The return trip was a bit more subdued after that, but passed without complication. I sold the worst swords to the smith to either repair and resell or use as scrap iron, although the bows I gained from the enemy archers were decent, so I bought some arrowheads with the earnings. I would be able to return Bortag’s loaned bow now, but needed to make or buy more arrow shafts.
Soren was rather unhappy that the attention had drawn potential thieves to the Freehold villagers, but was glad we had been able to protect everyone and take the thieves down. He was understandably wary when I introduced him to the lubargs, but again acknowledged that the world of taming was full of potential. I did warn him that it takes a lot of practice before one could manage two evolved lubargs like I could, especially in conjunction with the tarands, which earned me an odd look from the older man, given that I was only fifteen in his eyes, but he did not challenge me on it.
After ensuring all the villagers got the grain they wanted and selling some excess to Soren in case of emergency need, we sat down to discuss some of the finer details of my plans and ultimate goals surrounding the spread of tarand use and taming.
“So I’d like to have a kind of organization for it, like a… guild. The guild would buy and sell beasts to and from prospective tamers, help train and educate those that were interested, and help normalize and spread the art of taming so that more people can benefit from it.”
“Buy, as well as sell?”
“Right, yeah. I want to maintain an inventory of beasts for my study, so I can learn more about them. The more I can learn about the beasts themselves, the more potential uses I can uncover. When I was younger, I encountered another beast that could have worked in the place of tarands, but the difficulty of raising one to use was much higher,” I explained, thinking back to my conversation with Bilgus about why Buda was not a good option for replacing oxilire. “It wasn’t until I found the tarands that I was able to start this path forward, and there could be even better beasts out there for the job. My hope is that by offering a monetary reward for unknown beasts, I can encourage people from far and wide to seek them out, tame them, and bring them to me, since I can’t just travel the whole world myself.”
Perhaps I could travel the whole world, but it would be dangerous, and I had a herd of quadhorns about to give birth, and I was extremely curious about whether or not I could milk them and make cheese. There was a lot of work to do close to home, and that was my priority for the short term, not more travel.
“All right. And you really want to operate out of Freehold? It’s rather… out of the way.”
“Only from the perspective of the Kingdom. There’s a whole world to discover, and you can only go so far west before you hit ocean, so far north before you hit mountain,” I said, skipping over the notion of traveling beyond the mountains entirely. “If strong tamers start to gather here, we can explore the east, and with no one else settled this far east…”
“Freehold would be the one to benefit from it,” he muttered in response. He frowned. “We did not settle here to discover riches and collect power. We just wanted a space of our own, to put some distance between us and the capital.”
“And you have, and it’s fantastic, truly. But you said it yourself: the fate of a settlement is either the death or flight of everyone involved, or the ultimate takeover by the Kingdom when it becomes a walled city. While I agree with you that neither option is particularly desirable, I think you can agree with me that living as a settlement in the wilds is not sustainable, either. Perhaps the settlement would survive your lifetime, but what about Rena?” I asked, pointing at the doorway behind him.
Soren turned to see his daughter spying on us, and she let out an “eep” before pulling her head of messy brown hair back. He sighed, and rubbed his forehead.
“It would take… a lot for the Kingdom to come out here and claim Freehold,” I said, pressing on. “Without finding as much gold as Gurt once had, it’s unlikely that they would come out this way for decades, even if we have more success than either of us could imagine. In the meanwhile, success is Freehold’s security. How many shugs can these walls fend off before falling? And what if you could turn those same shugs from a threat into your own guard force?” I asked. I still did not really know what a shug was, but what Bortag told me suggested that it was one of the most dangerous beasts around.
Soren nodded. “So what do you want?”
“You had discussed the building of a cottage when I first arrived, but what I really need is a place of operations, a… front, I suppose, for the business. Ideally, it would be at the north wall, and maybe with a gate or access out of the village that way.”
“Why north?”
“Ah, I’ve been settling that way with my beasts, using them to carve out a place to live by the mountains,” I said, not mentioning my magic. I was sure I would have to admit to that eventually, but Soren was getting a bit overwhelmed already.
“North by the mountains? That’s lubarg territory, it’s–ah, right, of course. I suppose the lubarg aren’t a problem for you anymore with your big ones. But why not just build off the village?”
“Safety, for one. I sometimes have to let the beasts live untamed, as I can only manage so many at once, and it’s not without some risk. The beasts might also attract other beasts as predators, so it’s better to keep them separate. Plus, the smell. If you’ve ever smelled a single oxilire, particularly their dung heap, then you might be able to imagine what a multitude of beasts in close proximity can smell like.”
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“Ah. So you’d like an office building, with access towards your lands to the north, as the face of your ‘tamers guild,’ from which you would be offering to help teach the methods to others and engage in trade.”
“Correct. It would also be good to get Kil and Po working on more wagons for the tarands. We can use them for trade, but also, once word spreads and people start trying to buy the tarands, the village can prosper from the sale of our improved wagon design that’s already fitted for them. And I’m confident people will come.”
“Not unwise. We might have to expand the walls, since there’s limited room to store wagons. Perhaps we’ll expand the wall to the north, since that’s where you want your guild anyway.”
“That would be great. Eventually, we’ll cut a new road through the forest to connect my farm with the village, since I’ll be transporting beasts and goods between the two. In the meanwhile…” I said, pulling out a pouch and putting it before Soren. “I’m willing to initially fund the expansion and operation.”
