Pulling hard, I heaved the net up onto the shore, the bright colored littoral fish entrapped in the net flopping in distress on the wet sand. Once I was clear of the water, I opened the net and gave it a few hard shakes, emptying the fish onto the desert beach.
Sidel looked over the fish, then looked back down at the notes she had prepared after talking to local fishermen in Haklan as well as the few Guild tamers who spent time working with sea beasts.
“Toss back the yellow ones,” Sidel said to Estorra, who pulled some globs of water from the ocean to surround the fish the tamer pointed out and returned them to the ocean. “Collect the red ones, and the big silvery-blue ones.”
Rashir tossed me a spear and joined me in collecting what would become our supper and then breakfast.
“This is probably enough,” I said when Rashir and I were done, showing her the haul. “Anything else worth taking?” Estorra had already collected the remaining fish in a holding pool with her water magic so that they did not die out in the desert air.
Sidel looked into the pool again, then back at her notes. “Probably nothing worth the extra work, no. These little ones are edible, but we’ve got more than enough already.”
With a wave of her hands, Estorra sent the remaining fish back into the ocean.
Rashir and I dropped off our fish next to Markas in the shade of the new sled canopy, who had collected some dried out driftwood to stretch our campfire fuel, so he could gut and descale them.
I stood in the warm light, letting myself and my undergarments dry off from my ocean dip before I could put my clothes and armor back on. I was developing a rather dark tan from all my time in the south, but some subtle healing magic stopped me from getting too badly burned.
Once dressed, I joined Markas in preparing the dinner, skewering some of the fish to grill and chopping the rest into pieces for a soup, alongside some of the dried vegetable rations we had brought with us. I added it to the party’s large cookpot alongside a Haklan spice blend. The fish soup would reduce into a fish stew overnight which we could eat for breakfast with a rice-like grain that was grown predominantly around Taraponi.
As the evening settled in and the light of the day began to fade, Estorra got the campfire going and we started to cook the meal. We fell into our usual rhythm which had developed since we started to travel together.
Rashir was telling a story when he stopped mid-sentence, pulling out a dagger. “We’ve got company.”
I followed his gaze towards the water, where I saw some masses moving in the shadows. I blinked and squinted, letting my vision adjust to the dark. It must have been some sort of marine beast that was attracted to the smell of our cooking fish.
“Tug’s not worried about it, so they probably aren’t too strong,” Sidel said quietly.
“I can put up a light,” I said, and glanced over at Estorra to see if she was ready with her staff. She nodded, and I lit up the night.
The beasts that were creeping towards us froze, caught in the act.
“Oh. They’re so cute,” I said.
“Really?” Rashir said, scoffing. “They look like wet polerats.”
“Hmm… I can see where Deklan’s coming from,” Sidel chimed in.
“Do you know what they are?” I asked Sidel, who nodded.
“Seadarters. Iron rank. They can be a bit of a nuisance for local fishers as they’re rather curious. They chew through nets, steal stuff, and sometimes leave nasty, sour feces behind. They have a mean bite, but they’re mostly harmless. They’ll run off if we shout and chase them.”
I looked back at the beasts, who had shaken off the initial fear and were sniffing at the air and approaching us again.
That’s an otter, the Earthling inside me screamed. I had no idea how many adorable otter videos I had watched when I was living on Earth, but the number was high. They were one of my favorite animals in my first life. This world’s version of them was a bit different, from what I could see. They were bluish-gray instead of brown, with a forked tail and long, beard-like barbels instead of whiskers, a bit like a catfish. They were also a bit bigger than their Earth counterparts.
I was surprised I had never seen any in Mirut, where fishing was also a big industry. Perhaps the shieldbacks kept them away, or some other territorial conflict prevented them from migrating north.
Sidel stood to chase them away, but I could not help myself. “Wait. Uh. Do you think… could you teach me to tame one?”
The tamer looked at me in surprise. “Huh. Sure?”
She grabbed a piece of fish, walking me through what I already knew. “You already know how to use enchantments, so this is basically the same thing. Push your magic into the treat, with the goal of infusing your will as a tamer and creating a bond between tamer and beast…”
Once she was done explaining it and satisfied I had succeeded, the seadarters were pretty close, and I tossed the tamer treat to the nearest one. It snatched it up and after scrutinizing it for a moment, stuffed it into its mouth.
