Walking along with the bat perched on my shoulder I came to the conclusion that having a pet was pretty awesome. My pet could see in the dark, fly, and even sort of communicate with me. She took a huge weight of my shoulders, though not literally as that’s where she liked to perch most times, by scouting for danger. To make matters even easier my pet was self-feeding, when she saw something she wanted to eat she just flew off and ate it.

I was trying to think up a name for my bat now, something that was taking me a lot more time than I thought it would. I wasn’t great with names, everyone who knew me could tell that, so coming up with a good name for my first pet was a challenge to say the least. On the Brightside I had a friend here I could bounce my ideas off of.

“So, how about Peach? You look a lot like a big fruit bat, so…”

The bat looked at me and I could tell that it wasn’t all that enthusiastic about the latest name I came up with. Nodding slightly I went back to thinking about what name would match with my pet.

“Well we could just try a list of names. Tell me when to stop. Ashley, Erin, Beth, Betty, Cathy, Cammy, Daphne, Daisy…”

Spouting off all the girl names I could think of I kept waiting for the bat to stop me, but she never did. Eventually I just trailed off and we stared at each other. The bat seemed like she wanted me to keep going, but I was pretty much out of names that I knew.

“Umm… Ok, so that didn’t work. Maybe I’ll just go back to trying to think of a name based off of your features…”

The bat was about a foot tall and looked like a fruit bat with sharp teeth and red eyes, its fur was soft and black and it had sharp ivory claws that it was careful not to accidently stab me with. It sort of looked like a winged fox, well not really but that was the only thing I could think to describe it besides big fruit bat.

“Ok, well you have red eyes so how about Scarlet?”

The bat let out a soft chitter that I felt meant that the name was better than before, but still not good enough. I figured if I was on the right track then I should try other color names.

“Crimson? Blake? Nox?”

A soft headbut to my cheek stopped me from naming off more.

“So, Nox?”

The bat practically chirped its approval.

“Alright, then your name is Nox.”

With that things were settled and I could go back to looking for a place to sleep, but suddenly I realized something that I was too distracted before to notice. I wasn’t tired anymore, in fact I felt well rested and full of energy. It had only been an hour or so since I woke up from my unconsciousness, but I even felt like I had recovered most of my mana.

I froze. I don’t recover mana that fast, it usually takes a few meals and a good night of sleep for me to get back to full after using up most of my mana. Something was wrong, and since this had never happened before I could only assume it had something to do with the newest addition to my life. Looking over at Noir perched on my shoulder I tried to think how the bat could have possibly helped me recover my mana let alone how it could make me feel rested and full of energy.

“Hey Nox, weird question… Did you do something to help me recover my energy?”

The bat nodded and let out a proud chitter, it was like Nox was proclaiming how useful she had already been without my even noticing.

“Ok… That’s cool and everything, but how exactly does that work?”

Nox just tilted her head in confusion. A soft chitter told me what she thought was the obvious answer.

“Um, how does you feeding do anything for me let alone recover my mana?”

A flap of the wings and a self-assured chitter told me that Nox probably wasn’t the best source of information on this issue.

“Yeah… I know you like blood and all, but I don’t think just you drinking blood would fix an issue that I myself am having…”

I needed a mage and a monstrologist, and maybe a priest for some divine revelations.

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“Whatever, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all that…”

Trying not to think about how I seemed to be maintaining a constant level of energy I continued making my way east. Periodically Nox would fly off to feed on some poor critter that caught her eye, and on two occasions I had to use my light bending trick to sneak past those big green cat monsters. Even as dawn was beginning to break I still felt refreshed and full of energy, I hadn’t even gotten hungry or thirsty once during the night.

Sadly as the day began Nox started yawning and wavering on my shoulder. Figuring that my pet was probably nocturnal since she was a bat I made a place for her to rest in my pack and tucked her safely away. As Nox dosed off for the day I continued my journey east. Without Nox occasionally scouting ahead I had to be a bit more careful, but I could see clearly now so my pace actually increased.

As I walked I considered what my new pet brought into the picture. Nox was cool, there was no doubt about that, but ultimately she wasn’t a monster I could rely on to protect me. She could warn me of danger easily enough, but I couldn’t see her taking on a monster much bigger than she was. Nox wasn’t a fighter, she was a scout. For now I could make do with a scout, but eventually I would need something that could take on the dangers I couldn’t hide or run from.

