by Aleron Kong
Weight: 0.3 kg
Well, he sure as shit wouldn’t be indulging the last effect of the egg. The first effect though meant it would be a good resource to drop down the Well of Offering. It still seemed counterintuitive that he wanted to make the Dungeon stronger, but he was done thinking he knew better than people that had grown up in The Land. Both Randolphus and Hisako were telling him to strengthen the Dungeon. Randy was a hundred years old and Hisako might be as old as dirt for all he knew. Richter had a feeling that master Life mages that were also Masters of Places of Power might age very well. It wasn’t only black that didn’t crack, after all.
It was the second effect that Richter was mainly interested in. He singled out the bull skath. When it was born it had had roughly the same dimensions as a football. Now it was “mom’s gumbo pot”-size, slightly larger than all the others. Its soft skin had started to segment into scales. He bent down and beckoned it forward. The creature probably had no idea what his hand motion meant, but he had stared into the eyes of each of the skaths and made a weak mental connection when they were born. Just him willing it was enough to let the skath know what he wanted.
It mewled and swiped at the other skaths until they got out of its way. The creature cried out again. Richter could see all of its small but very sharp teeth. Wasting no more time, he handed the baseball-sized egg to it through the bars. The bull skath sniffed at it, looking unsure, then all of a sudden bit into the egg.
Richter yanked his fingers back to avoid losing a digit. The egg dropped, half in and half out of the fence. The bull skath gave a baby roar at the other monsterlings to ensure they wouldn’t try to get to his meal then set to with gusto. Bite, swallow, bite, swallow. Richter watched, amazed. He didn’t know how the little creature was tearing through it so quickly. In four seconds flat, the egg was gone.
Richter looked at the bull skath which was now sitting on its haunches, looking immensely satisfied. He looked at Derin and then back at the skath. “Huh,” he said, “I was expecting something a bit more drama… Christ!”
The bull skath’s mouth and eyes had shot open. Seven beams of emerald light were shooting from the holes in its head. One beam also shot straight out of his backside and another from beneath it, which was a bit overkill in Richter’s opinion. His exclamation occurred because the skath had been looking at him when it happened. One of the beams had shot right in his eye. It didn’t burn him or anything but, well, it was a beam of light in his eye!
Richter kept that eye shut but the other glued to the skath. It started shaking, not like a seizure but instead as if it was on a vibrating plate. A moment later, Richter realized it was growing! The process lasted for a full minute, then the lights winked out. What was left was a skath that could no longer be called a baby by any stretch of the imagination. It was the size of a medium cooler. Definitely not full-grown, but well into adolescence. The diamond pattern that had been on its soft skin had turned into supple scales. They were not nearly as strong a defense as when it was fully grown, but it was a clear improvement. There were also small bone spikes sticking out of its head that Richter didn’t remember seeing on the skath adults the eggs came from. The bull skath let out a roar that was decidedly not “mewl-like.”
“What happened?” Deera called out excitedly, swimming back towards the shore.
Richter didn’t answer because he was bombarded by prompts.
Know This! By providing the Stem Cell Egg of an Assengai Spider Queen you have rapidly increased by 25% the growth of a creature that has Imprinted upon you. Current growth: 30%. You have also increased the bull skath’s attack by +2. This creature can consume another Stem Cell Egg in 7 days. Consumption beforehand will have no effect.
Congratulations! You have reached skill levels 3 and 4 in Animal Husbandry. +8% effectiveness in training. +8% stats for trained animal.
Congratulations! You have reached skill levels 3 and 4 in Exotic Beasts. +8% more likely to domesticate wild beasts. +8% stats for trained animal.
You have greatly aided the growth of an Imprinted animal, the Bull Skath. This has endeared the animal to you. It has been Domesticated! You may take it around others without fear of it attacking villagers randomly. Remember that this creature will only behave as well as you control it and will only act as well as it is trained. Your bull skath may now learn specific powers including: attacks, defenses and skills. More can be learned over time.
