Luciel set his chopsticks down, his voice calm and measured. "I want twenty of that kind of snake."
Waldo blinked, surprised. "Only twenty?"
Luciel nodded lightly. In truth, he needed just one. One was enough to study, to understand, to see whether such a creature could be domesticated under his control.
For every beast species in this world, only a single individual could be tamed once. The bond formed between tamer and beast was unique and unrepeatable.
Otherwise—Luciel thought faintly—he might have already tamed a dozen rock tortoises, linking them into a vast moving fortress, a mobile continent crawling across the wasteland.
The remaining nineteen snakes, however, had a different purpose. He meant to raise them for the future—small seeds of balance for the ecosystem he envisioned. Trees alone could not form a living forest; they needed animals, life that slithered, breathed, and hunted. Only then could true nature return.
