“Welcome to the Freehold branch of the Tamers Guild,” I said to Soren as he walked in.
“Freehold branch?”
I waved my hand. “I’m assuming that sooner or later we’ll have a building in Gurt as well, if not beyond. Also, head office is up the road to the mountain. This is just part of a bigger picture.”
Soren chuckled and shook his head. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a peculiar young man?”
“Yes, I’ve been told.”
Soren took a look at one of the walls near where I had constructed the front desk. The wall was split into two sides, “buy” and “sell.” Under each heading I had pinned up sketches of beasts with information, including the names and descriptions like color and behavior.
“Tarand, of course, lubarg, and… rockstalker?” Soren asked, reading off of the pages of beasts that were available to buy.
“That’s another import of mine,” I said, reaching down below the counter and lifting the half-grown kit that was sleeping at my feet. It mewed as it awoke, and I set it on the counter.
Soren raised an eyebrow, and took a half-step closer. “Is it safe?” I nodded, as it was tamed for the visit, and he came right up to it, bending over to examine it. “Seems young,” he observed.
“It’s not fully grown, but I figured selling the young would be an attractive prospect to some who were looking to bond more emotionally with their beasts. An adult is ready to use, but raising one from youth has some advantages. I think.”
“You think?”
“...I still have a few things to work out. In any case, the little ones are cuter.”
“I suppose,” Soren said, not convinced, but I knew he would come around.
Who can say no to this face? I pet the young rockstalkers chin, fussing over the cute critter.
“You’re asking a lot for the tarands, especially compared to the others,” he commented.
“Less supply, but also the most value. The first people to buy tarands and their wagons will have a massive first-mover advantage when it comes to rapid transport for trading. That’s also for a full grown one, as there’s no real benefit to selling the young, since they can’t haul.”
I watched Soren look over the other pictures, the beasts I would buy, and for how much. I was offering a good price for some beasts, enough to entice people who would otherwise be on the fence. I had a picture of a ramhog, with a specific note that I was looking for a female, as well as a picture of a treehopper, a gremline, a rackenbit, a chipig, a muskoon, a pannid, a direfox, and many more that I had seen on my travels. Soren tapped the treehopper.
“This one looks a bit like your companion,” he commented.
“Treepo is a transformed treehopper, yeah. Great companion, so I’m hoping to buy in more so I can offer them for sale to other tamers. They’re from the jungle out west, though, and that’s a big journey.”
“What about non-tamers? Most people can’t actually do what you need them to.”
“Right. So the plan is to include training into taming as part of the membership, which will have a small fee and get you a badge,” I said, lifting up a metal coin I made with magic over the winter with a small logo that looked like a stylized animal face. It was a simple iron coin, but I hid some pure aluminum at the core as a safety against forgery, although I was not too worried about that yet. Still, it would weigh less than pure iron, and I could appraise it directly to ensure it was real, just in case. “You’ll need membership to buy and sell, and I’m developing a rank system that informs what you should be able to handle.”
“Well,” Soren said, stepping back. “This is interesting, but out here in the wilds, it's of limited value. No one knows about it and the locals aren’t going to sprint off to far eastern jungles for a few coins.”
“Yeah, I know. As soon as the ground dries up, I’m going to head off to Gurt with a couple of wagons, try and sell one with the tarands and get some word of mouth going. I’ve also got to buy and sell a few things, and I’m hopeful more of the villagers will use me as a middle-man to make the trip more valuable, although since I’m still working at cost, it won’t be valuable valuable. Er, profitable. Unless I sell the wagon, I suppose.”
“Sounds like you have a plan. So, how much is membership?” Soren said, stepping back up to the desk.
“Wait, really? You want to join?”
“Pilus,” Soren said, chuckling. “The money you provided for this endeavor paid for the village expansion, this building, all those wagons outside, and then some. Paying for membership is just returning a fraction of your coin back to you. Even if you fail, and I’m not convinced yet that you won’t fail miserably, you’ve grown the village, given people income and work for the winter, and will at the very least bring a year or more of prosperity through ease of trade to Freehold. The least I can do is go along with your plan and see what it’s all about. I’m sure half the village will as well.”
