“Phew!”

I took a breath of relief as I sat back in the carriage. I just had a meeting with Count Darrow and realized why he had stalled my promotion.

It is all because of his idiot son and some people who had lobbied against it.

No one talked about it directly, but Lancel mocking words and a few indirect references from Count Darrow were more than enough for me to know what had happened.

It took most of my worries away. The promotion hadn’t ended, just postponed, due to his idiot son. Count loved his son too much and to please him, he had postponed it.

I will get it. It will take a week or two, a month at most, but it will happen.

Count knows my value, and he would be an idiot to deny me a promotion.

The man is intelligent but also has many flaws, which is a good thing.

If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have needed me. I love working for such people, who are smart enough to understand things but also have some flaws that needed other people to fix.

“To house,” I said, seeing the carriage is still standing and a second later, the carriage begins to move.

Today is a great day despite a slight disappointment.

The establishment had performed better than I had estimated, and Ina had also left the Mirador Hold with the merchants, without any accident.

Through the private message, Ina had informed me, there was some discontent among the soldiers and officers.

Soldiers are discontented because we are trading with the enemies, whom the emperor had declared as our greatest enemy.

While the discontent among officers is for a completely different reason.

They are not getting any benefits from trade.

Count Darrow should have promised them some percentage of taxes from the trade with Navr. If not that, then increase their salaries and some perks, but instead of that, he is planning on cutting those benefits, they already have.

He didn’t ask for advice about it, and I didn’t tell him my views.

It is a delicate topic, and the Count becomes angry at the thought of even spending a little money.

He is not this way in Greltheaven, where he needed to accumulate as much as money before leaving, but does the same in his territory. There too, he acts miserly and didn’t spend much on anything other than his army.

In the future, I will try to nudge him in the direction I want.

Mirador Hold is an important cog in the welfare of the region. It is our shield against the undead.

While it wouldn’t be able to do much against a serious attack of the undead, given the number of men in the mirador hold, they could still hold off against the regular attacks.

Ina will reach the Jalrux by tomorrow and will stay there for two to three days, before returning.

I took out the book as the carriage got out of Count Darrow’s mansion. It is the new book I am reading; it will help me with what I am going to do today.

I had already read several books about it. Six months after, I had come to this world and had even seen how the job was done.

For a while, I had wanted to peruse this trade, given my prior experience, but doing that would have been too suspicious. So, I perused my other trade while learning to be a merchant from my father.

A few minutes passed, and the carriage pulled into the manor.

It is my new home; I had rented it when the undead had attacked the mirador hold. Carla got it at a good rate.

It is a three-story tall manor with a garden.

I got out of the carriage and went inside. The first thing I did was go to my room, where I had changed from a suit into comfortable clothes, before coming down to the kitchen and having lunch.

With that done, I walked into the back garden, where there was already someone.

The young man is about my age and has a small white sparrow making flying around him. It surprised me; it hasn’t been even two weeks, and he was making the monster move around him.

He is smiling, which is quite rare, as usually he had a somber look in his eyes.

“On palm,” he said, and sparrow flew toward him, before landing on his hand.

“Mr. Silver,” he greeted. “You are making great progress with a cloud-surfing sparrow, Eli,” I said, and the young man’s cheeks brightened.

I looked at the sparrow, which seemed to have grown slightly and looked a little plump.

“She is much smarter than any monster I had seen,” he said, looking at the little sparrow affectionately.

“What about the other guy?” I asked, looking at a white mutt sitting in a wooden pen. “Same as before, it doesn’t listen to anything and becomes aggressive when I tried to train him,” he replied.

“It is not surprising. It is a mutt,” he added with a sigh.

Very few people would train the mutts, and most give up. They are hard to train due to their unstable genetic factors.

I looked at the mutt; it had healed from its afflictions. The beast healer I had called had said, it is completely fine but advised me to kill it.

According to him, it has Lv. 3 aberration factor.

Like on earth, breeding among the subspecies is not forbidden and 80% of the time doesn’t come with side effects. It is how we have got so many breeds of dogs in modern times.

Here too, many subspecies interbreed in the wild or by people, and most of the time, it is fine, but sometimes; they produce a result that is not stable.

Which is known as an aberration factor if it happens once. It is Lv. 1.

These monsters are dangerous but stable enough that one might train them, but if they breed with another aberration factor beast or subspecies, that formed an aberrant factor with it.

Stolen novel; please report.

