They had dreamed of something better for Leo.
"Eight years," the father said, sinking into his chair. "Eight years watching other children evolve their beasts while he… while our foolish investment strangles his hope for the future."
He didn't need to finish the sentence. A spore could not evolve its rank.
There were no cultivation techniques to study, no evolutionary paths to explore, no secret arts to buy.
Many had already tried.
Richer men with far more resources.
The only one who had ever succeeded…
Was branded the greatest failure of all. A fortune had been spent for a paltry, almost useless gain: a twenty percent increase in strength.
Since that day, the spore had become a symbol of futility.
Leo would now spend eight years learning lessons he could never apply, his surroundings a constant, painful reminder of what he could never achieve.
Eight years of mockery. Eight years as the school's laughingstock.
Eight wasted years. What could he possibly learn about cultivation and evolution when he was bonded to a creature that could do neither?
The weight of it all sent the father’s thoughts drifting into the past, to a time that Leo himself had brightened.
"Do you remember that day?" he asked suddenly, his gaze lost in the flickering candlelight.
"The kingdom's medicine stores were depleted from the mana contamination after that year's horde. I had to go out searching for a cure for mana poisoning myself, and that's when I found it… the plant you ate. We thought we had been blessed."
She nodded, taking his hand.
How could she ever forget?
They had been trying to have a child since they were in their twenties.
Nearly three decades of broken hopes, of watching friends raise families while they remained alone.
They had lived a frugal life, saving every coin for the family they dreamed of, only to find the one thing they truly wanted couldn't be bought, no matter how much they accumulated.
Almost a million—an incredible sum for citizens of their rank.
They had considered using the money to "cure" their infertility, but they were already so old. They had given up.
But that trip to the outskirts…
"The plant I found… I mistook it for one of those high-quality, hundred-year-old sweet roots," he continued. "When you ate it, I thought… I thought I had killed you. You were so pale, so cold…"
"And a week later, I felt as if I were twenty again," she said, her smile tinged with sorrow. "The following year, we had him, without even trying."
They fell silent, listening to the muffled sobs coming from Leo's room.
Their little miracle, the child who had breathed life and happiness back into their world when all hope was gone, now faced such a cruel destiny.
"It's as if the dragon gods are mocking us," she murmured. "They give us a child when we are far too old, only to…"
"To watch him suffer," he finished, squeezing her hand.
The candles, nearly spent, guttered in their holders, their flames reflecting in the glossy surface of the school contract on the table.
In the next room, their ten-year-old son cried himself into silence, a small gray spore floating beside his pillow like a constant reminder of his fate.
The celebratory feast they had prepared with such love and anticipation grew cold on the table, untouched, while two elderly parents wept for the cruel turn their life's miracle had taken.
Leo lay on his bed, the tears drying on his cheeks as sadness gave way to a slow-burning rage.
The spore floated beside him, its weak, gray glow only fanning the flames of his anger.
Go to school? It was a sick joke.
He could already see the next eight years stretching out before him like a waking nightmare. While the other children learned to evolve their beasts and awaken new powers, he would just sit there, shackled to a creature that couldn't even mature properly.
Maybe it would be better to do what the other unfortunate "rotting ones" did and…
No. He couldn't. He loved his parents, and he knew how much they loved him.
He needed a distraction, anything to take his mind off it.
He turned to the small bookshelf beside his bed and picked up his favorite book, its spine cracked and its pages worn from countless readings: "The Second Contract of the Wandering King."
His fingers traced the faded cover, following the image of a legendary warrior who had achieved the impossible.
According to the story, the hero had found a mystical medicine deep within the forest, something that had allowed him to form a second contract with a beast.
It was just a story, of course. In all of recorded history, only the current king and a handful of legendary warriors had ever bonded with a second creature.
And not one of them would ever reveal that secret to the masses.
But Leo was still a child, and still naive enough to hope.
Leo glanced out his window toward the dark forest that loomed beyond the outskirts. The medicine from the story… what if…?
The thought died as quickly as it had been born.
His own father, with his mature, Iron-rank plant companion, had returned half-dead the only time he had ventured deep into those woods.
And his father had real advantages: a forty percent boost to his vitality, an adult's strength and speed increased by twenty percent, a modest control over plants to detect dangers, and years of experience.
And what did Leo have?
A useless spore and a miserable ten-percent increase to his own childish strength.
He could barely lift the heavy flour sacks in the kitchen. How could he possibly survive in a forest teeming with monsters?
The spore flickered weakly, as if it sensed his desperation.
"Why you?" he whispered bitterly at the creature. "With such low chances… why did it have to be you?"
Silence was his only answer.
From the dining room, he could hear his parents talking in low, worried tones. He couldn't bear it. He couldn't be the cause of their pain, the pathetic end to all their hopes and sacrifices.
But there was nothing he could do to change it.
Once a contract was formed, it was for life. The spore would be his companion until the day he died, a constant, floating reminder of his failure.
His eyes were drawn again to the dark forest beyond his window.
Even thinking about it was suicidal.
With such a weak creature bonded to him, the mana poisoning would kill him in less than three days.
But then he thought of the school contract, of the years of torment that awaited him.
What was worse? To die trying to change his destiny, or to live for eight years as the school's laughingstock?
His parents… maybe, just maybe, this was a way to make them happy, too.
Leo opened the worn book one last time, his fingers tracing the illustrations of the Dragons.
It was said that any creature, given the right path of cultivation, could eventually become a dragon.
According to the book, the Wandering King had found more than just his medicine in the forest.
It wasn't just any medicine he sought; it was hidden in the heart of dragon territory, a place where mana flowed so thick it shimmered in the air.