“So you tamed it after all! I have to admit, I thought you dropped it and ran when the megasaurus appeared, and that you’d have to start taming the giga-komodo all over again. Sergeant, you know… you’re just amazing!” the Scout said, admiration and excitement inn her voice. For a second it seemed like the girl wanted to kiss me, she seemed so overloaded with emotion. But Varya held off and answered more officially. “My father will be very grateful for your support in the village!”
* * *
I managed to get a decent sleep and rest by the time my younger sister shook me awake.
“Get up, bro! Varya told me to tell you that the chimeric megasaurus is awake and eating her way through chunks of meat. Only the taming process won’t start.”
“I’ll say!” I laughed, yawning and covering my mouth with my hand. “The player has to have the Taming skill for that. And for such a big strong beast, the skill would have to be way above level one. We’ll be lucky if my skill is up to it. And on that subject…”
Opening Sergeant’s skill page, I spent all twenty-two free points on Taming, increasing my most important Beast Catcher skill to level fifty-five. That was a big relief.
I stood up from the bed of luxurious soft grass that I’d made for myself that morning. My fire had long since gone out, and there was no need of it anyway now — the sun was at its peak and scorching hot. The morning had driven away all signs of cold and damp. Atlas, Herd Bull of the giga-komodos, was still asleep, rolled up into a big purple-and-black ball. He must have gotten exhausted after all from racing around that pole for so many hours, if he hadn’t recovered yet.
Katy and Tick-Tock sunbathed on the bank just a few paces from my bed as if nothing was amiss. Where were the creeping crocodiles last night, when I needed them? A mystery. Incidentally, one of the river pets had dragged a huge rainbow carp out of the river and set it down a yard from my bed. It must have weighed around twenty pounds. Apparently, it was a gift for their master. I thanked my pets, grabbed the still slightly twitching fish, stuffed my backpack full of roasted and raw chunks of meat and headed to find Varya.
“Look,” the girl pointed at the massive female megasaurus as she tried to rise.
In the bright daylight, what had looked like a misty fur on the dinosaur looked perfectly normal — fairly sparse spines around sixteen inches long. Dark brown, almost black. But the main thing was that there was no magic left, none of the wreathing fog that had made me want to look away. It seemed that camouflaging magic worked only at night. If so, that meant the chimeric megasaurus was a nocturnal predator.
I approached carefully, fearing that the animal would sweep my feet out from under me with its long tail any second. I walked up to the gigantic beast from behind and twice cast Calming Touch on it, to quiet the beast’s struggles and stop its fruitless attempts to stand up on its wire-bound legs. Then I walked in a semi-circle around the megasaurus, made sure the dangerous creature was watching me, and threw the heavy rainbow carp to it. Wham! Like lightning, the long neck whipped out and the monster’s fearsome jaws snapped shut in the air. One barely noticeable gulp and the fish was gone.
Woah! My heart started thumping in my chest. I realized too late that it wasn’t just the monster’s long tail that I needed to pay attention to. Even lying on its side, the beast had more than enough neck for its tooth-filled jaw to reach me or Varya with the kitten sitting on her shoulder.
Taming: 8.7%
We were getting somewhere! Quickly, before the beast realized that it could add some variety to its diet by eating the humans before it, I started throwing it chunks of raw and cooked fish and meat one after another. I didn’t notice that any food was more effective than another — the starving beast greedily gulped it all down the same. It seemed more like the taming bar depended on the size of the piece; the bigger the portion, the more the bar filled up. A two-pound chunk added 1.1-1.5 percent, a three-and-a half-pound chunk around 2-2.3 percent. Even the pieces Varya threw filled up the taming bar. Awesome! That meant one of us would have to go off and look for seconds, since this giant would eat through what we’d brought pretty quickly.
I went myself, grabbing everything left on the river bank from yesterday’s rich catch. I even sent both creeping crocodiles to catch more fish. I was worried we still wouldn’t have enough. At our nighttime camp, Julie and Shelly were cooking fish soup over a campfire. The veich girl had added some roots and herbs taken from the forest. It smelled great, and the girls invite me to try it, but I couldn’t hang around. I hurried back to keep taming the chimeric megasaurus. My Sprinter level went up to twelve from the run there and back.
