Shortly after shieldback season, I again found myself earning next to no experience, and was still a small stretch from leveling up. I had gone back to grinding braygulls and jumpcrabs on the beach, but with it turning into summer, the beach was suddenly far less barren than I was used to from training over winter.

It was premature, but it was time to enact my plan to get outside of the town limits.

Over the coming days, I poured magic into the removal and modification of some of the stones of the town’s wall. The stone bricks were large and too heavy to move on my own, and I was worried about ruining the wall’s stability. I reshaped stone from whole brick into a series of arches to create a tunnel I could squeeze through. I left a recess where I could seal the entryway with a facade that looked indistinguishable from the wall as it was, which was wedged into place in such a way that it wouldn’t budge unless someone was explicitly looking for it and had either a chisel or inventory skills of their own. I had some practice doing this already thanks to my various stone hidey-holes where I was keeping loot I couldn’t carry in my inventory.

I worked around the shifts of the guards who would walk the top of the wall that I had studied beforehand. They probably couldn’t really see what I was up to unless they looked straight down the inner wall, but this was easily the thing I would get in the most trouble for doing if I were caught, so this was entirely a case of better safe than sorry. Backing out, re-installing the facade, and making myself scarce through the day slowed my progress a lot, but even if I could go faster, I would have simply run out of MP sooner each day. I was eating a lot of meat to replenish MP, as had been the case for months. Despite being young, I was already seeing definition in my muscles from the exercise and excess protein.

When I finally broke through the wall, I had to recess the tunnel’s exit on that side so I could install a facade there, as well. I left the tunnel and was surveying my new surroundings when I felt a familiar pressure. I pulled up my metasystem and saw the notification.

Exiting Mirut. Entering Mirut Jungle.

“Huh,” I said out loud. I dismissed the notification and looked over my menus, looking for anything new. I didn’t see anything, so I ignored it for now, and looked around.

The jungle was thick with foliage, warmer than in town where the ocean breeze blew more readily, and humid from the plant perspiration. It got warmer the further I got from the shoreline. Walking the shore was too risky, since a guard standing at the end of the wall would be able to spot me, so I had to keep under the cover of trees. I started mentally mapping out the area immediately around my secret tunnel.

It was surprisingly noisy with all the trilling insects, chittering creatures, and brushing leaves as the wind moved through the trees. I found myself swiveling my head at all times, trying to avoid getting caught unawares. Maybe it wasn’t a very good idea for me to be doing this. I had no idea what kind of beasts were roaming out here in the bush.

I saw some brightly colored birds, quite a bit larger than singbirds, which I sniped down with stone bolts. The waterfront was too far to pull ocean water to drown them and I wasn’t sure how well air blasts would work with the leaves and trees. I picked them up and added them to my inventory. My appraisal named them “vicaws,” but I didn’t look much closer than that while I was exposed out here in the jungle. They yielded some good experience as first-time kills of a new species, but the second was already worth much less than the first, which suggested they were too weak to bother grinding on much more. I also felt bad, because they reminded me of parrots from Earth, which were a protected species, although there certainly seemed to be plenty present here. Some of them would occasionally divebomb me, screeching. I took those ones out readily and stored them away. My experience was ticking up and up.

I found a small clearing with some thick undergrowth and surveyed my surroundings. I couldn’t easily see the top of the wall here, so that meant that guards above wouldn’t easily be able to see me. I found some bright flowers and other interesting looking plants and added them to my inventory as well. They were lightweight and could be useful ingredients for things, if I could learn more about them. As I was wandering through the undergrowth collecting plants, I stepped a little too close to a specific tree.

I heard a grunting chittering sound, and looked up. A beast, a similar size to the gremline I met at the ship, was perched on a branch glaring down at me.

My initial response to this beast was that of a rabbit crossed with a lemur. I barely had time to process that before I realized it was flying right towards my face.

