The Bore Shrew had a frenzied look as it literally leaped at Lucius, but the man was not surprised at all. He had an indifferent look on his face, as if the crazed beast in front of him was no danger at all.

Lucius simply extended a finger at the beast as it started to glow red before simply speaking, "Stop." 

~thud~

And as if his words were the absolute truth, the Bore Shrew stopped in its tracks, stumbling and rolling on the ground due to the momentum. It eventually crashed into the leg of a chair that was kept to the side and stopped.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk~" Lucius clicked his tongue as he looked at the Bore Shrew.

~skwee~

The Bore Shrew let out a low cry as it managed to pick itself up from the ground and got on to its legs. It raised its snout and looked at Lucius. Its eyes were gazing at the red glow on his finger intently.

Lucius moved his finger to the left and the beast followed it. He moved it to the right, to the bottom and to the top. The entire time, the beast's eyes were locked onto his finger. Lucius nodded his head in approval and kneeled down.

"Just as I thought, the desire for Hell energy will make them obedient. Though the limitations will need to be explored as well." Lucius muttered to himself.

He then pointed to a location a meter away from where the Bore Shrew was and spoke.

"Go there," He ordered.

~skwee~

The Bore Shrew did not seem to understand it and simply let out a low cry again. Its eyes were still fixed on his fingers, and it did not seem to want to leave them.

'Hmm, will need to think of a different method. Wonder if the method for controlling the Lost will work on this thing as well or not.' Lucius thought.

The Barrom Clan had several methods of controlling the Lost that they had devised over the many millenniums. The True Bloods of the clan had the easiest method to do so and that was to just give them orders.

Due to them having a part of a demon's name, the Lost listened to them with no extra conditions needed. In the Hell dimension, the same thing would happen as the demons often employed them as front line soldiers in their dimensional wars.

The Barrom clan had of course, taken this as inspiration and started to use the Lost for their own armies as well. The second method that was used more widely was to control the Lost using Hell energy as a reward.

It was similar to training animals and needed a little bit of effort. But this was a method that could only work in a world that did not naturally have Hell energy and if the Lost could not find any other sources of Hell energy.

Then there was the third method which was used to control entire legions of Lost. This was usually done with the help of a magic artifact that was made to especially control them. Making one was quite difficult and needed a lot of resources that Lucius definitely did not have.

Thus, the only option that he had left right now was the second option and that is what he decided to go with. He released a small hair sized sliver of hell energy from his finger. As soon as it appeared in front of the Bore Shrew, it became excited.

Lucius waved the sliver of hell energy around and saw the beast follow it around. The range of its movement was currently quite limited for Lucius as he could only do so within a foot of his body. But once he saw that the beast was responsive to it, he shot the sliver of energy towards the beast.

~SKWEE~

The Bore Shrew devoured the sliver of hell energy that came towards and let out a pleased cry. Its eyes also became a bit less bloodshot and the faint twitches on its body had also lessened. Overall, it looked like a junkie had been given his daily hit.

Lucius then moved to the location that he wanted to get the Bore Shrew to move to and made his finger glow with the Hell energy again. 

~Skwee~

The Bore Shrew reacted almost instantly and came towards him. He repeated this several times and made the Bore Shrew moves before finally giving it another sliver of Hell energy.

~Skwee~

The Bore Shrew let out another pleased cry and closed its eyes. 

"Huh? It fell asleep?" Lucius was surprised.

He poked the rune beast with a rod and saw it unresponsive. He even wondered if the beast had unexpectedly died or something, but then he saw it breathing and its veins throbbing from time to time.

"It's alive, but it seems like the hell energy must have done something." Lucius said before squinting his eyes.

Nexus activated again and the information about the bore shrew appeared once again.

Hell Energy Corruption: Lesser

Info: The creature will have increased physical strength, a slight increase in intelligence and overall increased stability. This can be increased further with the use of hell energy.

Corruption level: Minor

Corrupted Gift: Locked

(Corrupted Gift: Nefarious Bite )

The Hell energy Corruption had evidently increased due to Lucius feeding the beast two slivers of hell energy. Even if they were quite small, they were enough to trigger a change for the beast.

"Hmm, though the Corruption level is still at minor… so it semester like Hell Energy Corruption related to the physical corruption and just the Corruption level is probably related to the gift of the beast.

Since it is still locked and the level is at minor, it will probably need more hell energy to unlock it. Or… there may be an additional condition, perhaps." Lucius analyzed.

He looked at the sleeping Bore Shrew and decided to end the experiment for today. He put the beast back in the cage and just replaced the grill that had been bitten.