Chapter 31.5:Tamers and [epic] monsters

Flora discovered that her query had left 'The Garden'. She was so absorbed in her worries that the target had left the vicinity.

This slightly pissed her off. The act itself was common enough, many students wanted to interact with her after class usually with ulterior motives but her well-kept boundaries prevented them from achieving their goals. When they figured they had no chance they often backed off and she was fine with it.

Her past had created an inherent distrust of Tamers and even now her monster girl instincts and her thoughts were still at odds though the instincts were winning by an overwhelming majority. The cost of suppressing them for so long.

However, in all of that, she had completely forgotten that teachers were allowed to tag a tamer they were attracted to. Every teacher was a [epic] monster that for one reason or another got dropped by their tamer or other extenuating circumstances like herself. [Epic] monsters are monsters that approach the next tier in power but the cost of being three to five times as essence hungry.

Granted they were no 'legendary' monsters who require upwards of twenty times the essence of their base tier. But at the same time, they did have the overwhelming power that legendary monsters possessed. She was a special case but it was still effectively the same for her.

However, [epic] monsters specifically were stuck in a sort of limbo, too essence hungry for new and midrange tamers to feasibly bond, but too weak for powerful tamers who would prefer to directly bond a [legendary] monster.

One might ask that if a bond was complete, feeding was no longer necessary and so tamers should go for [epic] monsters on top of [legendary] monsters. But as with everything in life, there was a catch.

They had 'effectively' infinite mana, 'effectively' being the operative word. If their mana stores got too low the bond would fill it up to a point, but never to a point where the monster girl could operate at 100% capacity. In fact, they could barely operate at 25% capacity.

Most veteran tamers could only maintain about five monster girls active at a time with a [legendary] being a sort of 'oh shit!' button. Reducing that to one [epic] monster girl active at a time was not conducive to a long tamer life.

There was also the fact that their power made them inherently valuable and the [tamer league] often paid handsomely for selling off the monster girl. Then they were required to work for five years to pay off the 'debt'. As [loan] monsters or any other occupation, the league saw fit.

Then they were let go because the league knew that they would continue to work for the good of mankind without the league needing to spend extra resources to manage them. There was also the fact that they needed humans more than humans needed them and they were smart enough to know this and empathic enough to help humanity grow. The league made sure to grow such traits.

Thankfully [epic] monsters were also smart enough to create their organization [monster union] with the expressed purpose of eventually gaining a tamer.

This organization quickly expanded to collect niche/undesired monster girls and also find them a home.

They inserted themselves into other organizations working for practically free with the clause that should they find a suitable tamer, they be allowed to engage in some sort of bond, with the permission of the tamer. Of course, they targeted almost exclusively gifted new tamers that could handle them, a helpful feature that combined their intellect and their monster girl instincts.

By the time the tamer had enough sense to drop them off for a more 'efficient' bond, they were either too attached and/or they now had a complete bond. The pros of such an arrangement outweighed the cons for most organizations.

They were still very powerful monster girls and the tamers they tended to target could field around two [epic] monster girls or at least one with other normal monster girls.

Planar University was the most desired place to work and where about 90% of the [epic] monsters of the [monster union] went because of the sheer concentration of tamers attending every year. The university itself also welcomed [epic] monsters as it helped them pick out the elite tamers among the student body. In fact, the only reason 'blessed' tamers were even suggested to attend class and not have private tutors was because they were encouraged to bond with [epic] monster girls.

The whole reason Flora could hide her real status was that [epic] monsters had a plethora of unique abilities. [Epic] monsters were sometimes called [unique] monsters because they had something that monsters of that variant did not have.

This did not help their case as those abilities tended to be their strongest aspects which made them very specialized and one specialized monster girl was always worse than a balanced team outside of niche circumstances.

Well. She found the one for her whether she wanted to or not. All she could do now was accept that fact and do her best to get him in her grasp.