image [https://cdn.midjourney.com/8a9500ba-ef76-4553-861e-2a18c5fde459/0_3.png]

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Thursday passed in a blink, with errands and hunting. Peter gained another level by killing Dire Wolves. However, most of the XP came from the previous day's exploration. The best part was he managed to put back the money spent. On Friday morning, the expedition left at the same time, a little after eight.

To his regret, he was assigned to another group led by the Sports teacher. Good for the security of the group but bad for sneaking away. He and Regina waved to each other and went on separate ways.

While hiking, Peter asked Sports if he could move to the other group, for he had a friend there. The teacher allowed it because Melinda's group was still in view. A hundred yards after skipping Sports' company, he entered a narrow valley where no one could see him.

"You're joking? Of course, I want."

“How much Mana?”

Replying with a snort, Peter changed into combat attire and Warped as fast as he could toward the village. There were only catfolk people in there, and he waited for a few seconds before going deeper in, but no one paid him any attention. He found the billboard in the hamlet's. No one was in line, so he cleared his voice to wake the sleeping clerk: "I want to list an announcement for a Bounty Hunter named Redroar."

The clerk took a pen and a piece of paper. "Saying?"

"Hi, I'm the guy you met yesterday…"

"Yes-ter-day," the clerk nodded.

"Leave me a message about where and when we can meet. That's all."

"That's… all...," the clerk wrote.

"No… never mind."

"No… Never mind."

"Hey! Pay attention. Erase the last three words, and stop the message. How much it costs?"

The clerk scratched his lower back around the tail. "A hundred Floor Two dollars if you want your message to be sent instantly," he offered a handshake that Peter ignored.

"OK," Peter said, happy to get rid of the Hitler Rex banknote. He forwarded it between his index and middle finger, trying not to touch the lion's fingers. The clerk pocketed it before pointing behind Peter with his index claw.

"Sorry?" Peter shook his head.

The catfolk repeated the gesture, adding a sort of poking motion. Turning on his heels, Peter widened his eyes. Thirty feet away, Redroar sat on the terrace, a beer in hand. Five lively cubs were fretting around, carrying glasses of milk or scratching each other for fleas. The barbarian waved.

It's OK; that bill was worthless anyway.

"Sorry I let you buy a message, but I have a strict policy of not ruining other people's businesses," Redroar said. "More so if they're family. That's hubby."

"Such a classy gentlemen vibe," Peter sneered. "Nice place you have here," he turned around, looking at the twentyish or so buildings in the hamlet. Most might have seen better days.

"It's a dump, but you go where the work is," Redroar shrugged. "How can I be of assistance?"

"Was it you that killed one of the teachers yesterday? An old lady?"

"I don't remember," Redroar said, putting down the beer and sliding her right hand under the table.

"I want you to train me.”

“Say again?” the lioness shook her mane.

“Train me. I want to become powerful enough to be an independent contractor. You have amazing skills if you took down a stage seven Cultivator," Peter blurted before she could jump him.

"Oh, it was no big deal," Redroar waved her hand, now holding a small crossbow. "Sorry," she grinned sheepishly, putting the weapon on the table. "That old lady moved so slow: Iiiiiii… wiiiiil… smiiiiite… fart… yoooooou… " She imitated Botanics's voice so well that Peter burst into laughter, feeling very bad about it the next second. "It was mercy, really. I'm glad I didn't have to kill a kid instead… Anyway… show me your eyes."

After a short delay, Peter raised his dark visor.

"Hm… OK, you look trustable enough. I'm a good judge of character. But I don't work for free. It will be an ounce of—"

"I prefer to barter," Peter interjected, opening the left part of his jacket. "What do you say about this?" Under his arm was a holster with the Sig Sauer looted from the assassin. He put it on the table, along with the holster.

"Mmmm…." The Barbarian eyes widened with greed. "Three lessons for that and an extra magazine."

"I'll give you an extra magazine and fifty bullets, silver coated, for training me as long as it takes."

"No way—" Redroar countered before realizing he was offering a better deal and stopping short

"I'm confident your work is top, and I prefer to be friends," Peter said, producing a pack of ammunition and the supplementary magazine and putting it on the table. “Payment in advance.”