You have unlocked one Power for your Bull Skath:
Name
Powers
Description
Juvenile Bull Skath (Lvl 1)
Chomp!
Damage of skath’s bite +100%
Up to 10% chance to cause weak Bleeding status
Cost: 20 stamina
Cooldown: 5 minutes
Richter was ecstatic! His dreams of an obedient monster army were one step closer. He didn’t know if he was ready to let the skath just start wandering around the village though. If he was reading it right, it seemed like the twins would have a much easier time teaching the bull skath after this. Even cooler was that Domesticated monsters gained powers! That was a clear advantage over his ability to Tame creatures, at least at his current skill rank of novice in Beast Bonding. Of course, Taming a creature was much faster and ensured its absolute loyalty, so he saw the benefit in both approaches to controlling monsters.
The Chomp power didn’t seem overly cool, but he realized that was just because he was envisioning his young skath’s attack. The adult bull skath he had fought months ago had been the size of a gorilla, and its bite had been tenacious, like a bulldog’s. With the boost to his trained skath’s stats, thanks to the twins’ Animal Husbandry skill and the Exotic Beasts subskill, when his boy was all grown up one Chomp might be enough to kill.
Another prompt was waiting.
Know This! You have Domesticated the leader of the skath pack. There is now a +50% chance to Domesticate the remaining members of the pack.
Get the alpha and the rest will follow, Richter thought. Just like real life.
Deera was standing next to the pen now, oohing and ahhing at the bull skath. Derin, on the other hand, seemed much less comfortable with being in the high steel enclosure with a juvenile monster than he had been when the bull skath was still cute. Richter told him that the bull was domesticated now though, and the twin relaxed. He still thought it prudent to leave the pen before Richter fed any more of the young skaths.
Richter opened the gate and Derin slipped out. The enlarged bull skath easily herded the others so that they didn’t slip past. It was already showing its obedience and was more responsive to his mental commands. He quickly fed the rest of the skaths as well. Each underwent the same process: light and growth. They all also gained a random bonus, an increase to defense or attack in most cases, though it was just +1 rather than the +2 that the bull skath had gained. One skath even obtained a venomous bite. Ultimately, only eight of the fourteen became domesticated. Richter wasn’t discouraged though. It was amazing progress for only one hour. He imagined that when he fed the skaths again in a week he would be able to domesticate a few more.
As a final plus, feeding the stem cell eggs to the skaths had catapulted his skills even further.
Congratulations! You have reached skill levels 5, 6, 7, …, and 11 in Animal Husbandry. +22% effectiveness in training. +22% stats for trained animal.
Congratulations! You have reached skill levels 5, 6, 7, …, and 11 in Exotic Beasts. +22% more likely to domesticate wild beasts. +22% stats for trained animal.
You have received 1,250 (base 2,000 x 1.25 x 0.5) bonus experience for reaching level 10 in the skill: Animal Husbandry.
You have received 625 (base 1,000 x 1.25 x 0.5) bonus experience for reaching level 10 in the subskill: Exotic Beasts.
XP deficit remaining: -173,125
Congratulations! You have advanced from Novice to Initiate in: Animal Husbandry. Animals that you care for now mature 20% faster. This perk is cumulative with successive
ranks.
Congratulations! You have advanced from Novice to Initiate in: Exotic Beasts. The cooldown for the powers of trained beasts is reduced by 15%. This perk is cumulative with successive ranks.
When he was done, he looked around the high steel enclosure. It was twenty yards in diameter and had seemed like more than enough space for the baby skaths, but now it appeared merely adequate. Richter realized that he would need come up with another solution to house his monsters. The next growth spurt might see the skaths overpowering the fence. Hopefully, Roswan would be back in time to address the problem.
