Dream stood there for a second before thinking about what to do.

[Well first put the money away. You don't want to get attacked.]

'True.'

Dream hurriedly put the money in his inventory before checking his surroundings. Seeing nobody there, he sighed.

'Well, he gave me money, so maybe I should go buy something. I was interested in a pet earlier.'

[Except we have no idea how something like that works. It would just be another thing to take care of and worry about. How about you start with getting the girls something.]

'Well, if its anything material I think something from Earth is best. This place probably wouldn't have the best variety. Plus, I could make pretty much whatever. So... What the hell am I going to do with this money? Why did he just give it to me and dip?'

[He was probably just feeling generous. And he likely does have a huge amount of money. Those wires are everywhere, and if it was just him and a few other people who installed those things over the whole kingdom, then he has enough money to live lavishly for the rest of his life and set his kids up for life as well. He's the Rockefeller of this world. So the money he gave you is probably just some change to him.]

'I guess. Well, if I want a pet then maybe I could bring the Old Man and the girls to shop for one. He probably knows about them. Or I'll just learn this contract stuff and get myself a pet out in the wild.'

[That sounds like a better idea.]

'Well the best place to learn contracts is from the tamers themselves. We should find a shop.'

[There's the slave shop back down the street that we saw.]

'I don't know if I want to enter one of those. I'll feel sorry for one of them and end up buying one. Any pet shops?'

[There's one not far from the slave shop.]

'Alright.'

Dream turned on his heel and headed to where Sophia told him.

He wasn't exaggerating about feeling sorry for the slaves either. He knew that if he entered one and got shown some, especially any pretty girls, then he might just end up getting one. And that wasn't something he could really do right now. So he decided to just go to a pet shop which he wanted to do anyway.

After a bit of walking, he came up on a building that he could sense monsters inside of. He once again thought of how subtle but effective it was to let people see inside.

He walked through the door.

*Ting*

A bell sounded as the door was open and closed. Dream looked around and saw a lobby. Soon, he heard footsteps coming from a back room.

"Hello. The name's John. I'm the tamer in charge of this establishment. How can I help you?"

A man about 6' 5" came walking from a back room. He was a burly man with a shiny bald head and a nice trimmed beard. He seemed cool.

"Hi. My name's Dream. I was hoping I could get your help with something."

"A job? What kind of monster are you looking to capture?"

"No, I'm kind of looking to employ your knowledge. I know it's an odd thing to come here for, but I'm new to the Mountain and was curious about what taming was. I already know some enchanting and heard that contracts were similar, so I came here to see if I could get a gist."

"Hold on, you came to my shop to learn from me? Did someone tell you to come here?"

"No."

Did someone tell you to come find me?"

"No."

"Did you hear about my shop from anywhere?"

"No."

"...So you really just walked in and asked to learn from me?"

"Yes."

John put on an ugly face as he stared at Dream. Dream knew exactly what he didn't like.

"...A little piece of advice. It's an unspoken rule that you don't ask someone to teach you their craft. We specialists don't take too kindly to that." (John)

"But how am I supposed to learn this stuff if I can't ask anybody? Where I come from, people never hid that stuff. They were perfectly fine teaching people about what they did. It was a way to show off almost, to take pride in your skill that you've spent years mastering. Who came up with that rule?"

"It's rude to ask because it's their personal craft. I don't know where you came from but it's not something we do here."

"What, do you think you're the only one who knows how to tame? It's not like I'm gonna steal business from you. I was just looking to learn a bit about how it works. Look, I have a bit of money, so if I need to pay for you to simply tell me a bit about the process of taming, then I can."

"..."

John stood there with a thoughtful face.

"...Why don't you just go to a school if you have money?"

"Because I'm not interested in spending a year to slowly learn it. I don't exactly have all the time in the world. If I did, I wouldn't be here."

"So you're looking to learn it in a week?"

"Not really. As I said, I already know enchanting and I heard that contracts work similarly. I'm here to learn why. In fact, I also might be able to help you."

"You helping me? You don't even know taming, and you want to help me with it? *sigh* You know what, I'm not doing anything so why not. I don't need your money either. A few silver won't help me."

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"Oh, thanks. I appreciate it."

"Uh-huh. You're lucky that I'm not as mean as some other people. They wouldn't give you the time of day, just kicking you out. Come on."

John waved over Dream, who followed into the back room where monster cages were located.

"Do you know anything about taming?"

"Not really."

"Well first, taming isn't really taming. Monsters don't exactly enjoy being chained up, so we employ other ways to control them. There are three ways, training, rearing, and contracts. We can train and discipline them to listen to us, raise them from birth, or use contracts to forcibly control them. The first two take years to achieve. I actually have several monsters that I raise. I'll focus on the contracts though."

John unlocked a cage and walked over to the monster inside.

"Whoever told you that contracts work similarly to enchantments, they were only right in the sense of the scripting part. Everything else is different though. Come over and tell me what you see on this monster."

Dream walked over and looked at the monster, quickly seeing the outlier.

"There's a symbol."

"Indeed. This symbol is the sign of a bound monster, meaning one that is contracted. It can look however the tamer wants it to, but the symbol is still only that, a symbol. The actual contract is underneath. When you enchant an object, you're writing a script inside of the object. Well, contracts write the script inside the monster. Specifically, in their body. These contracts are very different and harder to write than your enchantments. That's because nobody, human or otherwise, wants to be written on. You understand?"

"I think I do. How do you write the contract to something with its own mana though? Wouldn't they interfere?"

"That's why it's harder. Because they do. So you either have to weaken them, overpower them with your mana, or get them to submit and let you. Unless you have a skill fr it, the most common way is weakening them. You beat them within an inch of their life and they have no strength to stop you."

