Our first quest as a party was a simple hunt of Silver rank beasts to bring in quality meat for the city. Any one of us probably could have managed it solo, but it made for good experience working together and establishing party tactics while learning to read each other.

The second quest we took was a convoy guard quest to Taraponi and back. Our party was definitely overkill for the job, but the merchant was willing to pay for us, and it was a good chance to see how we would get along on the road for a longer period of time.

Personally, I was just eager to get the chance to visit Taraponi and see the last of the walled cities in the Kingdom with my own eyes. It was still hot there, but a bit more fertile and with a lot more influence from the north plainly visible. The merchants needed a few days in town before heading back, so I took my time exploring the city while the rest of the party did whatever business they had in town, or just rested in the inn.

There were many more mixed-race people here, and I swung by Gorban’s guandao school to make sure it was still operating without issue, as was promised to the man when I became king. While I was out and about, I made a few more purchases for myself and as souvenirs for those back in the capital, tucking them away in my inventory.

I also managed to find some steel at a better price in Taraponi, and went ahead and “rented a forge” to make my new tower shield. In actuality, I just snuck away and constructed it with 8-point magic.

The shield was a beast, and as heavy as I expected. I debated trying to fabricate an alloy or composite fill and having the shield only be steel on the surface, but then figured it was not worth the headache if someone else tried to pick it up and found it unusually light, or if it was fully destroyed and someone examined the ruins.

When the rest of the party saw my new shield, they were again stunned into silence.

“How… can you even wield that?” Sidel asked.

“I don’t think I could pick that up,” Markas added.

“Our last defender used a much smaller shield,” Estorra stated.

Rashir just scoffed.

“Well, I’m… pretty strong, I guess. Help me test it out?”

I had my party members attack me, practicing my ability to maneuver the last shield into place, catch attacks that might otherwise get by, and spiking it into the ground as a temporary barrier.

When I hit Level 51, which happened soon enough questing with my new party, I dropped another 50 skill points into Strength, bringing it from 10% to 15% of the way to mastery. That made the huge steel shield a bit easier to maneuver.

With my last skill point, since I did not particularly feel like adding 0.1% to an expert skill by itself, I decided to try and pick up a shield-specific skill, if one existed. By then, I was already developing a bit of a reputation in the Haklan Guild and with my party, and got a few of the adventurers to take me on in the training yard, betting a silver coin that no one could get through my defense.

At first, I was unsure it would work, but after a day of fighting battles entirely defensively, trying exclusively to block and wait out my attackers, I finally saw a change to my skills with the addition of a new one: Shielded. It was my first basic skill in a long time, and the only one on my list, but I would toss the round-off skill points I got over the coming levels into it until I got it to advanced, and it should help me with my role as a defender, protecting my party members, blocking damage, and being a living barrier when necessary.

The new skill helped me more intuitively use the shield and block attacks. I had spent most of my life avoiding taking hits directly, staying agile or fighting from a distance or using magical barriers. Purposefully putting myself between an attack and a target as a physical barrier was new, and I would happily take a new skill to practice with for the bonus experience thanks to the novelty. It would help me reach Level 52 that much faster.

* * *

We were walking through the whistlewood groves, after finally accepting a quest that would take us in that direction. My goals in the area were twofold, above and beyond us accomplishing Sidel’s quest there to tame an octophant for the Tamers Guild.

The main thing I needed to do was guide my party to the dungeon that was in the area, and start opening up that can of worms.

The second thing I was hoping to do was find a panda of some kind, or whatever this world’s equivalent was. I may have been hiding that I was a tamer, but I was still eager to see the various beasts of this world, and there were so many cool animals that lived in bamboo forests on Earth, I was really hopeful to find some in the whistlewood groves.

I was surprised to encounter some shagloths there, mostly docile and chewing on the whistlewood. The only one I had seen was in the jungle, quite a bit north of the whistlewood groves, but perhaps they moved seasonally. That, or the allure of the skillfruit tree was just that severe. Certainly, these ones were far less hostile than the one that I had fought with.

After walking for hours, finding no octophant nor panda-beast, we decided to make camp for the night. We had arrived in the region fairly late in the day, and it was already growing dark.

