The huge and furry Hunter growled something and Shelly translated:
“My uncle wishes to purrrchase the rrrecipe for taming such beasts.”
“You were there when we tamed this one and saw it all with your own eyes!” I said in surprise. The furry girl cast down her eyes and ears, glanced at her uncle like a dog caught destroying something valuable. The veichs must have tried to repeat my feat after the girl told them the story, but without success.
No problem. I didn’t mind telling them what they had to do step-by-step. Just as I was about to open my mouth, Varya’s father stepped forward.
“Thirty baskets of ore!” he said, declaring the price of the information. The furry Hunter nodded in agreement.
* * *
I hid nothing. I told them about the Taming skill, that the most effective feed for creeping crocodiles was live loaches and that the taming process wouldn’t start without them. Showed them how to catch loaches with a gauze net. Showed them my bark bucket and plastic bag for keeping them alive in a little water. Told them how to build and reinforce a long and narrow cage to trap a creeping crocodile so it can’t escape. Warned them about the danger of the river monster’s heavy tail strikes that could destroy a trap. At that moment of the story, Ugmai suddenly frowned, growled something and slapped his niece around the back of the head. Shelly’s mood soured completely and tears even welled up in the corner of her eyes. Nonetheless, she translated her relative’s growl:
“We underrrstand. It turrrns out veichs cannot trrrain such creatures. The skills requirrred are unusual, and we do not have loaches in the mountain rrriver. We will have to eat the crrreature that we imprrrisoned with such difficulty.”
The male veich turned to leave the village, showing with all his demeanor that the conversation was over and these humans were no longer of interest to him. I called to Ugmai’s retreating back.
“Wait! If the creeping crocodile is already in a trap, I can tame it. Only I’ll need time to prepare, to catch loaches. Later we’ll have to figure out how to give you the tame monster. It’ll count as my pet!”
The huge Ugmai froze, listened carefully to Shelly’s translation, spoke:
“Giving crrreature to other master is easy. But how much your serrrvices cost, Serrrgeant?”
“Another thirty baskets of iron ore,” Max Dubovitsky piped up without hesitation. The werewolf nodded.
He growled something else and quickly left Pan’s Landing. The female Shelly stayed, her ears low and nose twitching, looking lost as an abandoned puppy. It took a moment, but she translated her uncle’s final words:
“Uncle Ugmai say that we will ‘meet at the trrrap in the lake’ and that ‘this walking catastrrrophe’ will show the way. He also add that if trrraining not work, then I can forrrget path back to village of Orrrshi-Urrr forrrever.”
Cruel… I’d have to try hard to help out my furry acquaintance. Max was eager. According to him, it was very hard to trade with the werewolves — they needed nothing that humans could give them. But the veich village of Orshi-Ur was next to veins of metal, and the werewolves smelted iron in large quantities. The humans from Pan’s Landing, however, had to go on a long and dangerous hike to the icy mountains for iron. Every trip took a whole day, and each man could only bring back what he could carry in a box on his back.
* * *
I didn’t take my sister Julie with me, though she did ask. Shelly told me that her packmates were unwilling to let outsiders into their territory. The wolves might simply stop an uninvited guest, and the little girl would have to return home alone through a forest full of danger. I took just the kitten, and that only because the little sneak crept into my backpack, apparently following the scent of fish. This was only discovered halfway there, and it was too late to take the furball back home. Now Whiskers sat on my shoulder, his claws stuck into the fabric of my jacket, looking around and sniffing the great outdoors with interest.
“Why ‘walking catastrophe’? You left us yesterday in a good mood, with bags full of fish. What happened yesterday?”
By now Shelly had already dried out and recovered a little from the insults leveled at her. Breakfast at Ashot’s had also put some spirit back into the furry girl, along with some extra hitpoints.
“Because that is way it is. All my life I am just big loser. Yesterrrday I was late, not make it home to Uncle Ugmai house beforrre darrrkness. So I rrrun to nearrrest veich house on outskirts of Orrrshi-Urrr village. Who could know that there already nine villagers there before me? Alpha appear, phase through hut wall. Slaughterrrhouse. Six veichs die beforrre others deal with monsterrr.”
