The Beast
Chapter 8: Tasty Fish
A Royal Road Fan Fiction… of sorts
By Halosty
The next hunting session Roger participated in was rather standard. At least, if you had a strange definition of standard that included wiping out most of the strongest monsters in the forest and one (or possibly two) bosses. The question about the number of bosses depends on whether a goblin riding a giant wolf counts as one or two. Roger got a ring that increased his fighting spirit, but was disappointed to find no carrots of power. He did get some regular carrots, though, so he figured it was probably still a success.
The party continued to wipe out goblins until everyone was too tired to go on, and couldn’t carry any more loot. Well, Roger could have carried more than any two of the others, but he didn’t really have any way to hold it. Roger prepared to go off to practice fishing, but then…
“Hehe little rabbit, I’m not actually that tired yet.”
Arasel was still around. She had showed up later than the others.
Roger acknowledged her presence, but still hopped off towards the river. After he hopped in and started swimming, Arasel said, “I’m going to go sell stuff in town, will you be here still?”
Roger nodded. Then he got out of the water so she could actually see him do it, and nodded again. People were so hard to talk to when they weren’t a Human Companion. Maybe… no, it looked like Roger couldn’t ask this person to be a Human Companion of his. Not that he really wanted to give up any more of his experience anyway.
While she was gone, Roger managed to catch a few fish. Then the bucket was full, so he put them back in the water and caught some more. Then the fish kept swimming away before he could get anywhere near them. Roger pondered at what he could do about scaring them. He had learned that just trying to do something could let you do it, so he tried very hard not to scare them.
New Stat!
Peaceful Spirit
You can call on a semblance of peace, or convince monsters not to attack with the innocence in your eyes alone. You are prohibited from distributing stat bonus points to this stat, and it rises spontaneously, depending on the avatar’s action, especially if you avoid fighting monsters for a long time, or often confront monsters far from your current level.
Roger thought this stat was stupid. He tried to get rid of it.
A stat cannot be deleted.
Well, that didn’t work. At least it would allow him to fish better. It was still a stupid stat though. Why would he want to be more like his stupid, weak, fluffy, cute relatives.
It certainly did help with fishing though. The fish weren’t scared of him, and would startle less easily even when he catapulted a fish out of the water. All he had to do was give them an innocent look and the fish all went back to ignoring him.
Level up!
Beginner level 3
Fishing
Increases effectiveness of fishing. Can find rarer fish.
Health + 150
Roger felt this was an awful lot of work, but he sure liked getting the health. Plus, he got stamina and strength from swimming. It was just a different, stranger kind of training than the training hall. It used a lot of stamina though. Roger was resting again when Arasel got back.
“Hi Roger! What are you doing next to a bucket?” she looked inside. “Ooo, fish! Did you catch them?”
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Roger nodded.
“Ah… that was supposed to be a joke. Is there a reason you’re catching fish?”
Roger nodded again.
“And the reason is?”
Roger shrugged. There wasn’t really an easy way to explain it. Shrugging was actually a pretty hard thing for him to do, but he’d seen these humans do it. Elves, technically, but they were all the same.
“Umm… alright. Well, I’m gonna plant some stuff over here, okay?”
Roger nodded vigorously. He was always in favor of her planting more tasty vegetables. Arasel began digging in rows. She had a spade and some skill at digging, but she didn’t have the physical stats to be terribly efficient at that. Roger went up and poked her.
“The vegetables aren’t done yet, Roger. I haven’t even planted them!”
Roger shook his head. He moved ahead and started digging. Although he didn’t have any tools, rabbits were natural burrowers. More importantly, he had excellent physical stats. Instead of being like a single rabbit digging, he was more like a small army of them. Soon, Arasel had some nice, neat rows to start planting in.
“Thanks Roger! That will really save me some time. On to planting!”
Roger let her do that alone. He wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to just eat the seeds, and he didn’t have hands to carry them in. He just went back to fishing.
After a while, Arasel asked, “You just put them back in the water?”
Roger nodded again. That was pretty obvious.
“...Can I have them?”
Roger nodded. He only put them back in the water to empty the bucket.
Arasel finished planting her seeds, and then she started cooking some of the fish. After a while, an elf passed by the strange pair.
“Hello there, I smelled something good so I came to see.”
Arasel saw a good opportunity. “Well, I guess I can afford to share… for a small fee.”
The hungry elf easily agreed. Money and fish changed hands.
As the elf was about to walk off, he saw Roger get out of the water.
“Hey! That’s the rabbit who attacked me and stole my stuff!”
Roger looked at him, and realized he was the fishing elf. He quickly put on his best innocent face.
“Err, just kidding. There’s no way a rabbit that cute would do anything like that. It’s not like I would be beat by a rabbit anyway.”
The fishing elf walked away slightly embarrassed, but enjoying his grilled fish.
Word go around up and down the river about a rabbit catching fish, and someone selling some of it. The fish was rumored to be relatively cheap and thousands of times tastier than rye bread.
Arasel found herself cooking a lot more than she had originally intended. She tried to sell some vegetables too, but very few people wanted anything but the grilled fish- or just to watch the cute rabbit swim. Arasel remembered some of the people from Roger’s “fan club”.
The carrots and other vegetables would not go to waste however. Roger consumed a lot of them to increase the pace of his fishing. Arasel found herself very busy with cooking and planting and selling fish. At night, Arasel logged off to take a nap, and Roger went out to hunt more. He could always use more experience.
The next day, they did the same. They even made plans to continue after the party moved upriver, to the other side of the city. The fanclub grew and shrank, but there was almost always someone around to fawn over Roger. He took the opportunity to increase his Charisma and Peaceful Spirit stats. Especially when he saw players he had killed at night.
End Chapter 8: Tasty Fish