"It's a deal, friend," she offered a handshake. "If you ever appear on a bounty board, I'll do it myself, clean and painless. It's a promise."

Shut up. I won't appear on any bounty board.

"Good," Redroar slapped her hands on the table, raising. "You'll train along my kids. I have to babysit them today because Hubby's working. There's a good spot behind the village."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

With that said, Redroar led the way toward a large clearing, surrounded on three sides by trees and on the last one by the grasslands. "I assume you have some powers, but they're wild magic, not cultivation, right?" she asked.

"Yeah… kinda…"

"Let's warm up. Kids, hide in the grass. You'll play hide and seek."

"Yey!" the little cubs yelled as one. Running toward the grass, they plunged at its base. Five thin lines moved away like a shark's fin through the water. After a hundred feet, they disappeared. Peter was at a loss. He took out his helmet and scratched his head.

"Leave your helmet off. I give you ten minutes to find them. Don’t use scans, only common sense. The rule is that once they settle, they can't move. In real-life situations, it depends. Any ideas?"

"Come out, and I'll give you choc—" Peter shouted.

"It's toxic for us," Redroar slapped him on the nape of his head.

"Catnip!"

"Underage!" a second slap followed.

"Can I use a drone?" Peter asked the bounty hunter.

"Of course not. This is about you, not tech."

Picking a small rock from the ground, Peter threw it into the grass in a straight trajectory. There was a slight jerk on the right of his pebble. He Warped forward and grabbed one of the cubs, raising them in the air. The cub growled, angered he had been discovered.

"Four more, go on," Redroar said.

He left the cub down, allowing it to return to its mother, and tried the same trick again, but in vain. He tried to listen for noises. A little sneezing, barely audible, got him the second win.

"You're doing great," the Barbarian encouraged him. "I'll give you a tip: think how kids are. What they do, and what they don't."

No, she saw I used my hearing… it's about the other senses. Kids don't like to wash… it's about the smell…

Breathing slowly, he walked back and forth through the grass until a soft, musky scent became stronger, then weaker. Backing on his own tracks, Peter snatched up a third cub.

"Good, you're smart. Now comes the hard part. The last two are girls."

Girls obsess with washing. With Ariana, I often had to go pee in the cantina’s restroom; she was bathing all day long…

Brilliant!

The fourth cub was revealed by its own cleanliness. "You smell like a princess," Peter complimented the little lioness, who smiled at him. For the fifth, he tried some more but didn't find them.

"Time's up," Redroar said. "Look around me and count the cubs."

"Five?" Peter exclaimed. "How?"

"The little one played with your mind. The second you had your head turned to follow her siblings, she returned and hid behind me."

"Wow… clever girl."

"Yes… she wants to become a spy. Pays better than bounty hunting. But there's a double-edged meaning in this, too," she bent her knees to be nearer Peter's ear. "She used her brothers and sister as a decoy… Sometimes, you need to let other people die to survive… It might be worth it or not. That's up to you to decide."

Peter shivered. It was true, if not pleasant.

"Fight time. Don't hurt each other too much. Kids, get him."

As one, the cubs jumped on Peter. Two grabbed and bit his ankles, another two his arms, and the last one climbed on his back and started to scratch at his eyes.

"Whoaa!"

Trying to shake them off didn’t help, so he Warped, hoping they'd stay behind. They didn't. It was a piece of valuable information, but the scratches hurt a lot. Finally, he rolled on the ground, like he had done for the jackalopes, but trying to be slow and careful. The cubs jumped off and raised to fight again, but their mother called the bout a draw.

"Do you have any skills with a blade?"

"I think so. Rapiers and cutlasses are my thing."

"Boxing or wrestling?"

"A bit of both."

"What's your forte?"

"Ranged weapons, I suppose. I throw javelins and shoot guns decently."

“Do you have some normal bullets on you?” the lioness asked.

“Yep,” Peter nodded, extracting two magazines, offering her one, and putting the second into his gun. The Sig Sauer was the same caliber as the Lagos Alien, and he bought extra rounds for practice or hunting smaller monsters.

“Kids, go home and bring one standard training kit,” Redroar ordered. “Pick yours too. Now, show me how you shoot a gun, step by step, explaining everything like I knew nothing about it.”