“Gwah–” I managed to spit out while reactively swatting the thing out of the air. It tumbled away, twisting in mid-air and landing on the ground, screaming at me. I felt something on my arm, and glanced at it to see that it was bright red. The beast’s nails had shredded my arm as I swatted it away. I cursed and healed myself with a second to spare before it was leaping at my face again.

I did not want that thing anywhere near my face. I summoned a sizable rock in one hand and my 4-point magic circle stone disc in my other and launched the rock into the face of the oncoming beast. It collided midair, then crumpled. I summoned several stone nails from my inventory and floated them around my head.

A quick glance at the canopy of the trees surrounding the clearing revealed that this first beast was not alone.

* * *

I panted, folded over myself as I recovered from the battle. I was drenched in sweat and bleeding from multiple scratch wounds, including one nasty one that cut open my scalp. Those things had been really angry. My MP had basically bottomed out, and many of my stone nails and bolts were lost in the jungle.

This was a mistake, I had thought in the midst of the battle. I can’t believe I’m going to be killed by a bunch of rabbit-lemurs.

With the immediate threat neutralized, I was stuffing my face with cherry tomatoes and meat to address the lost HP and MP. As bad as the battle had gone, I survived, and the best part was that I had hit level 6 thanks to the multitude of attackers. I dropped the last few points I needed into 6-point magic to achieve advancement, then cast a heal. I was now recovering 1 HP per 1 MP spent, which was a much better healing return on magic spent. While the cherry tomatoes healed my HP slowly as I ate, the magic heal was an immediate relief. I could feel my skin stitching itself back together. I would need to wash off closer to the water before I went back into town, and make up a story explaining the rips in my clothes.

I closed my menus, thinking that I would assign my last skill points back in town rather than risk getting caught in another beast’s trap. I quickly gathered up the dead beasts and tossed them in my inventory. Were they always this territorial, or had I done something to piss them off?

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I went back to the tree which had triggered the initial attack. I was looking up at the branches, trying to see if there was a resource like a jungle fruit that they were guarding, when I heard the little cries.

I parted the foliage surrounding the base of the tree and saw the small ground nest. I sighed, making a face, and bent over to glance inside. The bright eyes that stared back out at me told me exactly why I had triggered an attack.

“Sorry little fella,” I said to the baby beast. “I think I just murdered your parents.”

I took a look at the beasts in my inventory to learn a bit more about them.

Treehopper (deceased)

The corpse of a treehopper. Inedible.

Contents: Treehopper bones, treehopper fur, treehopper meat, treehopper offal.

I had eight of these in my inventory now. For all I knew, that was the whole tribe. I pulled one out and looked it over.

The beast had a head like a lop-eared rabbit, with the eyes of a ring-tailed lemur. It had two delicate horns which grew back over the skull, protecting the crown of the head. The body was something between the two, and the tail was definitely lemur-like, but the same dirty beige as the whole body. The paws were more cat-like than I expected, although seeing the damage they had done to me, that wasn’t too surprising. So these things could climb like something between a cat and a primate, and leap with all that and the explosiveness of a rabbit. With the little furry snout of a rabbit, these things were insanely cute when not tearing my face off.

I put it away and looked into the little burrow on the ground again. “Don’t rip my hands open, please,” I said as I reached in for the child.

The young treehopper peeped at me as I lifted it to look at it eye to eye, clutching my fingers with its sharp little nails. That little innocent peep was awfully different from the screeching earlier. It chitter-grunted like its parent had done before initially attacking me, but pitched up.

“What am I going to do with you now,” I said, wincing a bit as the thing grasped harder at my hand. The claws were like a little kitten’s, and I’d probably have small wounds to heal when I put this thing down. The young treehopper didn’t have horns yet, so I rubbed the top of its head softly.

I had been killing beasts for a long time now for the experience, most of which had been innocent. In fact, these treehoppers were probably some of the least innocent beasts I had met yet. Sure, they were reactive in defense of their territory and the child, but I only fought back defensively as well. I probably would have killed them for the experience if they hadn’t, but that was neither here nor there. I looked at the child. Killing a very cute baby beast was a bit of a different story. Would it survive if I left it alone? Probably not if they were carnivores, since it wouldn’t be able to hunt. It might make it if it were an herbivore or an omnivore, though.