It takes their aberrant factor to Lv. 2. very few people would train such monsters.

It only happens when the trainer sees a very desired, trait in the monster.

This one had Lv.3 aberrant factor, barely anybody trained such monsters, even if they had the desired traits. If I knew about it, I wouldn’t have taken it, but I had taken it and will try my all.

I will think about the last option when I spent all options, I have. It's what my father would have done.

I walked toward the pen, before stopping by it and looking at the monster, whom I had been feeding for a week. While I have not done much training, I had been feeding it every other day, at least once.

The monster is quite cute, that anyone would want to cuddle with him.

It has a pure white thick-soft coat, with normal wolf's ears and tail; its paws on the other are thick. Bigger than normal paws with tough but soft paw pads and deep purple nails that are very sharp.

Eli had been filing them every few days. As they would sharpen very quickly.

The monster could retract them back till they disappeared inside its paws. Eli saw it happen, but this little monster kept them out, especially when people were near it.

The most prominent feature of it is its eyes. They are an indication of it being a mutt.

It had dual irises; they are violet and magenta and looked like they are clashing with each other. Most mutts have such features that make them easier to recognize.

“Hello fang,” I said to the monster, and it didn’t even turn.

It is the first time I had called him by his name; referring to him as ‘him’ rather than ‘it’ that I had been doing.

The name is not hard to think; I had been on my mind for years since I was a child. In a zoo, I had seen a wolf and wanted to adopt it and when my parents asked me, what I would name it, I answered with a fang.

It also comes from one of my favorite books, white fang.

We had many wolf-like dogs from huskies, german shepherds, and even wolfdogs, but never a wolf.

My father had got the opportunity to train the wolf many times but declined it. Saying they would disturb the rest of his dogs and it is going to take too much work.

This monster is going to take too much work. More than a wolf would have done. That makes me, relegate responsibility to someone or even kill it, but since I decided, I will do it.

I took out the black leash from my bag and it connected it to his collar automatically.

“Come out, fang,” I said as I opened the pen’s door. It looked at the opened door but didn’t come out.

“Not interested Hun. How about this?” I asked and took out a piece of dried blue monster meat.

Immediately, his eyes were directed at me, and it growled low before jumping at me, with its sharp claws out. The monster looks small as two months old husky, but he took the jump at me with speed, that normal humans wouldn’t be able to react.

Thankfully, I have been prepared.

I kept a smile on my face and let it come near me, before sliding my hands to catch him.

He tried to avoid my hands, but I was fast and had practice. I caught it easily, avoiding his sharp claws. Though, I had worn gloves to avoid any accidents.

Growl!

It growled at me cutely before tried to reach for a dried monster meat in my hand, his favorite.

I have been not sitting useless; I have asked Eli to test which type of food he likes the most. He tested over a hundred types of monster food before finalizing on four, which he loves the most.

“You will not get it, by being aggressive fang,” I said to the monster, who is struggling hard in my hands, while I took him toward the corner of the garden.

Like the dogs, the training of the monsters is also a reward base. You will do a thing right and you will get a treat.

The first stage of monster training is finding out the food they like the most. I had done that and now, I have to train him with patience. Thankfully, it is a job, I have been doing since I could walk.

It will be harder than any dog, I had trained, but I am upped for a challenge.

I love this job and if it wasn’t for me wanting to accomplish something in life. I would have stayed home and worked with my father in the business.

“This place seems better,” I said and stopped.

It is in the corner of the garden, devoid of any distractions. It is important, the less distraction there, the more fruits training will bring.

My first target is basic obedience training. Following the simple commands, like sitting, staying, and walking with a leash, before going on more complex.

Unlike dogs and other animals, monsters are capable of learning complex commands. Especially when there is help from the skills which I don’t have.

I will try first, before taking help from a trainer.

Eli is good, but I would need someone better with more experience. Though, I will only do it if I wasn’t able to manage it on my own and likely will need to, considering, this job is not simple as dog training.

Not to mention, I don’t have enough time to train him properly, with all the work I have to do.

I am currently not busy, but it won’t be long before I find myself on a task. That will take most of my time.

I placed him down gently and sat beside him, with meat hidden in the wrist, where he was focused at.

“Now, we will start with your training,” I said and opened my fist.

Like before, he jumped at me, and I caught him and placed him back in his place. I opened my fist again, and he jumped again before I even uttered a word.

“You will not make it easy, are you fang?” I asked him as I placed him back in his position before starting again.