We had just barely enough food. By the time the taming bar hit a hundred percent, all the cooked food in Varya’s backpack was gone, and I’d spent the last chunks I’d brought. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that we did it!
Taming skill increased to level fifty-six!
My character didn’t level up, and in any case, the system only awarded miserly experience for taming the level 17 chimeric megasaurus. Without further delay, I tried to gift the new pet to the Engineer’s daughter. It worked without a hitch. A second later, the new beast’s name changed:
Irosaurus Regina. Chimeric Megasaurus. Level 17 Female. Varya Tolmachyova’s pet.
* * *
We returned to Pan’s Landing at dusk, now a happy and noisy crowd. Shelly and I were on the creeping crocodiles, my sister Julie was on the giga-komodo Atlas, and Varya rode her new pet Irosaurus Regina. The Scout’s chosen name seemed weird to me. I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. She said something about the Greek roots of ‘tyrant’ and ‘hero’ that I didn’t quite understand. In any case, the Engineer’s daughter liked this name for the nocturnal reptile, and it was her pet, her choice. The creeping crocodiles swam along the river while the giga-komodo and the megasaurus trampled along on the bank, keeping us within sight at all times. We joked, laughed and made fun of each other, and we were all in high spirits. We had reason.
We’d managed to complete Max Dubovitsky’s difficult mission and brought a strong pack animal back to the village. And what a pack animal! The true pride of the giga-komodos, huge and tireless, a level ninety-three Herd Bull! And it didn’t stop there; we’d also brought a new defender with razor-sharp teeth. She’d come in handy against the night beasts. Varya was already planning on how she could help Grip on the back of her mighty and fast dinosaur pet.
But even that wasn’t all we’d done that day. We’d also collected food for all the villagers at Pan’s Landing. And in addition, I followed the creature’s giant footprints imprinted into the wet ground back to the giant creature’s lair in the woods. Covered in tree trunks torn out by the roots and piles of earth. A huge impassable mass of vegetation. It would have taken inhuman strength to move aside the heavy logs and get in. It took quite some time to find a ‘back door’ in the form of a narrow passageway between the roots. Even that wasn’t easy to squeeze through.
Turned out I was right — the young female was exhausted because she’d been protecting her clutch of eggs day and night. Three large bluish-gray leathery eggs covered in black spots lay in a warm nest of earth and leaves. Each weighed at least forty pounds. At least five more eggs had been eaten by some small and courageous predators that had found their way in, and a long time ago — nothing remained of the eggs but their dried-out skins. As carefully as I could, I took the three whole eggs out of the lair, put them in some durable bags with soft grass as padding and then attached them to the saddle Varya had made for her pet. The razortoothed mother watched us work anxiously, but didn’t prevent us from relocating her nest to a safer place.
Now, with gawping villagers streaming out to meet us, we crossed onto the island. Part of me was afraid of admonishment from Max Dubovitsky regarding the long absence, and especially the fact that I’d taken his wounded daughter with me. It turned out the Engineer had other things to worry about — he greeted me and exchanged a couple of words with Varya, then we
nt back to the common house to talk to some new settlers that had arrived. There were so many of them, fifteen at least. And they weren’t noobs in the usual sense — they were all at least level thirty, even the eighteen-year-old boy that fearlessly circled the beasts we’d brought in. Who were these people? What was happening?
The Philosopher answered me, looking pathetic next to the other villagers at his humble level eleven.
