Creatures are best tamed from the wild. Pets grown tend to be much weaker than their wilder cousins. A bear raised among rabbits will never learn to be a bear, a dragon hatched among men will never learn to be a dragon.That is, assuming no special circumstances.

-Excerpt from Adventurer Hearth's Guide to Monster Taming

Easy jobs for a lot of money are hard to find. I knew that and it makes sense, but one can hope, can't they? I've searched through dozens of jobs already, but the ones available take several days. One job even lasts a week! I haven't even been here a week!

"How about this one?" A glance tells me that Janice handed me another worthless quest.

"This one is a rank three quest." I place is on top of a large pile of paperwork. Sheila has made a spot for herself on one side of it and is resting there. The cubs are cuddled up next to her.

I reach for another paper and my mind wanders for a bit. The couch in the adventurer guild's building is so comfortable. Janice dragged me in there to look for another quest, since the searching spell didn't have a search for 'easy and high paying'.

"What about this one?" Janice chimes in and interrupts my thoughts. It's a quest to exterminate a grown fire lizard.

"That'll take too long." I place it on the pile of unwanted quests and continue looking. "How do you feel about giant mosquitoes?"

"Just like the giant flies, ants and spiders. And if you find one about roaches and rats, put them straight in the pile." She continues searching through her own pile of quests. I pull out a quest to exterminate roaches, pile. Then another quest for rats... That's odd. She called them spot on.

"Take a look at this one!" Janice shoves another quest paper into my hands. Remove the young Fire Lizard population from the nearby town Gaddut. I place it on the small mountain of papers.

"It takes too long to go there and finish quests." She smacks my shoulder.

"You can tame them!" It takes me a while to process what she said. When I finally did I threw all of the other papers aside and grabbed at the quest paper. Sheila and the two cubs woke up and lazed off.

"We go, steal the young and come back. 240 each and it takes about two hours to travel there and another two to get back. It's not enough to justify going there, but I really want the young fire lizards." She smirks and searches through the pile of unwanted quests. One of the ones she handed me earlier lays on top of my lap.

"It goes perfect with the one I showed you earlier. We get rid of the parents and steal away the younger ones." It's the exterminate the grown Fire Lizard quest. Also in Gaddut, but pays in silvers.

"What can we do with silver coins? I can't use them to pay the craftsman." She taps me on my forehead and explains to me very clearly.

"There are currency traders in Gaddut. We can trade our silvers for coppers and come back with around 700 copper each." I quickly do the math in my head.The daily cost of living in a room is around 50 coppers per day. Only if I want to eat proper meals, which I do. I feel that only eating Jelly Fruit is giving me stomach problems. On top of that, I need to pay for the fur, which is 400 coppers, plus some other price to make it into something, I assume 600. Then there is also have a large debt to pay to Janice, which will probably last forever. That totals into -60 coppers and a first born. Not bad for a half day's worth of time.

"Let's go. I need to take another quest today so I don't owe millions to you later." She uses some kind of magic to move all of the papers into four stacks in the corner of the room. I should get her to teach me something as we travel.

The new receptionist lady was very nice, though not nearly as cheery as Janice. I don't really feel like getting to know her, as she might do what Janice did and quit to join my party. Only people weaker than me can join right now, since I still need to build a reputation and weak people can't join right now because I'm not strong enough to pick up their slack.

The new receptionist smiles as she hands me my papers, completely oblivious to my thoughts. I thank her and leave as quickly as socially acceptable. It would be weird to run out of the guild, and that would build me the wrong reputation.

"Hey, are you ready?" Janice asked me, waiting at the front gate. She want ahead when i waited in a line to process the quest papers. She didn't need to be there to gain credit for participating in a quest since we're officially part of a party now.

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. Let's go." The road will be a long one. The only upside is that maybe it will increase my physical fitness, which everyone else seems to have no problems with.

There is silence between us for a long time. No sounds other than our footsteps and breathing. This would probably be a good time to start a conversation.

"How do you do the magic stuff you did earlier? Like the golem and the paper thing." She looks at me strangely.

"I get you wouldn't know how to do the golem, but the papers? That's a simple spell. What spells do you know?" Shoot, she's going to ask me stuff now. I haven't decided on how I want to explain my existence. Saying I'm the chosen one of the goddess doesn't sound like a good idea, and saying that I'm from a world without magic is probably also not a good idea.

