The Contrasts

"The path of a Beastmaster was a difficult one on Sumeria." Jarod explained. "We have to deal with difficulties that Peninsulars don't have to - namely the lack of energy, the weak strength of monsters and the number of pages. All of these problems are interested."

"When I first connected to my Grimoire, I had only one page in it. This is not an unusual phenomenon at all. A lot of individuals cannot even form one page in the White Grimoire form.and can only tame their first monster in the bronze or silver Grimoire stage. Until then they must purely cultivate their soul depth to improve their Grimoire strength." Jarod explained.

"Is this because of the low energy density in the air?" Dante asked with interest. His engineering mindset from Earth suddenly came back with a vengeance.

Jarod nodded with a mirthful smile. "Indeed. Our souls aren't strong enough because we grow up in an energy starved environment. Soul Cultivation is thus much more heavily focused on in my Sumeria than the Beastmaster profession. The Soul Cultivators have their own guild, whereas Beastmasters like myself are few and far between and we have our own schools of thought."

Dante was not surprised by this revelation. The widespread culture of soul Cultivation in Sumeria was something he had quickly observed during his stay.

"Thus, the Grimoire is only a secondary tool for most individuals, who stress soul Cultivation as the primary cultivation path. What monsters we tame are also typically based on these realities. My first tamed monster, and the tamed monster of a lot of individuals in Sumeria is this..."

Jarod summoned out his bright gold Grimoire with complex sigils on its hardbound cover and the pages flipped before a small cactus embedded itself into the ground. The tree was only the size of Jarod's waist, but it was thick and unmoving. The moment it landed, it began to suck in the energy gushing out from the ground in Jarod's mansion.

"This... is the Soul Strengthening Cactus." Jarod explained. "As far as monsters go, it is extremely docile and even very peaceful. It is a waste in battles, however, for us Sumerians, it is essential in setting out foundations as both Soul Cultivators and Beastmasters."

Dante quietly observed the cactus. It truly felt like an unmoving, unconscious entity. Jarod continued his explanation.

"This cactus absorbs energy to grow. It resonates with our soul and tempers it to become stronger by slowly increasing the soul depth. The other consequence of taming this is it gradually improves the physique of the Beastmaster. It is why so many of our kind are tall and muscular."

Dante nodded with understanding. "This is the first time I have heard of this cactus. Is it endemic only to Sumeria?"

"As far as I know, yes." Jarod replied. "However, the drawback of this cactus is that it needs excessive amounts of energy to grow. So much so, that even I have only been able to evolve it once."

"Evolve?"

"Haha, yes. As Beastmasters, our monsters can evolve. However, different monsters have different requirements for evolution. My Fiery Flame Horses have both evolved twice each. The number of evolutions is limited by the grade of the Grimoire. A gold Grimoire can only sustain a thrice evolved monster."

"Where can I learn about the monsters that populate Sumeria?" Dante asked.

"You are free to peruse my library for the Beast Compendium. As I explained.earlier, us Beastmasters are an isolated group few in number Most of our information is scattered and incomplete." Jarod warned, but swelled with pride when he mentioned his own bestiary.

Dante thanked Jarod before perusing through the library. Compared with the oppulence of Azalea, Dante felt the meagre choice of books in this bestiary. Unlike the finely refined paper of the peninsula, the paper here was coarse and poorly prepared. Even for the relatively backward technology of this monster world, Sumerian technology seemed like it was even more backward.

Dante shook his head and returned to the Beast Compendium, a collection of encyclopedic books detailing the various monsters in Sumeria. The books seemed to have been written by hand, probably by Jarod or his teachers and their teachers. The books had delicate drawings of monsters, locations on geographical maps, their traits, their abilities.

The details about monsters behavior on soul synchrony, aka on being tamed were much fewer. Dante guessed this was because of how few Beastmasters there actually were on Sumeria. He also noticed that the information regarding the monsters got thinner and thinner as the locations moved towards the center.

The information correlated with things about Sumeria that Dante had learned on his own time - that large swathes of the interior geography were occupied by isolationist tribes that were hostile to major forces who congregated on the coasts. For a barren world, the geography of these so called information blank spots was dramatically divergent. Some had snow capped peaks, some were dense jungles and others were swamps and deserts.

Hearing that Jarod, one of the most talented Beastmasters in Messop only had a single page in his White Grimoire internally shocked Dante. He correlated what he learned about the Beastmaster tradition from Sumeria in contrast to the memories of his mother trying to stuff Grimoire knowledge in Azalea granted him a new perspective on charting a path as a Summoner.

Azalea stressed on using the first few pages of the white Grimoire to set up the potential of the summoner as well. The difference was that the abundance of energy meant that they focused on different kind of fortification. Dante's brothers had both chosen the Bright Steelbird as their first tamed summon. The reason was that taming them increased an individual's sword talent.

His younger sister had tamed a Darkeye Raven, which improved eye sight and perfectly alligned with her archery skills. The skills considered as fundamental in Azalea were more alligned with the weapon skills.