d work! Didn’t I tell him it’d work?”
“You understood maybe a third of it,” Elias muttered, swaying slightly from the rattling.
“A confident third!”
Selena had drifted close to Floria, hands clasped firmly behind her back—pointedly not touching, a small smirk aimed at Elias to show she’d learned her lesson. “Well, would you look at that,” she murmured, genuine awe softening her sharp features as the queen drifted a slow, regal circle and dusted her with gentle motes of light. “She’s beautiful. Damien, your bee turned into royalty.”
And Damien—Damien simply held out his arm.
Floria descended at once, settling upon it with an ease that spoke of the bond already deep between them, folding her great shimmering wings. He looked at her with quiet, brimming pride, the expression of a man who had believed without proof and been proven right.
“Welcome back,” he said softly, and from her tank Amia blew a long, delighted stream of bubbles, as though offering her own congratulations to the newest member of the family.
But that was not the end of the surprises.
For as Floria emerged and completed her evolution, something flowed back through the contract that bound her to Damien.
Damien had been stuck for a long time—longer than he ever let on—at Elite Rank 10, the very peak of the Elite realm, unable to push past it. The reason was simple: for years he’d carried only a single contracted beast in Amia, and a beast tamer’s own cultivation was bound up tightly with the strength and number of the beasts they kept. Without a second companion to broaden his foundation, he’d hit a ceiling and stayed there, quietly, patiently, for ages.
Floria changed that in an instant.
As her evolution settled, a surge of spiritual energy poured back along the contract and into Damien—the feedback of a freshly minted Commander-rank beast flooding into her contractor. His breath hitched. He felt the long-locked ceiling above him crack.
Without a word, he lowered himself to the floor, crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and sank into meditation.
The whole family went still around him. Even Kyle, mid-celebration, clapped a hand over his own mouth and sat down. The beasts quieted. The only sound left in the apartment was the soft hum of Floria’s wings and the faint drift of light falling from them.
They watched, breath held, as Damien’s energy began to climb.
Years of patient, accumulated cultivation—all the meditation he’d banked while trapped at his ceiling—came rushing forward all at once, now that the way was finally open. His aura swelled, deepened, and broke cleanly through the wall that had held him so long. Commander Rank 1. Then, carried by the sheer reservoir of energy he’d stored over the years, it didn’t stop. Rank 2. Rank 3. The power surged on, climbing higher with each breath—before at last beginning to slow, and settling, steady and certain, at Commander Rank 4.
Damien took the flood in hand with the ease of long discipline. The wild, surging energy quieted under his control, growing still and ordered, folding neatly into his foundation. Then he exhaled, long and slow, and opened his eyes—outwardly his calm, unhurried self once more.
But inwardly, everything had changed.
His Beast Taming Space, once an empty white void like any other, had transformed. It now brimmed with life—lush with greenery and blooming plants, and through it all wound a clear, gentle river, its waters bright and alive, curving through the green like a ribbon of light. For it was a known phenomenon that upon reaching the Commander rank, a beast tamer’s Space began to take shape at last, its barren whiteness blossoming into an environment that mirrored the nature of the beasts they kept. With a Life-and-Wood queen and a Life-and-Water guppy both at his side, Damien’s inner world had bloomed into a verdant garden threaded by flowing water—Floria’s green and Amia’s river entwined into one.
Elias looked around at all of them—his loud, ridiculous, impossible family, the radiant queen he’d coaxed out of an ordinary little bee, and his father risen to a height he’d been locked away from for years—and felt something swell in his chest too large for words.
He’d done it. They’d done it. And nothing in either of his lives had ever felt quite like this.
Lifebloom Bee