“Right,” I said, blushing a bit. I would rather people be legitimately interested, but that could follow. “Of course. Well. Let’s get started.”
* * *
Soren’s prediction turned out to be somewhat accurate, as people filtered in and out of the building all day once the word got out that I had opened. Membership was not a lot, though I would likely raise it if we opened a branch in Gurt, so there was little to stop the locals from joining. I had not prepared enough badges, so I had to start telling people that I would have more soon and they could pick them up, but I was recording the membership on parchment as well so it was easy to see who still lacked a badge and what count I would require.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The process of teaching people to tame was relatively straightforward. Farm kids learned it all across the kingdom, just through spending time around the animals and feeding them. It only required a drop of MP to infuse a treat, and I had prepared some plain dried pieces of meat for them to do so. If they could not figure out how, I used one of my light enchantments to get them used to the feeling of pushing magic through an item, the same way I had previously taught Soa. I had a few cages of vorbils that I caught in the forest as beasts to practice taming on and acquire the skill, since at rank G they were some of the weakest beasts in this world and should offer no resistance to the process. In most cases, I got people to break the bond when they were done, but anyone that wanted to keep theirs could as part of the membership. I hoped to have more starter beasts, as non-local rank G critters might be more enticing, but since rank G beasts were basically just fodder the goal was to get people reaching beyond rodents and small birds and taming some rank F creatures as soon as possible. For everyone without access to a skill menu, taming was an act where practice made perfect. Taming and raising stronger creatures would allow them to tame and raise even stronger creatures, and so on.
In some rare cases, people failed to acquire the taming skill, and usually that was because they were on the cusp of their next level. I had worried about people not having the SP for the skill, as natural growth used available SP to build the skills that were used the most, but usually it was a relatively even spread over the full time it took to gain a level, and happened in line with experience gain.
That was slightly different for people who did a lot of killing, beast or otherwise, but for most craftspeople and the average villager, they acquired the skill as well as a nice bump of experience towards their next level thanks to the new experience. If they were about to level up, it was possible they had used all their available SP, in which case I told them that they should try again in a handful of days, during which I hoped they would level up. I was a bit worried they would get dejected and give up, thinking they did not have the talent for it, and wondered how often issues like that happened in this world, when it was just a matter of lacking the available skill points at the wrong times.
That reminds me that I should go check out the possible dungeon. If there is one, I could use it to quickly farm some skillfruit, and I could offer those for the stubborn learners to jumpstart the process with a bonus skill point.
Beyond that, my true goal was to grow a whole crop of skill fruit at the farm. I had prepped some land to plant some pits, but the nights were still a bit chilly and as far as I knew they were jungle plants and would not suffer frost well, so I was waiting for warmer weather. I had a couple pots in the house to see if I could get them to germinate early, but had not had any luck yet.
My goal in growing skillfruit was not entirely altruistic. I knew that a lot of my strength at an early level came from the rapid consumption of a large number of the fruit, and that without that, I might have failed to protect the north. My knowledge and ability to see and adjust my own stats was a cheat code for my power in this world, and there was a lot of potential in skillfruit abuse. If I was going to be focusing on gaining income and helping my community and the Kingdom as a whole through the power of pet ownership, I was definitely not opposed to throwing myself into cheating my growth through gluttony.
Thankfully, my attempts at sugaring seemed to be working out. One of the two types of trees I identified as a possible source of sweet sap started to run when the days warmed up, and I had successfully collected and reduced a bunch of syrup. I had to manufacture some quartz jars to hold the syrup until I could purchase better bottles from a glassmaker in Gurt—my windows were thick panes of quartz as well, in the short term, although I kind of liked them as they were—but it was all safely tucked away in my inventory. It was not quite maple syrup, but it was sweet enough to offset the sourness of the skillfruit, and I was looking forward to having a fresh crop to experiment with. If I could not find citrus, I would try cheesemaking with skillfruit, too, but I was not expecting that to work, as the sourness of skillfruit was slightly more bitter, like rhubarb, rather than lemon.