"I was orphaned at a young age and raised by a hermit who was a tamer. He taught me how to be a tamer and asked me to show the world. I didn't know about magic until a week or so ago." Oh man, what am I saying. Was that even a good lie? Please think the sweat is from the walking.

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"Really? The hermit didn't teach you any magic?" I need to calm down and roll with it.

"No. Never mentioned it. He only told me he had no talent for anything other than taming." She seemed to be buying it. I try to make my tone as sad as possible so she doesn't try to pry any further.

"Alright. First we need to check your innate magic. This is usually done on kids, but you haven't gone to a magic institution, have you?" I shake my head.

"What's that? It's where they teach magic, right?" The information I have on this world is severely lacking, so I have to expand upon all of the information I can get. I hadn't realized that because I thought that it would be just like Domain, but there was never something like magic institutions in the lore. Maybe the producers cut out the boring stuff.

"For children, yes. Basic things like cleaning spells and small elemental spells. Area spells are only taught by other mages, but most can create one on their own." What Janice said makes sense, especially when related to the game. You would put a point into the spell and you would learn it on your own, which is relatively simple. Knowing the previous spell would allow you to make a larger version of that spell.

"Okay, so how do we test my innate magic?" She thinks for a second before answering.

"We don't have anything we need here, so we'd need to go to a magic institution first. We could ask them to do it, but it would cost you a hundred silvers." Silvers? That's a thousand copper!

"How do we do it ourselves?" She laughs, knowing what I was thinking. It was written all over my face and it wasn't like I tried to hide it.

"We need a large crystal and a mana battery." A mana battery was anything that could hold mana. That technically included humans, but very few people could use other people's mana. To learn how you had to complete a special event quest in the game.

"How big of a battery?"

"So you know what those are?" Did that give something away?

"It's a battery that holds mana, right? It's in the name." She thinks about it for a second.

"Yeah, that makes sense. I just need something that can hold a bit, we're looking for the quality of your mana, not quantity." That's the first I've heard of that.

"What do you mean quality? Does everyone not have the same quality?"

"No. The quality of your mana will tell me how strong your spells are. A person with a high quality mana will have a stronger spell than a person of low quality mana. Someone with a higher quality of mana will have a spell that's just as strong as anyone else, but for less strain on their mana pool." So it's kind of like a reduced mana cost.

"Is there any way to increase your quality of mana?" She shakes her head and sighs.

"There is, but it's very difficult. Think of yourself as a jar that holds air. People with good talent will naturally compress that air and be able to suck in more that way. Other people can force themselves to compress it, but if they go too far, the jar cracks and breaks. And even if they can compress it, it'll only be for a little bit before some of it leaks out and everything goes back to normal." Unlike in the game, there is a factor of natural talent.

"Meditation?" I ask. She sighs.

"If you do it for a long time, you can increase your quality by a little bit." That sounds annoying. Maybe I can find a way to cheat training and just compress the mana outside of myself and use mana batteries instead.

"So why do we have to know how strong my mana is for me to learn to cast spells?"

"That's not quite right. We need the test to 'awaken' your mana sense. You can't really sense mana without it being drawn out of you and the only way to do that safely is with the test. That's why we can use any quality mana battery." Awaken my mana sense? Well, I haven't gotten any new senses when I arrived to this world. Did my stat table even show I had mana before?

Name: Professor HearthLevel: 1Class: TamerHP: 80/80StatsMP: 110/110Str: 9Con: 8Agi: 8Int: 42Wis: 13Cha: 19

I guess it does. Did I gain some stat points? I don't remember what my stats from before were.

"Alright. How big of a crystal?" She makes a fist and holds it out for me to see.

"Around this size. The larger it is the more accurate it can be read, but I can't read it that accurately anyways and we don't need to read it since it's only to awaken your sense."

"Alright. How much longer until we hit the town? The cubs need a break from walking." I look back at Sabrina, who was pushing the cubs forward. They look like they want to collapse already.

"You sure you don't mean you need a break?" I give a small laugh.

"Yeah, me, too. Let's rest over in the shade." The trees made cover for what turned into a little picnic. Janice packed some nice stuff in her backpack.