* * *

I awoke with a jolt to the early dawn light. A sound had awoken me, and something about it refused to let me fall back asleep.

Getting up, I found most of the party still asleep, only Sidel already up and about, feeding Piko and her rhinothell, who was named Tug. I greeted her, and offered Tug a small piece of jerky. It was a piece of the kraken meat, which I had dried in Haklan and let all my residual magic bleed out from so it would not interfere with Sidel’s tamer bond. Each piece brought the rhinothell closer to her max limit. I already knew Sidel had a beast crystal for the rhino, and tested her regularly to see if she was ready to transform.

Suddenly, I heard the sound that woke me again. A crowing cry echoed through the whistlewood grove.

“Sid… what’s making that sound?”

Sidel cocked her head. “That cry? That’s a bushcaller, I think. Kind of a useless little beast, it has wings but it can barely even fly. Good eating, but weak and not worth much with the Tamers Guild.”

“I need to see it,” I said, seriously.

“Uh… all right?”

Sidel led me through the whistlewood grove, until we came to an area densely packed with low foliage. We dropped into a crouch, and she pointed ahead.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“They’ll be in there,” she said, and reached into a pouch on her belt for a small piece of jerky, tossing it up to where the bushes parted slightly. We waited until a bird stepped out, pecking the meat a few times in curiosity, before it picked it up and fled back into its den.

That… was basically a chicken, I thought as a huge smile broke out on my face.

Its green and yellow feathers were different, a little bit more like peafowl than the poultry I was familiar with, and it had shaggy feet instead of bare ones, with a squat neck and long whiskers instead of wattles, but it seemed like a fit. If I recalled correctly, chickens descended from junglefowl that were native to a similar region on Earth.

So long as I ignored the fact that it had four legs instead of two, it seemed like a close match. And hey, that just means extra drumsticks.

“Does it make a nest, and lay eggs?” I asked.

“I think so? I believe they grow to be a nuisance in the area, producing a lot of young in the spring. The local huminectes prey on them and manage the numbers.”

Lots of young definitely sounds like large clutches of eggs.

“Great. Thanks so much, Sidel.”

“Sure? Why did you want to see them so badly?”

“I know a… fancier of beasts, back in the north, and in particular small winged beasts, like blueflit. I think he’d be really interested in these bushcallers. I’ll send him a letter, let him know. I bet you’ll see the bounty on them go up substantially soon.”

“Hmm. Maybe I should tame a few while we’re here.”

“Could be worthwhile. If not, you said they were good eating, right?”

“True…”

I left Sidel and headed back to camp, finding some of the others waking up. Estorra was boiling some water on the fire to make some nikopi while Markas was doing his morning stretches.

“Where’s Sidel?” Estorra asked as I sat next to her.

“Uh, I asked her about the bushcallers in the area, and I think she decided to tame some. I may know a guy in the capital who will pay a premium for them.”

“I see,” Estorra said, returning to her brewing.

Rashir eventually stumbled out of his small tent, scowling. He winced at the morning light, pulling a hood over his head and wandering off to empty his bladder before returning to wait for the nikopi, which Estorra finished and served to the three of us. It was too bitter for Markas’s tastes.

Eventually, Sidel returned to the campsite, with a small flock of bushcallers following behind her. Alongside the smaller hens was a larger, more ornate bushcaller, likely a male, with magnificent plumage and tremendous whiskers. It surveyed the various humans at the camp, then sat back, opened its beak, and let out a loud crow. I grinned as I sipped at my mug.

Markas sighed. “Will these beasts be joining us, Sid?”

The tamer shrugged. “Deklan said he knows a guy and they’d be worth something. At least this trip won’t be useless if we can’t grab the octophant.”

The bushcaller crowed again, and Rashir muttered something about eating them into his mug.

Sidel glared at him. “You can’t eat them. At least, not until I find out how valuable they might be. Otherwise, if Deklan’s right, I’ll just be coming right back out here to get more. You going to let me go alone, Rashir, and risk my life, or do you want to make a second trip? Feel like hauling back your hunts without Tug?”