“The Pharaoh gave freedom to the three hundred slaves on the condition that they would resettle beyond the snowy mountains and inhabit the abandoned veich villages. And it wasn’t presented as a choice. Without explaining anything, they drove them out of the fields and mines, loaded them into covered carts and brought them to the snowy pass under guard. Only then did they read out the Pharaoh’s order and declare that they were all free from now on. They took off their slave collars and chase them eastwards with spears and clubs, towards us. Far from all of them wanted to be free under those conditions. Many had left friends and family behind. But those that tried to resist were beaten to death, then met at the nearest respawn point and beaten to death again. They were told they had to go east or face permadeath. And here was the result…
I didn’t even know what to think of it. In the meantime, the Philosopher told me more:
“That isn’t all the news, Sergeant. Once they learned from the new arrivals that the veichs had gone beyond the barrier, many of our people refused to obey Grip and Max. They gathered their things and went off to Orshi-Ur. They declared Rumbler as their new leader.
Chapter 35 [Kitten]
Havoc
THEY TOOK THEM all in. It was the most important decision the leaders of Pan’s Landing had ever had to make. And, the way I saw it, they made the wrong one. But nobody could listen to the cat that climbed through the window into the council room. Even if I could talk, would they have listened? Counting the seventeen new settlers, we had twenty-nine residents in total (thirty with the cat!), which meant a very, very difficult night. The Lesser Terror would come again. The villagers had only just started to forget it. Personally, I had no idea how we were supposed to stand up to that flying menace without more bullets. And if a third Alpha joined the beast pack alongside the airborne terror… Just the thought of the possible catastrophic consequences made me anxious.
Worse, I really didn’t like some of the new inhabitants, nor did I like the gender imbalance they’d caused. Not a single member of the fairer sex among seventeen newcomers! That caused trouble fast; after dinner, two brutes with idiotic grins cornered Varya as she headed for the kitchen with a heap of dirty crockery. They tried to get handsy with her, said things that I’m sure she didn’t want to hear. The Engineer’s daughter looked afraid, upset. I intervened quickly and both of them ran off with sudden attacks of diarrhea.
“Thanks, Whiskers!” Varya said, figuring out what had just happened.
I had some difficulties with the newcomers too, at least with one of them. A nineteen-year-old brown-haired and big-eared boy by the name of Jerry, a level 30 Runner. For some unfathomable reason, he hated cats, and twice tried to kill me with rocks. First he threw them at me on the palisade, then on the watchtower after I’d climbed up at dusk. Both times I managed to go into stealth and escape the little bastard. The only upside was that I leveled up Dodge to two.
I had a feeling we’d have a rough time with these newcomers. ‘Freed slave’ didn’t necessarily mean ‘good person,’ and these men were all unused to civilized society after months of imprisonment. They were drunk with their new freedom, and often just drunk. It regularly turned to lawlessness. Conflicts over everyday matters arose at once with the old residents. Over seats at the dining table, straw for mattresses, the spoons and steel knife that someone stole right out of the kitchen, the rota for guarding the kitchen.
Sergeant came to blows with Godzilla, a muscle-bound level 39 Miner tall enough to play pro basketball. He’d shown up with his mattress at the new room given over to my master, and declared that he was going to live there alongside the Beast Catcher from now on because he liked the room. Apparently, he saw the lowly level 16 boy as easy prey to intimidate and push out. He should have thought twice. I wasn’t there when it happened. All I saw was Sergeant’s huge black eye and bloody knuckles, and then Godzilla sitting glumly with Healer Anna, his arm broken and front teeth missing.
Suffice it to say, not all these new faces integrated easily into the old group. That said, none of the newcomers tried to claim leadership of Pan’s Landing, and they all agreed to work for the good of the village. Nine of them at once wanted to stand guard at the firewall through the night, on the condition that they be given some kind of weapon.
But they knew shockingly little of the new world. Even what we thought of as the basics were new to them. They didn’t know the limits of the starter zone. They had no idea about the energy barrier around the sandbox, or about the veichs and sherkhs. Shelly was the first of another intelligent species that any of the newcomers had met. In fact, forget intelligent species — none of them even knew anything about the night beasts! I found it hard to believe, but even in their three months or more with the Pharaohs, none of the newcomers had encountered Feelers or Alphas! From their stories, it sounded like the western side of the mountains used non-slaves with combat professions for defense — Warriors, Archers, Berserkers, Gladiators. The slaves, who practically lived down the mines carving out metal and coal for their masters, had almost no contact with the defenders. They often had no idea what they were even up to at night.
