Sylver Seeker

It had 7 legs, as advertised, but instead of having them in a line, like a centipede, the creature had them side by side. Only the front left leg was alone, the other 3 were doubled up.

But even if the general shape was right, calling it a “horse,” felt disingenuous.

For starters, it didn’t have hooves, or rather it did, but they were currently folded up, and Sylver could see that it had something that looked closer to the feet of a cat. Claws as thin as razor blades peaked out from within the folds near the bit where the flesh ended, since describing the stubby appendages as “toes” didn’t feel right.

Going up the legs, the creature had 4 points where the limbs bent, as far as Sylver could tell at least. And unlike a regular horse or any animal with hooves, the joints didn’t appear to be hinge joints. Meaning the creature likely wouldn’t have any trouble using its back legs to scratch its own ass.

But its lower half was likely the least interesting thing about it. From his attempt at a mana-based inspection, Sylver discovered that its inside were a cacophony of illogical chaos.

Lungs so small they appeared to have been crushed since the moment it tried to breathe, a stomach that had seemingly digested itself, no heart, no kidneys, liver, pancreas, spleen, intestines the whole thing was mostly muscle and bone.

Or at least it appeared that way.

It was completely hairless, with a tail that looked like it belonged to a rat. Similarly, it was skinny and starved looking, enough so that Sylver could easily count its ribs and vertebrate, even without having to inspect it with his mana.

And then there was the head!

It had fucking antlers, of all things. There were 2 pairs, ones that curled protectively around the side of its head, and a second pair that was straight and pointed upwards, perfect for impaling someone.

Similar to Bruno, it had 4 sets of eyes, 2 exactly where you expected a horse to have eyes, and the remaining 6 were about half as big and located between the area of its eyes and muzzle.

Sylver stood up from the unconscious creature and wiped his hands clean on his robe.

“How is it still alive?” Sylver asked, as he walked away from the mare, and turned to face Bruno.

“Regular fresh blood injections from several donor monsters. The others died of natural causes, but this thing managed to survive somehow. There was something off about it’s soul, so I decided it would be better to keep it alive until you arrived,” Bruno explained, as the unconscious horse creature shifted on the hay covered floor.

“What is it anyway?” Sylver asked.

[N/A – N/A – 186][HP: 644 – 1%][MP: 19 – 0%][Stamina: 0 – 0%][Corpse – Unique][Soul – Grand]

“Before you left, do you remember how I mentioned I needed to get a functional base working?” Bruno asked.

“Yeah.”

“I found that certain monsters share a link, and found that a certain type of base works great for one monster, but produces a stillborn for another. There are currently 24 types of monster bases, mammal, insect, arachnid, bird, slime, you get the gist,” Bruno explained.

Sylver nodded along.

“Normally I create my chimeras by using one of the bases, typically in the form of an egg, and combine it with sample material from a monster with the desired feature. From there it’s a simple case of adjusting its development while it grows, to remove the unwanted characteristics, and leave only the beneficial ones,” Bruno explained.

“And what exactly did you combine to produce this?” Sylver asked as he gestured at the horse-ish monster.

“I was getting to it. Creating chimeras used to be more art than science. I would do the magical equivalent of banging two rocks together while hoping something good happened. It’s a lot less chaotic now, I can reliably gauge the chance of success within the first 2 weeks of growth. What you’re looking at here, is an amalgamation of my failures,” Bruno said.

“It doesn’t look or feel stitched together, so I’m assuming this is a classical chimera made out of failed chimeras?” Sylver said.

Bruno was right the soul did feel weird, but he was certain he could only feel 1. Chimeras were famously difficult to create because 99 times out of 100 the various mixed creatures’ souls would fight for dominance, and the winner would usually be too damaged to survive for more than a handful of minutes.

“Initially I just, and don’t judge me for this, I just fed the failures to whatever was nearest to me. But after we had a minor viral outbreak that nearly killed half the chimeras, I just tossed the dead failures into a giant locked up hole, and incinerated them every other week,” Bruno said with an odd smile on his face.

Sylver shrugged his shoulders and waited for the old man to continue.

“It was the best thing I’ve ever done. See… What ended up happening is that the hundreds of thousands of failures ended up effectively competing against each other. And every now and then something very very interesting would crawl out of it,” Bruno explained and gestured at the horse-like monster laying in front of them.

“You do know this is essentially how you make a demon vessel, right?” Sylver asked.

A bit of color drained from Bruno’s face but didn’t seem to affect his smile all that much.

“That certainly explains why some of the sigils I used appeared demonic in origin… Would you mind giving it a look over before you leave, to make sure I don’t accidentally summon a demon?” Bruno asked.

Sylver rolled his eyes and then tried to shift the conversation back to the creature on the floor.

Instead, he felt as if something slapped his right hand’s fingers. Sylver looked down at his hand and could see the tiny piece of wood wrapped around his middle finger flickering with pale white energy.

Sylver shifted his gaze from the ring to the creature lying on the floor a few steps away from him, and then returned it to the ring.

“I think I’ll have to, because that right there, seems to be a dormant demon vessel…” Sylver said as he took a step toward the monster.

“Are you going to kill it or…” Bruno asked.

Sylver wordlessly took another step towards the creature. The ring on his finger was practically humming with power.

He turned around and walked away from the creature until the ring stopped reacting.

“I’m about 99 percent certain I’m right, but I’m going to check the framework you used, just in case,” Sylver said and followed Bruno.

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