Interesting. I asked her to tell me more. It turns out the werewolves placed their houses far enough away from each other that each counted as a separate settlement for the night beasts’ attack; each got their own little pack of Feelers to deal with. Strong, thick walls and a ring of spiky bushes around the house was more than enough to prevent the Feelers getting in. Over time, the veichs practically stopped paying attention to the night beasts, started thinking of them as a natural phenomena like rain or snow — just sounds. But to the alpha, all those boundaries meant nothing — the glowing red cloud seeped through the house walls and caused a bloodbath. Shelly herself survived, although she wasn’t happy for it — she got it in the neck! In the morning the girl’s fur was splashed with mud and she was told she couldn’t wash. A particularly shameful punishment for the veichs.
Only the tale of the creeping crocodile tamed by humans kept the girl from banishment. But then the veichs’ attempt to repeat my feat in the morning led to fresh losses; the level 48 crocodile they’d found destroyed their trap and devoured two Hunters. With great difficulty, they managed to catch the river monster again and put it in a bigger and stronger cage, but they couldn’t get the taming process to start. That was why one of their strongest and most respected hunters, Ugmai, went off to learn the trick from the humans. He took Shelly as a translator. He let his niece wash herself just outside Pan’s Landing, so as not to shame their people before the humans.
“How did your people get into this world, Shelly? We humans are all from Earth. We all chose to come here when faced with certain death. What was your world like?”
My question seemed simple enough to me, but it confused my companion. She admitted that she couldn’t remember anything before she appeared in the icy pass with a big group of wolves like her. Or rather, she had only the vaguest flashes of memory. She seemed to be able to remember what her parents looked like… every living creature had to have a mom and dad, right? But her parents never came to this world. Shelly also somehow knew that Uncle Ugmai was her relative, and he knew the same about her. How were they so sure? I didn’t get it…
Our conversation stopped as we reached the lake. Huh. It was the same one where I’d fallen into a waterfall a couple of days ago. It turns out the cold lake was home to creeping crocodiles. If I’d known that the day before yesterday, I wouldn’t have come within fifty paces and I would have thought a hundred times before walking carelessly by the cliff next to the water’s edge.
Shelly and I were expected. Five big grumpy werewolves stood next to a big, sturdy cage. A river monster thrashed around within it, paying no attention whatsoever to the chunks of meat and fish lying on the floor. Wow… The veichs had built the second cage like they wanted it to hold an enraged T-Rex. The walls were made of logs a foot and a half thick, knit together with iron bars as thick as a finger. The cage was huge. Too big, even; it didn’t stop the creeping crocodile from turning round. On the river, I had no problem at all approaching Katy from the side and touching her body. How was I supposed to touch this enraged monster and calm him down? If I stretched out my hand to the sharp-toothed monster, it would leave me with a bloody stump.
I walked around the trap, trying to figure out how to get close to the creeping crocodile. Whiskers whined on my shoulder; apparently the dangerous predator scared the kitten. Then, suddenly… the male creeping croco
dile fell silent, calmed down. Slowly and carefully, ready at any moment to jump back, I crept closer and touched the spiny tail.
Taming skill increased to level nineteen!
Minus a hundred and twenty Stamina Points, but the predator was calm. I opened by backpack and opened a bag of loaches, threw one. The creeping crocodile smartly caught it in flight and swallowed it down.
Taming: 3.8%
The rest was just a matter of time. The creeping crocodile wolfed down everything, including the food thrown by the veichs on the cage floor. Forty minutes later, the taming bar was full and messages ran across my eyes:
Taming skill increased to level twenty!
Your character is now level eight!
Reward: three skill points (total available: nine) and one mutation point (total available: three).
Only then did Ugmai and the other werewolves approach me. Shelly’s uncle squeezed into the cage, mistrustfully touched the tamed beast. Then he got braver and even examined the creeping crocodile’s teeth. He turned to me. Shelly translated his growls.
“This is some kind of magic! I am astounded! And I have new idea. We see that humans from the otherrr side of the mountains harrrness giant rrreptile giga-komodos to their carrrts. We have seen such wild beasts in the fields beyond the faraway forest. The veich trackers will now seek them. They will study the arrrea and build trrraps. If all is well, they will catch a few giga-komodos and summon you. You will trrry to tame them. You can choose one of them to keep. If you fail, you will get meat of beast instead. We have deal, Serrrgeant?”