Coins clinked as Soren lifted and glanced into the pouch, and after carefully controlling his eyes and expression, looked back up to me. “You really weren’t kidding when we first met and you spoke about opportunity, eh?”
I laughed. “I really wasn’t. This is just the start, Soren.”
He pocketed the coin purse and stood. “I’ll start spreading the word.”
* * *
It was not going to happen quickly, Soren had warned. Winter limited what could be done, especially when it came to expanding infrastructure, and we had precious little time to work before the weather became untenable. Rather than focus on a formal face of the future Tamers Guild, I advised him to build out components for wagons. I left some steel with Po the smith to build out additional suspension pieces, gave some larger measurements to Kil the carpenter that I thought we could build to and still pull with the tarands, and was introduced to Lidel, a leatherworker who could make additional harnesses.
Now that I was working in less secrecy, I also commissioned some large wooden gates for the farm’s entryway and also a door for the house I was building. I also bought some lumber from Kil directly, loading it up in the wagon. I had picked up some carpentry tools in Gurt for when I gained a level so I could get the skill, and while I would rather have not encountered thieves leaving Gurt and worried about the possible complications that could bring, it had pushed me pretty close to Level 36, so new skills were around the corner for me, and I had a lot of creature comforts I wanted to build.
I loaded the wagon up, drove it out of town until we were out of sight of anyone, then put all the crates of grain, all the lumber, and even the wagon itself into my inventory. I mounted up on one of the tarands and we made our way through the forest back to the compound.
Reclaiming my bond with Buda, I gave him a hug, and was glad to see he and everyone were doing well. Despite the approaching winter, things would be getting busy, and I had a lot of work to do.
While all that work was important and necessary, I found myself continuously coming back to my curiosity about what a shug was, and after a couple of days it was driving me crazy. I gathered up the proud lubargs and we headed east along the base of the mountain, in search of one of the large beasts.
A few packs tried to hassle us as we traveled, but my pair of massive pack leaders chased them off with ease. As pack animals, when faced with stronger versions of themselves that could clearly dominate their hierarchy, the leaders of the pack ran rather than challenge, and their packs followed. Any stragglers got chased and nipped at, further driving off the group. I was not interested in gaining a whole army of ‘bargs, at least not at the moment.
When I finally did encounter the beast I was seeking, I shook my head in amazement. Bortag had used a common name for the beast, the same way he referred to lubargs as ‘bargs, but the full name of a shug gave a little more insight into what kind of beast I was dealing with.
The beast’s true name was “shuggopotamus,” and it was a massive, six thousand pound monster with a gaping maw like the hippos of Earth. It was clearly a land creature, as it was as much boar as hippo, with huge tusks and coarse fur. We watched it while in stealth mode, learning what I could. I had no doubt that the thing was capable of ridiculous speeds when it ran full tilt, and it pushed through the forest, knocking down small trees like they were not even there.
On one hand, it certainly was an option as a slop-eating animal for my farm, but it would be impossible to feed it on slop alone. The feed costs of keeping one of these would be atrocious, and I was not even sure containment was truly possible unless I kept it tamed at all times. Given my comings and goings, that was simply not practical at the moment. That said, taming one would be fairly straightforward, as when it yawned I could probably just toss magic-infused food directly into its maw.
I debated taming it for the experience, and then killing it while tamed, but I decided to battle it instead. I hated killing tamed beasts, though it was something I had done in my experimentation to see if it was equally valuable as killing them wild. I was a bit relieved when I found it was not, and that killing a tamed beast gave negligible experience, with the amount gained from taming the creature subtracted and some further loss unaccounted for. I was glad that whatever determined experience gain worked like that, because it helped me avoid the moral conflict of gaming experience through killing my bonded beasts directly. Releasing them first and killing them afterwards gave slightly more experience, but it was still not comparable to killing a truly wild beast, even if I had evolved the beasts first, so it was definitely not worth taming, evolving, releasing, and killing.
As for the shug, since I was not planning on keeping it, I prepared myself to kill it.
Like the alcewing—or the Pegamüs, as I called it in my head—this was a rank C beast. Outside of a dungeon, and the kraken-like beast at the bottom of the sea, I had yet to see anything stronger than rank C, and clearly they were strong enough that the average person had no chance defeating them in anything short of a full hunting team.
Of course, I planned to kill it solo. The meat of a creature like this would make evolving beasts much, much quicker and easier, and the skill points I earned from the level I would gain would let me become an advanced carpenter overnight without touching my last eleven skillfruit.
Rank C beasts were somewhat comparable to the strongest animals on Earth, maybe a little stronger. A flying moose or a tusked land hippo would be horrifying to fight as a normal human, just like facing down a charging rhinoceros or rampaging grizzly bear. That said, virtually no land animal, no matter how strong, could compete with a human with a gun and the distance to take a good shot. In the same vein, at my level of power, skills, and magic, a single rank C beast, particularly outside of a dungeon and without being evolved, did not really stand a chance.
Cloaked in invisibility and silence, with a headwind pushing my smell away from the shuggopotamus, I stepped up to the creature and summoned a spear of stone, reinforced with crystallization, and slammed it into the eye socket of the unsuspecting beast with all the force of my double-advanced 4-point magic. The beast died before it even knew what hit it, and I collected my prize.