"Makes sense. Now doesn't that mean that tamers are much better than enchanters? Why wouldn't you work as both or become a master enchanter if it's that much harder?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that. If you get rid of the fact that tamers write to an animal and just look at the scripts, then you'll find that tamers actually have it easier than enchanters. The script that a tamer writes is more general, giving broad restrictions to animals. The script that an enchanter writes is very specific. It has to account for the type of mana, how to convert it, all that."

"I see. Mind if I see a script?"

"Alright."

John turned and led Dream out of the cage. They walked down the hallway and into another room.

As soon as they entered Dream saw a table filled with papers that looked just like enchanter scripts.

"Take a look at this. This script was used for a class 2 water element monster. I captured it while in the fields by a lake."

John handed Dream a sheet of paper with a long set of interconnected symbols. Sophia instantly scanned it and attempted to make sense of it.

[There are several symbols that aren't in the book Eddie showed us. But there are also one's that are. I can make sense of about 44% of this script.]

'Well since one involves weapons and the other monsters, I can imagine that the scripts involved are different. It needs to manage the psyche of the monster as well as its mana to restrict it. Very different than a weapon.'

Dream turned to John after looking at the paper for a bit.

"I can only recognize some of these scripts, the majority I can't make sense of."

"I'm surprised you were able to make sense of any of it. But you're right. I needed to use certain scripts to manage the water element part of the monster, which may also be used when enchanting water-related weapons."

"And I'm guessing there's a different vocabulary for taming than enchanting?"

"There is. If you had gone to a school, you would have gotten... this book."

John walked over to a shelf and grabbed a thick book off the wall. It wasn't as thick as the enchanting book, but close.

He set the book down on the table, showing it to Dream.

"You obviously can't take this with you, but take a look. You'll find that the way scripts are used and formed are very different in concept than enchanting. Mainly because they need to keep an eye on the hostility of the monster, as well as it's intent."

Dream began flipping through the book. Sophia did the obvious and scanned it.

After a bit of page turning, he looked over to John.

"Since this can be used on monsters, it can also be used on people?"

"That question gets asked a lot. And the answer is half yes and half no. People are much more complicated than animals that have little ego. Which means slavers use a different means than contracts to control people."

"What means is that?"

"Instead of restrictions, they use control. Instead of giving the captive the inability to use mana, they just put the control of that mana in the hands of the master. If the master gives a command, the slave obeys. That's the theory anyway, and obviously there are limits. Complex commands aren't effective, and too simple commands may give the slave too much freedom. This is one of the big problems, so instead of trying to control the slaves' every move, they actually give the slaves some freedom, while giving the masters a way to effectively get the slave to listen. A popular way is torture."

"Beat them until they listen."

"Exactly. It isn't nice, but its the most effective solution. It also doesn't drive the slaves mad. As quickly anyway. If they had their every move controlled, they would go insane. Anyway, there's not much more for you to know. Everything else is specifics which takes time to develop. Is there anything else you want from me while I'm being generous?"

"Hmm..."

Dream rubbed his chin in thought. John's eye twitched seeing that.

"I'm not actually going to give you anything, so you can save it."

"I wasn't thinking about that. Ever since I began learning about enchanting,"

[Like an hour ago.]

"...I had been wondering why you couldn't get a device to do the enchanting. Like if you enchanted an object that would enchant other objects. Or something that would help you, if you had an object that gave you control over a monster just by strapping it to them."

"Objects don't have intelligence, so they couldn't build the scripts themselves."

"They don't have to build the scripts. All you need to do is give it a script to write. And when given the command is given, it'll write the script to whatever you tell it to. This could be anything from a monster to a piece of armor."

"Again, the scripts are unique across items, so they need to be built according to the item. One script couldn't work for multiple things."

"Who said they couldn't? All you do is make a script that covers everything. Or you can make multiple scripts for certain things and have them cooperate. Then you get a device that has a mana supply and tell it to write the script to an object. You know what? Let's try it."

Dream stopped explaining and brought out a chunk of titanium, setting it on the floor. Soon, it began heating up and Dream began to shape it.

"..."

John stood there confused as to what was happening. How was he shaping metal like that? He didn't even use a hammer!

After a minute, the metal was formed into a collar. Dream then began filling it with mana, while Sophia began writing a test script that she had been formulating.

John recognized what he was doing and bent down, sensing the script that Dream was writing in the collar. Except, he couldn't recognize any of it. There wasn't a single symbol or line that he could make sense of.

"It's just a jumbled mess of mana. Are you sure you're an enchanter?"

"Yup. But you see, I'm a bit different. I don't use your scripting language."

"What do you mean? How can you write script without using the language? Nothing will work!"

"Not true. Just watch."

"..."

They turned back to the collar, watching the mana take form.

As he and Sophia discussed earlier, the script language seemed to just be a way for the soul to organize its intent. Humans couldn't speak soul. So they turned the 1's and 0's into text that they could handle. But that in turn placed limits on the script's possibilities. If they got too long there would be bugs, just like in code. And the enchanters in this world couldn't fix that themselves.

Luckily, Sophia didn't have that problem. She could speak any language. And she could control intent however she wanted with utmost precision. So much so, that as a result of being so awesome, she leveled up.

<[Sophia] has leveled up!>

<[Sophia] has leveled up!>

Notifications popped up in Dream's mind as Sophia worked on the script, which was coming together by the second. Strings of mana were formed into waves and knots and shapes. John was also getting more and more confused.

Soon, Sophia finished.

[Slave Collar is complete.]

'Nice name.'

[Thank you.]

Dream didn't ask how it functioned since he already knew. It was his soul that was being used after all.

"Alright, John. Behold, my reward to you for the knowledge you have given me."