The carriage Kendrick and Cyprien were in shook due to the chaos outside. The duo ended up hitching a ride with a merchant caravan to make the journey up north easier. However now said caravan is currently under attack. Not from bandits, but rather from monsters. Usually Kendrick would help out with fending off the wildlife since he's a tamer now, but he has faith that the caravan's escort alone will be more than enough.

"Oooooh this one's red, YOINK!"

"That tamer is quite the character, huh Kendrick? It's not every day that you see someone willing to tame a succubus. Brings up a few bad memories though, ugh."

"It's a pretty useful monster to have early on though. It has a lot of skills that make taming other monsters pretty easy. I think that girl is gonna go places."

Cyprien's eyes become sharper after hearing that last tid bit and he gazes out the carriage window. He watches as the black haired girl fearlessly grabs a clench devil by the neck like it owes her money, a permanent smile plastered on her face. If Cyprien is reading her right, and he's really good at reading people, the young lass seems to genuinely love monsters. His mysterious friend seems to be correct, that girl could probably go really far. He'd have to keep an eye on her. Information on a rising star would sell for a lot.

The girl marches over to the carriage with her prize still in her hands. Her eyes gleaming with excitement. At some point while walking over the snapping turtle like creature craned its long neck and decided to take a bite of it's captor's throat, causing Cyprien's face to blanch. The girl however seemed entirely unphased by the 250 newtons of force attempting to crush her wind pipe. In fact she gave the creature a pat on the head!

"Yo Kendrick check out this weird clench devil I found! It's red instead of blue!"

"Hmm is it perhaps a hybrid?"

"Great Wyrm's mercy! How are you still talking?! That thing is trying to crush your throat!"

"Oh it's fine, this little cutie is just trying to give me a kiss. Mwah."

She positions the clench devil's body near her mouth and gives its furry shell a little kiss. She'd probably kiss it's cheek if she could, but that's unfeasible due to the creature still being firmly locked to her neck.

"B-but aren't clench devils extremely poisonous?!"

"Venomous not poisonous. Poisonous things kill you when you bite them, not when they bite you."

"That's not the problem here! We need to get her an antidote or something before she dies!"

"You're such a worry wort, Cyprien. I once licked a clove widow to see what'd it taste like, clench demon venom is nothing compared to that!"

"YOU WHAT?!"

"Anyway what was that about a hybrid, Kendrick?"

"Have you really not heard of hybrids yet? Well the odds are like one in 8000 something so I suppose that makes sense."

"That rare?"

"Fine just ignore me..."

"Mhm super rare."

"So whats special about hybrids other than their color?"

"Simply put they have abilities of other monsters."

Yes in the game hybrids would have one of their normal 2 skill trees swapped out with the third tree of another monster. This could be a huge boon or completely gimp a monster. Monsters generally are balanced around how much presence they have on the battlefield. Weaker monsters give strong stat boosts and skills to the tamer while strong monsters give weak skills and stats. Hybrids break these rules, they can make a strong monster give great stats and skills or on the other hand make a weak monster give weak stats. It's all up to rng. Because hybrids are so rare and can pull skill trees from all monsters except for infernal and almighty ones, you can't reliably expect to use one in a build. They are however quite the status symbol and a great flex. Even a terrible hybrid is highly valued among players of the game.

"Ooooh, so that's why it was breathing fire! I'm definitely taming this guy then."

The tamer pulls out a white prism from a pouch on her belt and taps it onto the hybrid. A white light surrounds the creature and it unclenches it's jaw. She catches the clench demon before it falls to the floor and gently sets it down. The creature looks up expectantly at it's new master. This is the taming method that only the heroine is supposed to know about and is the method Kendrick used to bond with Nihka. Cyprien eyes sharpen at the sight. 

"What was that just now?"

Kendrick answers him,

"A trade secret."

"Correct."

Cyprien scowls. This woman is gonna be a pain in the ass to get info from and Kendrick isn't helping.