I let out a soft sigh as I realized that I would eventually have to cast another summoning spell, I really wasn’t looking forward to that. That summoning had taken so much out of me I had passed out, and if a spell takes so much out of you that you pass out then you really shouldn’t be casting it. The cost could be eating into anything once you run out of mana, and I had the sinking suspicion that it ate into my life force when I ran out of mana and passed out.

I would rather keep my life force right where it was if I could help it, and that meant that I would have to increase the amount of mana I could hold in my mana pool. That would take time and effort, but I should be able to grow my mana pool some if I dedicate a month to pure spell work. If I can make some money to buy potions then I could potentially even double the amount I could grow my mana pool on my own.

Which brings me to the money issue. I have about two hundred and twelve coppers which comes out to two silvers and twelve coppers. That should be enough to buy some supplies and maybe a night or two at an inn, but after that I’m going to need money. There was only one real option as far as jobs go and that was the raider’s guild, if I became a raider I could take on jobs that would take me into a dungeon. That aligned with my goal, but as a G ranked raider I wouldn’t be making much of anything off of jobs, so I’d have to rely on monster cores and parts.

Which once again meant that I needed the strength to take on monsters without endangering myself too much. Which in turn brought me back to summoning and the necessity of increasing my mana pool.

I guess there was also the possibility of Nox evolving and becoming a monster capable of fighting at the front, but there was no way to tell when Nox would evolve or if she even could. It would be foolish to rely solely on such remote possibility, the better strategy was to try for another monster summoning after increasing the size of my mana pool. If Nox could evolve before that summoning then all the better, but it wouldn’t change the fact that I’d need to summon another monster.

I let out a breath and scratched the back of my head.

“To solve one problem I would end up running right into another…”

Shaking my head I decided to just focus on the things I could do, I was sure things would fall into place if I just gave it my all and did what I could do. Be it money, strength, or magic everything would come to me if I just put in the work for it.

Nodding to myself I picked up my pace a bit. I wanted to get to Dunstop, even just a second faster.

*

A little before noon I had to take a break. I was hungry, thirsty, and tired which came as a bit of a shock considering how I was last night. Then again with Nox sleeping I guess I was back to being my normal feeble self again. My best guess was that Nox was sharing her energy with me last night, or maybe her feedings gave me energy as well. Either way it was because of Nox that I could go all night without rest or food, but it seemed like daytime would be different.

Taking out some trail mix and being careful not to accidently nudge the sleeping Nox I sat down on a log and thought about my new pet.

Nox was a bat, and it was a fair bet that her elemental alignment was darkness and maybe air. In truth that didn’t really mesh well with my own alignment, but it did help cover for some of my weak points so I guess it was ok overall. What was more concerning was her evolutionary path. I had no idea what Nox would evolve into, for all I knew Nox could be at the end of her Evolutional path already and she wouldn’t evolve at all. That was an unlikely scenario since Nox was Rank 0, but it was still a possibility.

“Dark Blood Bat…”

I’d never actually heard of this type of monster before Nox appeared, but from its name alone I could guess that it would probably advance one of three ways. Nox would probably evolve based on her beast aspect, her blood aspect, or her darkness aspect. That alone doesn’t really narrow things down, but given I knew next to nothing about monster evolutionary conditions it at least gave me something to look out for. To help Nox evolve I should probably make sure she gets a lot of blood to drink and can take in a lot of dark mana, maybe even let her kill and eat a lot of beasts or something to help out her beast aspect as well.

Tossing aside the now empty bag of trail mix I pulled out a water skin and took a few swallows to wash down my meal.

It was frustrating not even knowing how to help my pet grow, but I took comfort in the fact that someone in Dunstop would know. Both raiders and hunters had to learn tons about monsters, and there were even quite a few that used familiars as well. Once I signed up to be a raider I could track down someone who could teach me the ins and outs of raising a familiar, maybe I could even learn under them for a while.

Corking the water skin and putting it away I got up and brushed off my pants. I was ready to get moving again, Dunstop was waiting for me…