“We need a target,” Peter said.

“See that trunk there?” Redroar pointed at a fallen tree. “Pick it up and move it thirty feet to the left. I need to see your core strength.”

Pfff…. That looks heavy, Peter grimaced. Nevertheless, he tried. The trunk proved as heavy as it looked, and he had to drag it instead of lifting it. He approximated the weight at about five hundred pounds.

“Use your feet!” Redroad yelled, yawned, went to the trunk, and moved it back to the previous location, taking it under her arm. “When I’m finished with you, you’ll carry two of these like nothing. Now start explaining shooting.”

Trying to cover everything he had learned in the shooting clubs and ranges he had visited, Peter patiently showed the lioness every step, then exemplified by putting three shots in a tree hollow. She tried to do the same but missed by a wide margin.

“Do you know how to shoot?” Peter hissed.

“First time I touch a gun,” Redroar confessed.

“Why am I paying you for, then?” he facepalmed.

“I teach you to be a teacher. That’s invaluable. I should be paid extra. Never mind. I’ll try it later. Next time you come, bring me some training rounds.”

“Here are the training rounds,” Peter shoved a pack of normal bullets in her hand. “Now give me back the third magazine. Easy!” he yelled as she momentarily pointed the muzzle at him. “Keep your finger off the trigger. Eject the magazine, slide the chamber, pick up the bullet, rack it again, and look at it to be sure it’s empty,” he explained the last steps again.

“See, you’re already progressing as a teacher,” Redroar nodded. “Now, don’t tell anyone you give me a gun; we’re not allowed to have fire weapons. And don’t flaunt your Spatial Storage so casually; people would kill for that. Look, the kids are back. You’ll train Peter to shoot a bow for an hour, and then he’ll show you how to throw javelins. I’ll take a nap.”

It turned out it wasn’t. The cubs were good with a bow and arrow, while Peter was not. He was still set on using guns, but bows were silent, and it was better to be prepared than to be found lacking. Adding Kinetic Impulse helped the arrows hit like a truck, and Peter was satisfied with the result.

“Javelin time,” the biggest cub decided, putting aside a bow taller than him. Now, it was Peter’s time to shine. He shared his knowledge with the cubs, who adapted it by running and throwing a spear in pairs.

After the two hours of training, there was a lunch break on the terrace. Peter paid the bill for everybody, including Redroar’s husband, with his smallest piece of gold, the one cut by the bartender. It was worth approximately three hundred bucks. The satisfaction on the waiter’s face told Peter the meal did not cost that much.

Peter’s mood improved in the afternoon when the fighting training began. Redroar made him exercise basic footwork, stabs and cuts with swords, or hits and kicks barehanded. She sometimes executed a specific move, asking Peter to do a counter or disengagement.

“It’s not you’re bad at it, my friend, it’s that your weapons are lacking…” Redroar patted Peter’s back. “Kids, pick some sticks. Imagine you’re defending against spears.”

It was a humiliating experience. Peter’s wooden cutlass could barely cope with a single cub armed with a spear. The little ones were fast and agile. At two, he coped for a minute at most, more than that, and he was “dead” in seconds.

“You need a polearm,” Reroar said. “Or a greatsword, but the technique is harder.” She demonstrated her words with a wide swipe of training staff, pushing away all her cubs' sticks and lightly hitting them on the heads, which nevertheless attracted summersaults and wails of faked demises.

“You’d do great in my parents’ shows,” Peter said. “You think I’ll be able to learn how to fight with a polearm?”

“Certainly. The only problem is how fast.”

“I have to go,” he told Redroar. “I’ll be back next week.”

“If I’m not here, message me through the Bounty Board. You have a neat movement skill; have you ever used it in combat?”

“Not really,” Peter shook his head.

“We’ll see about that next week. It was fun," Redroar said at the end. "I remembered my days in the army… I was a Sarge… Bloody Cultivators…" Her eyes welled up for a second.

Peter nodded and Warped away, happy. The System flashed a brief notification. He had gained two levels on a single training day. The return was eventless. No one noticed him when he joined the larger reunited group, and he was in front of the pizzeria at seven sharp.