None of the arrivals had any weapons, and their clothes had seen far better days; the more richly dressed among them had a dirty shirt and trousers torn off at the knees. But their attitude was through the roof! To hear some of them tell it, they could move mountains, strangle the night beasts bare-handed and eat them raw.
The Engineer provided all the volunteers with melee weapons — clubs, axes, javelins. After Rumbler left with half the villagers, Grip and Magomed were the last fighters left among the veterans at Pan’s Landing. They educated the newcomers on the difference between Feelers and Alphas, explained how to fight both, tried as hard as they could to impress the danger on them, but in vain. The newcomers failed to appreciate the gravity of the threat. I heard them talking a few times, muttering that if Pan’s Landing had successfully fought off the night beasts before, then now, with so many new high-level players to help defend, victory would be a piece of cake.
I told Varya my concerns, asked her to tell Grip about the Lesser Terror and the possibility of a third Alpha. No, I wasn’t planning to reveal myself as another player yet. My story was that there was a high chance that there was a sherkh girl on the island, invisibly tracking the inhabitants of Pan’s Landing. That meant the Swordmaiden was a thirtieth player, and that might cause a third Alpha to appear in the night beast pack.
Grip listened, but said there was no cause for concern — he’d fought the beasts so many times now that he was ready for the unexpected. He’d be tough to surprise.
* * *
For tonight’s battle against the night beasts, I decided to begin… nestled snug within Sergeant’s jacket. Yep, that’s right! Last time the Lesser Terror attacked, it sent me into an uncontrolled panic, and I had no way to protect against its psychic attack. Maybe beneath my master’s bony armor, with his ring that protected him from psionic attacks, I might avoid blindly running around in abject terror and casting diarrhea spells on my allies. Here’s hoping. Incidentally, Sergeant’s new armor was amazing! The Engineer pulled out all the stops, crafting thick, durable armor by attaching the bony giga-komodo plates securely to a mobile metal frame. Sergeant looked fearsome, even magnificent within it, mounted on the back of his Marsh Mistress and towering over the soon-to-be battlefield.
It was time! Flames licked all along the length of the firewall, illuminating the defenders’ determined faces with flickering red light. The night beasts appeared on the far end of the island, signaled only by their vo
racious howling. They seemed distant and not so terrible now. Any second now… I involuntarily stiffened in expectation of the psionic attack. Ugh! My face set in a grimace as the bone-chattering, soul-wrenching scream descended from the hellish night sky, screeching like a circular saw. My poor, delicate ears…
ATTENTION! Magic Resistance check successful!
Intellect increased to 22.
ATTENTION! Physique check failed!
Your character is deafened! Duration: 180 seconds.
Now I had no idea what was going on. Only then did I realize how much my animal hearing strengthened with Radar Ear helped me orient myself in a world full of dangers. Sergeant was doing something, turning this way and that with his whole body, waving his arms. The big oaf nearly crushed the little kitten in his jacket, and my hitpoints fell. I crawled upwards, to the high collar of the armor.
Woah! One glance and I knew just how bad things were. Of the defenders by the firewall, only Grip remained. Pinned to the ground by a burning level 11 Alpha, the strongest of Pan’s Landing’s fighters clenched his teeth, going all out to keep the creature off him with his left arm at its throat beneath its tooth-filled maw. With his right arm, he methodically beat the monster with his spiked club. Another Alpha, this one a humbler level 7, had a death grip on the Marsh Mistress’s front right legs and hung off it like a bulldog. That didn’t matter too much, but Grip needed help right away.
Slow on the Alpha! Weaken! Weaken! Weaken!
I was too late… A third Alpha had appeared, this one with a higher level than any seen before: 29. For some reason it arrived a little while after the other two, but it was still enough to break us. The beast leapt over the firewall, opened its terrible mouth and struck at Grip, ripping his head from his neck. The club fell from lifeless fingers. The headless body twitched, fell.
A Cat and His Human (League of Losers Book #1): LitRPG Series Page 29