I double checked my surroundings, then sat down and disentangled it from my fingers, putting it in my lap and healing my hand. I pulled some small vegetables from the garden which I had in my inventory as well as a cherry tomato, and placed it in front of the creature. If it ate these, I could probably leave it here, as there seemed to be plenty of vegetation around. I watched for a while as the child sniffed at the various offerings, then started to nibble on something. Ok, then. It might be fine to leave it.

Satisfied with the initial nibble, the young treehopper sped up, munching down some greens surprisingly quick. It tried to get its mouth around the cherry tomato with less success. I split the fruit open for the child so it could get purchase with its teeth and it gobbled that up too.

“Wonder if you’d also like meat,” I muttered aloud, pulling a cooked nodmouse out of my inventory. I didn’t have many of these left, having moved on to greener pastures for experience. This one had been sitting in my inventory for a long time.

The treehopper seemed thrilled to also eat meat. Well, most herbivores were opportunistic about protein sources, so that didn’t necessarily mean it would eat meat outside of this context. I recalled that Earth lemurs ate bugs, but I wasn’t sure if they would eat smaller animals. The treehopper finished up the meat and looked up to me, then burped.

I felt a familiar pressure in my head. I opened up my metasystem to see what the notification said.

Skill acquired: Taming

“What the hell,” I muttered. Then:

Familiar tamed: Treehopper (Lv 1)

I sighed. How did that even happen? Forn had said to tame a beast you had to “channel your will” into a food offering for a beast, which I took to mean infuse or enchant with MP. Had this meat, sitting in my inventory for over a year, passively absorbed my MP? This was not how I wanted to spend my skill points, at least not yet. I couldn’t bring a tamed beast home. How would I explain to my parents that I had a familiar?

I thought about what Forn had said at the pier about taming wild beasts. I would have to reinforce this connection, and if left alone, it would eventually break and the beast would turn wild again. I looked down at the child. I got the feeling I could actually appraise it, now that it was my familiar. I had never appraised a living beast before.

Treehopper (Lv 1)

HP: 3/3

MP: 1/1

Status: none

EXP: 4/10

Ok, admittedly, this was all very interesting. Clearly, beasts had a different growth rate than humans. Could they learn skills? It had MP, so could it eventually do magic? How differently would a tamed beast grow than a wild beast? Thinking back to games from Earth and comparing it to this world, could beasts evolve in some way to become stronger?

“Uuuugh,” I groaned aloud. All great questions, all things I would eventually learn about in the future. For now, this was a mistake. I looked down at the treehopper. “Sorry dude, no can do.”

I placed the child back in the ground nest, and pulled some food out of my inventory and tucked it in the nest with it. I didn’t want it to starve, so this would give it an extra chance to survive out here. I hadn’t seen anything that was an obvious predator to these creatures, so hopefully it would be fine.

I stood up, turned, and headed back to the wall quickly. I knew I was deluding myself. A baby in a jungle without parents would absolutely die. Even with parents, it probably didn’t have great odds. I doubted that it was an only child originally, given the nest, which means it probably already had lost siblings.

When I got to the wall, I turned left, headed for the water. I glanced up to make sure there was no guard, then quickly dove in, rinsing myself of the blood. I walked back up the beach, using 4-point magic to pull the excess moisture off my body and out of my clothes.

I had killed its parents, and even accidentally tamed it, and I wasn’t taking any responsibility for it. I felt terrible. Facing the tunnel through the wall, I found myself thinking I had done the wrong thing and instead should have just put the child down. I stopped and pondered. A quick, painless death was better than being eaten alive. Would the food I left with it attract a predator? Maybe I made a mistake.

I glanced back over my shoulder and was surprised to see the bright orange eyes of a baby treehopper staring back at me. It was hanging from an eye-level branch by the tail, upside down. Its lop ears hung down too, making it look even more like a weird rabbit.

“Well that’s adorable,” I found myself saying.