Well… why not? I wouldn’t lose anything, and at the very least I’d get meat. If I returned to Pan’s Landing riding a giga-komodo, that would be a huge boon to the villagers; it was far easier to move cargo on a cart than by hand. I agreed.
“Then wait. You will be called.” My people have alrrready begun to move sixty boxes of irrron to your village. As for the crrreeping crrrocodile…” Shelly suddenly stopped translating her uncle’s words, looked at her relative doubtfully. He nodded clearly and repeated what he said. Tears came to the girl’s eyes. Shelly sniffled. She was quiet a while, then steeled herself and finished translating:
“Serrrgeant, we need to do a trrrade deal. You will get it in a moment. You must agrrree, and the beast will go to the veichs.”
What was up with this deal..? Why was Shelly crying all of a sudden? A couple of seconds passed. A game message appeared before my eyes, and then I understood.
Level 52 Hunter Ugmai Orshi-Ur offers you a trade: your pet, level 48 Creeping Crocodile (male, nameless) in exchange for the level 22 Veich Huntress known as Shelly Orshi-Ur.
Chapter 17 [Kitten]
League of Losers
THE DAY TURNED OUT scorching. If I could have taken off my cat’s skin and had even a minute’s break from the unbearably stuffy heat, I would have. My master and the werewolf girl were hiding from the heat too, sitting in the shade on the bank of a gently babbling brook in the woods. The human was crafting something, cutting something like a set of panpipes out of some dried reeds. Who knows why. He wasn’t doing a great job of it. Two or three ruined attempts had flown into the bushes already.
Shelly sat next to him on the grass, covering her eyes with her paws and sometimes twitching her whiskery nose. She wasn’t crying anymore, at least, but it looked like it wouldn’t take much. By her own words, the loser huntress had long suspected, and more recently learned for certain, that her packmates wanted to get rid of her. That morning, Shelly was warned that if she made one more mistake, she and her bad luck would be expected to pack their bags. But the creeping crocodile was tamed successfully! It was unreasonable of Uncle Ugmai to banish his niece. She held up her end of the bargain! Shelly was distraught with the injustice and despair of it; it was tough to accept that her relatives and packmates didn’t want her. They saw their chance to get rid of the ‘walking catastrophe’ and they took it.
“Where are you going to go?” Sergeant asked, finally breaking the silence. The girl turned to him in surprise, her tail swishing.
“What do you mean? I am yourrrs now. I go where you go. Or you want banish me too, like Uncle Ugmai?”
“No, I don’t want to banish you. I mean… I don’t know. Just… this is weird. Humans don’t usually keep slaves or servants. So you’re free. I’m not going to make you stay.”
“You not make me stay, but not chase me away either?” Huntress asked doubtfully. “If that so, then I stay with you, Serrrgeant.”
My master looked awkward. There was another long silence. He seemed to be thinking of a way to gently let down this surprise new sidekick. Shelly waited patiently, didn’t rush him. Finally, the human spoke:
“You have to understand, this is my third day in the new world. I don’t even have a decent roof over my head yet. My sister and I live in a tiny workshop. Even just with the two of us, it’s crowded. If I go back to Pan’s Landing with you, hell, they could kick me out of the village!”
“Worrrry not, they will not kick you out,” Shelly said dismissively, waving a paw just like a human. “You can catch crrreeping crrrocodiles, that is a rrrare and useful skill. Grip and Max understand that. Their word mean much. Not kick you out. You know, you sell info too cheap. For such a terrrrrible monster, you could have asked for a hundrrred bags of orrre from my packmates, not thirrrty. And something else on top. Like the shiny summoning card for some eight-legged monsterrr that our shaman keeps. The veichs would have given you a magic item.”