Richter stepped away from the enclosure with the egg sac in his hand. It was lighter, but at a guess there were still several dozen eggs left inside. He took two more stem cell eggs out and put them in his Bag of Holding. One would go down the Well of Offering and the other was for whatever. He’d started keeping a large variety of powerful items in his Bag of Holding. Weird shit happened every day in The Land and you never knew what might come in handy. He pinched the edges of the hole he had cut in the egg sac together just to make sure none of the gooey spheres fell out, and to his delight, the sides of the rent stuck together like moist dough. A moment later the hole had disappeared, banished by the egg sac’s self-healing ability. Sometimes magic was just cool.
Both twins had already overcome their earlier hesitation. They were delighted that over half the skath clutch was domesticated now. Deera was so engrossed that she had apparently forgotten she was naked as a jaybird. The two sexy twins were already bickering good naturedly over the best way to accelerate the domesticated skaths’ training. Richter watched them for another few seconds before shaking his head in amusement and thinking how strange his life was.
He left the lake, already forgotten by both Deera and Derin. The two were still on his mind as he walked though. He sang a little ditty under his breath as he thought about the party that night.
“I... love… burritos at 4 am, drunken nights that never end… and Twins! And I, love, you, too!”
CHAPTER 32 – Day 142 – Kuborn 32, 0 AoC
Richter returned to the Dragon’s Cauldron to drop the egg sac off. To his dismay, smoke was coming out from every corner of the building. The lower level alchemists were standing outside of the building and they were… orange. Like, oompah loompah orange! Cursing, in a feminine voice, could be heard from inside the Cauldron.
One of the alchemists was staring at his hands in disbelief, trying to come to terms with the fact that he was now sherbet-colored.
“I’m guessing something went wrong?”
The gnome looked at Richter with an expression which said that was the dumbest question of all time. When he saw it was the lord of the village who was asking, he stilled the sharp response that he had been about to spit out. Instead, he simply nodded and went back to looking forlornly at his own skin.
Richter told him, “Sorry, bud.” Then he handed over the egg sac and told him to give it to Tabia for storage. The gnome’s face dropped even further as he looked at the sticky mess in Richter’s hand, but he took it all the same.
The chaos seed was going to clap him compassionately on the shoulder, but then decided not to. He didn’t want to risk getting whatever that orange stuff was on his hand, so he just walked quickly away from the glass building. There was still work to be done.
A quick check showed that he still had more than an hour left on his Enchanting debuff. He didn’t beat himself up again though. It would give him just enough time to perform a necessary task. Richter walked down the hill into the village proper. Then he made his way over to where the fallen trees and harvested marbled quartz were stored. Roswan’s absence had basically halted the production of buildings in the village. On the upside, there would be plenty of raw material for the taciturn elf to work with when he returned.
Among the chiseled blocks of stone, there were many small rocks that had fallen off. These were what Richter was interested in. In addition to being incredibly strong and beautiful, the marbled quartz was an inexpensive way to make basic soul stones. Most plain rocks could make, at best, only weak soul stones, a full rank lower. If his people and the sprites were going to cull the surrounding lands and farm the Dungeon to fuel his enchantments, he would need repositories for the captured souls.
Resigning himself to a boring hour, he started picking up rocks. Richter lined them up on top of a large chiseled block. When he had several dozen arranged, he began casting. His hand twisted into a specific configuration and he cast Create Soul Stone (Common). Like the name implied, it could only make soul stones of common rank or lower, but it was more than enough for his purposes.
A word of Power passed over his lips. White light surrounded his fingers and he held the radiance over the first rock. The white stone turned liquid and ran as if it were melting. The color also began to change. The light went out from around his hand, but the process continued. He knew from experience that the process took several seconds. As the spell had no cooldown time, he moved onto the next rock.
Richer went down the row like that. One after another, the rocks of white stone were changed. With his recently increased mana, he made more than two dozen. He left a little bit in the ol’ magic tank because full-on mana headaches felt horrible. Richter had never had a migraine, but he was pretty sure this was worse.