I shook off the distracting thoughts when the door jangled and a young girl walked in.
“Hi Rena,” I said to Soren’s daughter. The nervous girl was rarely seen outside of her father’s home, and her mother followed a few steps behind. I nodded to her, but she just winked and motioned to her daughter, so I refocused my attention there. “Have you come to join the Tamers Guild?”
Rena nodded, awkward and shy. Her brown eyes that matched her hair bored into the ground. I was not entirely sure how old she was, maybe nine or ten, old enough that I would have expected her to grow out of this shy phase by now, but living in such a small village might do that to a person. A part of me noted, with amusement, that my body was probably only a few years older than her, but my height had continued to increase to match my muscle-bound physique over the winter and felt much older than the twelve and a half that I was biologically.
I saw her mouth move, but could not hear what she said. “Come again?”
“I was hoping to get a friend like Treepo,” she said, wringing her hands.
I smiled sincerely at the girl. “I can relate to that. Treepo was my first real friend. But, hmm. First, you need to learn how to tame, and for that I’ve got a cute little vorbil here. Wanna give that a try?”
She nodded, frowning slightly, and her mother paid the membership fee for her. I had to use the light enchantment before she got the hang of it, and she had so little MP that she ran out after that, so I got her a cup of watered down MP potion to replenish her before I could get her to try again. Fortunately she was able to infuse a tamer treat and managed to tame the small rodent.
Vorbils were really not very interesting creatures, just small yellow rodents with a tiny nub on their head, but after some thought I realized that Gregory the flying nodmouse had started life as an uninteresting rodent as well.
“Rena,” I said, brainstorming. “Did you know that Treepo was a transformed beast?”
She shook her head, and I reached below the counter to summon a tiny piece of shug meat from my inventory, as well as a small magic crystal.
“Beasts, when they grow up and get strong, gain the ability to transform. When I got Treepo, he was only this big,” I said, gesturing with my hands. “Just a little baby. He grew up into a grown-up treehopper,” I continued, making the gap between my hands larger. “And then when he got strong enough, he transformed into a high treehopper, like he is today.”
I gave her another cup of watered down MP potion, then I squatted down and handed her the piece of meat.
“Try pushing more of your magic into this,” I said. Feeding it uninfused might cause my residual magic to snap her tamer bond and take it over, but once she pushed another few MP points into it, she should dominate the latent magic of my inventory. I did not want to refill her MP any more than that, in case it upset her stomach, but what she had already should suffice. “Now feed it to your vorbil.”
The tamed vorbil ate up the shug meat and, unsurprisingly given the enormous rank difference, it rapidly gained the experience necessary to hit a rank G level cap.
“Now watch this,” I said, and dropped the crystal in front of the vorbil.
The small beast immediately nabbed it and popped the piece of crystallized magic into its mouth, and without any further ado was washed over in the light of evolution. It doubled in size, then doubled again, and the nub on its head extended into a stout, slightly curled-back horn. It grew an incredibly dense fluffy coat that was a brighter yellow-orange than the initial dull yellow it had started, and grew a cute fluffy tail, like a tiny rodent pomeranian.
“Now he’s a bouncing vorbil,” I said, sharing the name I gained from appraisal. He hopped in place, and I could see how it could use that little horn to pounce and ram some small prey, although the critter was so small and cute that it did not seem remotely threatening. What is it about evolved rodents in this world?
Rena’s eyes were wide, and she looked back up to me in shocked joy. “I love him,” she said decisively. Her mom looked at me, holding back a laugh.
I failed to hold back my own and laughed while standing back up. “Great! Enjoy him. Love him. Make sure to give him a name. And welcome to the Tamers Guild!”