I listened to the two big brutes’ conversation with interest. So that’s how it was… In this world, creeping crocodiles could be sold for a good profit! And if not to the veich village of Orshi-Ur, then to someone else. I didn’t yet know much about the world we were in, but no doubt there were many more populated areas than the couple of villages we’d seen. A monster that brought in fish and made a good guard would be highly valuable to any settlement. Food for thought. Shelly continued:
“Anyway, about slaves and serrrvants… forrrgive me, master, but you are wrrrong. Humans east of mountains keep slaves. And happily buy memberrrs of my species, orrr take them by forrrce. Uncle tell me. He walk to pass, see how humans live. Therrre is whole slave marrrket. And when Uncle Ugmai get angry at me when I miss shots, sometimes he thrrreaten to sell me to humans, so they put collar and chain on me. Make me prrrotect home. Although I hearrrd from otherrr veichs that prrretty girrrls of our species are bought for entirrrely differrrent rrreasons…”
Shelly blushed, fell silent. Sergeant was quiet too, turning over this new information in his head. Another carved set of panpipes cracked in his hands, the fourth in half an hour. The human dejectedly threw away the unfinished instrument.
“I’m trying to make some birdcalls. I want to catch some birds,” he said, explaining the reason for his whittling. He pointed at a flock of careful speckled birds roughly as big as a pigeon. They were jumping around about forty paces from us on the riverbank. “I want to copy their call to catch the flock’s attention. But my Item Crafting skill isn’t high enough, and my Luck Modifier is low. I keep failing the Agility tests…”
“I know what that’s like! I have same prrroblems,” the werewolf girl snorted bitterly. “Whenever I pick up something frrragile, I always brrreak it. I lose little things. Whatever I trrry to crrraft, I always break. Veichs say I could not even orrrganize slaughter in sheep pen. But how can I make something when my Luck is minus thrrree, and I fail all tests for carrrefulness? Uncle Ugmai even patch my clothes himself after I brrreak bone needle six times… But I not think I useless. I just strrrong in other things.”
“In what, then?” Sergeant asked, cutting another reed for a fresh attempt to make a call.
“I run fast, much stamina. I can sit quiet as mouse in ambush all day, nobody see me. I have good Perrrception, good vision and scent skills. I find prey for others. Even now I see veichs that watch us from cliff over there. They think we not see them. I walk through all forrrests and moun
tains arrround here with uncle and Hunters. Even went to south borrrder. To forrrcefield itself. Me and Uncle even go to Hundrrred Skull City. I swim well, dive too. I can dance. Write poetry. Speak humanish. I learn much. Forrr example, I know how to get rid of biting gnats, stop them annoying you!”
My master really was scratching all over from the cloud of forest midges circling above his head. It surprised me to see that although Shelly sat only two paces from him, there were no midges around her.
“How, then?” Sergeant asked.
The werewolf girl stood and approached a bush growing on the nearby bank — spiky, with little narrow shiny leaves. Shelly stood on her tiptoes and stretched out to tear off a leaf growing high up, and then… lost her footing on the slippery sloping bank and fell with a splash right into the stream! Worse, her skirt split with a snap and started to quickly float downstream. The werewolf girl grabbed the piece of cloth at the last moment.
“See what I mean..? I’m a loser…” In spite of yet another unfortunate slip, Shelly kept a grip on herself. Covering her nudity with one paw, she tore off a handful of leaves with the other and took it to the human.
“Squeeze them and rrrub on skin. Scarrre off gnats. You can also sprrrinkle leaves in cup of water and leave on window sill at night. Then no gnats in house. Don’t chase me away, Serrrgeant! I be useful!”
“Yeah, I don’t think you’d survive on your own,” the man said, barely holding back a smile as he looked at the embarrassed wolfgirl. “Fails like that are rare even for me. Alright, you can stick with us. You’re funny. Let’s make a league out of us two losers. We can help each other out with the whims of fate.”
Three losers , I mentally corrected the big dumb oafs. My Whiskers was sorely lacking in luck too. My Luck Modifier was minus two — not quite minus three like them, but still terrible. Incidentally, it’d be good to somehow find out more about the ‘southern border’ and ‘forcefield’ that Shelly mentioned. I wanted to know more about Hundred Skull City too. Although… the talkative girl would tell us everything sooner or later anyway.
A Cat and His Human (League of Losers Book #1): LitRPG Series Page 14