When his magic bottomed out it made his vision blur, his temples throb, and any attempt at concentration extremely difficult. When he only had thirty-eight mana left in his pool, he took out his short swords and began to go through his sword forms. One after another he performed the seemingly simple but infinitely demanding series of techniques that Yoshi had taught him. Forest Wind flowed into Willow in the Storm. Richter ended low then uncoiled his body like a spring, extending into Crane’s Neck. He followed that by spinning with both blades outward in Samara Seed Falls, then did a combination of Reaping Wheat and The Lady’s Fan Opens, attacking and defending at once.
Richter wove from one form to the next. He didn’t rush. An old wrestling coach had taught him that “slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” It had sounded like some zen bullshit at the time and was especially strange coming from an ex-Navy Seal whose chin could have opened a can of tuna. Richter had soon learned that the man spoke the truth though. Much better to have control of his movements and truly learn an attack than to learn it wrong by moving too fast.
He practiced for twenty minutes and worked up a nice sweat. His mana was almost completely refilled by then so he sheathed his swords. Even after life-and-death battles, he still felt super cool slamming his blades back in their sheaths. Yeah, Richter thought with a self-deprecating smile, premium grade-A badass. He walked back over to the line of stones. The first set had long since finished transforming. Where before had rested a series of white rocks, nearly fifty cut amber jewels now resided. The jewels were six-sided and roughly circular. Each one that Richter picked up made his hand tingle pleasantly.
He put all of the soul stones into his bag and moved on to the unchanged rocks. Richter started casting his spell again. Less than a minute later, another twenty soul stones were being converted. The chaos seed rubbed his temples again and went back to training. Another twenty minutes passed and he started the cycle again.
Ten minutes into his third set of sword forms, he felt a gaze upon him. When he saw who it was, he rolled his eyes, “What do you want, Sion?”
The sprite spread his arms innocently, “I just thought you might need help. It appeared that you were having some type of seizure, flailing your arms about like that.”
“You’re a riot, man. How do you fit so much humor into such a small, little package?” Richter rejoined with a smile. He squinted as if having a hard time seeing the sprite.
Sion opened his mouth to respond but then thought better of it, shaking his head, “Too easy.”
Richter nodded and apologized, “Yeah, that’s my bad. I really softballed that one in.”
Sion smiled at his friend, “Now you’re
just making it ridiculously easy.”
“Just like yo mama,” Richter shot back reflexively.
Sion’s face grew still, and a pregnant pause filled the air. Richter started scrabbling, “Where I come from… people say that… I didn’t really mean…”
The sprite took a step towards him, his eyes widening with menace. Then he broke into a large smile, “I’m just… fucking with you. That’s the right term, isn’t it?”
Richter smiled and exhaled in relief, “Yeah, it is.” Sion reached out a hand and the two men clasped wrists in camaraderie. The sprite tightened his grip though and yanked Richter in till they were chest-to-chest.
“Don’t ever say that again though,” Sion said with deadly intent, “or I’ll tell my mother, and she’ll bury you alive.”
Richter nodded earnestly. The threat was not an idle one. Hisako was an Earth Master and probably could literally make the ground swallow him up. “Good safety tip.”
Sion smiled broadly and let go, “Excellent. Enough talking though. I didn’t come to find you just to see your pretty face.”
“Pretty?” Richter asked with a smile.
The sprite shrugged, “Pretty ugly.”
Fuck, Richter thought. Walked into that one.
“What’s your skill in Archery now?” Sion asked, enjoying his friend’s discomfort.
“Seventeen,” Richter answered. “Why?”
“Because it’s time you learned Stun Shot.”
Months ago, when Richter and Sion had been in Law, the capital city of Yves, they had both been trained for a mission. One of the men they learned from was Ulinde, an adept archer. The elf was one of the villagers that was currently away for his Trial. He had taught both Richter and Sion subskills in Archery. Stun Shot had required a skill level of ten in Archery though and Richter hadn’t advanced that far at the time, so he had missed out. Since becoming an initiate in the skill, it had occurred to him to ask either Sion or Ulinde to teach him, but there was always more to do. Sion was right though; now was a perfect time.