“Now, now,” Markas said. “No one is eating Sidel’s beasts. Even if they’re… loud. Besides, we get a cut of Sidel’s bounties as her escorts, so it’s in all of our interest for her to bring back beasts. That’s why we’re here, for the octophant. Speaking of, let’s pack this up and get hunting.”

In short order, we had our camp torn down and packed, and we were off through the whistlewood grove again, looking for the eight-trunked monstrosity.

The octophant was not my real goal, though, and once we were nearing the area I wanted to go, I projected a loud cracking sound with 5-point magic off to the left.

“Hold,” Markas said, snapping his head towards the sound as we all came to a stop. “There’s something that way.”

Forming up, we began to walk towards the dungeon, and I tried to contain my excitement. Halfway there, though, just when we were approaching the area of effect for the dungeon, Estorra stopped. “We should turn back.”

“Agreed,” Markas said immediately. “It was probably nothing.”

Frowning, I looked at Rashir and Sidel, who were nodding.

“Uh,” I said. “What about the sound?”

“Just some whistlewood falling. We need to find an octophant.”

“...But… the sound might have been an octophant? Right?”

Markas looked at me funny, then shook his head. “You’re leaping to conclusions, Deklan. Let’s head back.”

I looked around at the party as they started to turn and head away from the dungeon. Weird. Some kind of natural effect, maybe, to keep sapients away from the dungeon? Kind of like the opposite of what it does to beasts? Yeah, the dungeon has a kind of… unpleasant aura, and I remember my familiars disliking it too. Why am I immune?

“Well, I’m going to check it out,” I said, turning away and stepping towards the dungeon.

“Wait! Deklan!” Markas called out, eyes wide. He and the party followed me, and soon we had stepped past the boundary.

The whistlewood all around the dungeon was dead, and the ground cover was gone within the dungeon’s ring of corruption. A silence fell as we walked through the dead zone, all the local beasts either trapped in the dungeon or steering clear of the area for their own safety.

“What is this?” Rashir hissed, pulling out a dagger and looking around frantically. Sidel’s beasts were also wide-eyed and flighty, and Estorra was mumbling something about her magic.

“There,” I said, pointing at the dark matter jutting out of the ground. “I think that’s the source.”

Markas stepped up next to me, peering ahead. “Cautiously,” he said, glaring at me, and we slowly moved up to the cave.

Once we were all standing in front of the cave, everyone started speaking over each other.

“We should tell the Guild—”

“This doesn’t feel right—”

“Where are all the beasts—”

“What do you think is inside—”

“—I think I know what this is,” I said, and everyone stopped talking to look at me. “I spoke with a priest in the capital once, and he mentioned something like this,” I lied. “He called it a dungeon.”

“What does that mean?” Markas asked. “What’s inside?”

“Corruption,” I said. “But also… a means to repair it. The dungeon kills the area, trapping beasts inside, twisting them into corrupted versions of themselves in certain cases, to protect a core. If we can kill the beasts, we can extract the core, and the land will heal. Or so he said.”

“Where does it come from?” Estorra asked. “The magic feels… wrong.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s possibly just another form of magic, or the counterforce to magic. The priest warned me some magic might work differently within. The corrupted beasts can see through illusions, the rock within can’t be controlled, that sort of thing.”

“What about the core?” Rashir asked. “Is it valuable?”

“Possibly?” I asked. “The Church might buy it.”

“The Church… definitely has the gold,” Rashir mumbled.

“We should go back and report it, in any case,” Markas said. “The Guild can send people out to decide what to do.”

“...Can they?” I asked, and Markas looked at me. “We almost walked right past this. Have any of you heard of something like this before?”

Everyone else shook their heads.

“The dungeon seems to have an effect on our minds, hiding itself from us or pushing us away. We might not discover it again if we leave. Leaving it unexplored could be dangerous.” I looked at Markas directly. “We’re strong enough as a party to take on a Gold rank quest. We should check this out.”

A moment of silence passed as we all stared at each other, Sidel shifting awkwardly on her feet as she babied Piko, who was glaring at the dungeon and trembling slightly. Finally, Markas sighed.

“Fine. Let’s explore the entrance, at least. If there’s a problem, we retreat immediately.”