What lore do you ignore?

[Cleretic]

Yes, it is completely illogical. Because if tempering is something artifical then why did the ancients it to themself? Emet-Selch tells the player, that the summoners of Zodiark became tempered by him.


Cheers

...this part was explained extremely clearly by Livingway, I thought. A primal as colossal in both size and power as Zodiark does temper, albeit potentially to a lesser degree (Livingway understates things a lot so it's hard to tell how much lesser). Primal summoning as taught by the Ascians was deliberately sabotaged to jack up the tempering power even for smaller primals. I compare it to engine sound; Zodiark is a honkin' huge jumbo jet, it's always going to be noisy/tempering no matter how much you try to dial that down. Meanwhile, Ifrit is like one of those really obnoxious motorcycles where the manufacturer deliberately makes the engine as loud/tempering-causing as possible. Basically, the Ancients didn't do it to themselves intentionally, but when you make a primal out of half the population of the planet, its aether will by nature be so strong as to cause tempering.

Hell, Asetoni pointed out that his own counterevidence is invalid: Phoenix, Susano, Enkidu, and other primals summoned completely without Ascian instruction didn't temper anybody. All of those scenarios happened in such freak accidents that I'm not terribly surprised that nobody managed to study that phenomena.