I felt the bond settle into place, and quickly checked my profile, happy to see a familiar again for the first time since I left the capital.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Pilus Horgson (Lv 52)
HP: 424/424
MP: 528/555
Status: Absorption (major), Protection (major)
EXP: 136/5200
Skills: 3-Point Magic(++), 4-Point Magic(++), 5-Point Magic(++), 6-Point Magic(++), 8-Point Magic(++), Acrobatics(++), Brewing(++), Butchery(+), Cooking(+), Detect(++), Enchanting(++), Foraging(+), Horticulture(+), Inkmaking(+), Inventory(++), Knotting(+), Leatherworking(+), Literacy(++), Mounted(++), Needlework(+), Negotiation(+), One-Armed(++), Ranged(++), Shielded(+), Smithing(+), Stealth(+), Strength(++), Taming(++), Tanning(+), Two-Armed(++), Unarmed(+), Woodworking(+)
Familiar: Seadarter (Lv 3)
“Well done!” Sidel said. “If you pay for membership, you can jump right in as an Iron rank tamer now.”
I suppressed a chuckle, and thanked her, then summoned my new companion over.
“Hello there,” I said, scritching the beast’s chin and looking at it more closely while Sidel chased off the others. The seadarter smelled a bit salty and fishy, but I could give it a bath later. When no one was looking, I pulled out a small piece of rank C meat from my inventory and fed it to the beast, immediately pushing him up several levels. That would help him be a bit more sturdy, though I did not want to max him out just yet in case he managed to get his hands on any of Sidel’s beast crystals.
“What are you going to call him?” she asked when she returned and gave him a look over as well. Piko and the seadarter circled and sniffed at each other.
“Uh…” I said, looking at the beast and thinking about it. Sometimes, creativity failed me. I had a silly thought, which I almost discarded. Actually… why not? “I think I’ll call him Otter.”
Otter made a warbling coo noise when I gave him some more fish and flopped down next to me, rolling onto his back to enjoy his snack. I gave his belly a little pat and grinned.
“Great, another mouth to feed,” Rashir griped.
* * *
“It’s time to start heading inland,” Markas said after days of traveling south along the oceanfront. He glanced at me. “No more playing in the water with our beast friends.”
“I was fishing,” I insisted, patting Otter on the head. “Providing the party with sustenance.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Markas said. “You can work and play at the same time, I get it.”
The day prior, we had done some extra fishing, slicing the fish thin and stringing it up under the canopy so it could dry out in the desert air. We had to act under the assumption we would not encounter any other beasts worth eating once we started crossing the desert, so we made sure to preserve enough to last alongside our rations until we made it to the dungeon and back. Estorra topped up our barrels with desalinated seawater, and Tug began to pull the sled east.
Crossing the desert proved to be as rough as we expected. Once we put some distance between us and the ocean, we lost the seabreezes which had helped us stay comfortable, as well as a way to cool down and wash off. We were quickly all sandy and sweaty, resting at midday under the sled’s canopy to wait out the worst of the heat.
The desert was as sparse and empty as we expected during the day, but we found ourselves fending off some surprise attacks at night. Creatures that had hidden in small outcroppings or under the sand emerged at night, so we had to shift our sleep schedule a bit, spending more time trying to rest and recover during the height of the day and sleeping in shifts overnight, starting our travels each day before dawn to make the most of our time.
Without Estorra’s ice, party morale would probably have completely plummeted. The desert was unforgiving. I could hardly imagine what pushing further south would be like. I found myself gazing at the southern horizon, the constant heat being released by the sand making it look hazy and dreamlike.
Most noticeable was the absurd levels of atmospheric magic in the region. While the terrain itself was a desert, this was not a magical desert like the lands in the north. The magic was thick in the air here. Even without my absorption buff, Estorra noticed how quickly her magic was replenishing, which was good since ice magic was still expensive.
It was no wonder the Haklan region produced such excellent mages. If I had grown up with this level of magical recovery at my fingertips, I could have pushed myself way harder in my training.
Sidel cataloged some new beasts deep in the desert that she believed were still unknown by the Guild, though Markas had forbidden us to tame any more until after we were finished with the dungeon and headed back towards the ocean.
Our tamer accepted it well enough. “I can still report the details of an unknown beast to the Guild. They’ll put out a bounty on it, and I’ll get a small payout as the discoverer if it’s ever fulfilled,” she explained. “Though I’d still like to grab a few myself.”
After days of travel, I saw something jutting out of the sand to the east through the haze. Markas confirmed that it was in the direction the artifact was sending us, and we guided Tug towards it.
“This is it,” Markas said as we stood before the large cave entrance. “The Expert rank dungeon.”
Finally. The rank A dungeon. I looked up at the imposing entrance to the new challenge, and despite the heat of the desert, found myself shivering in anticipation.
Having yet to encounter a rank A beast, I was only able to consider them as a theoretical entity, specifically the potential evolved form of the rank B dracosaur I fought prior to leaving Freehold. Assuming any natural rank A beasts existed, they would presumably be able to evolve as well, meaning there could be another rank beyond it: the hypothetical rank S. In the Horuthian naming system I created, that would be Master rank, although I had no idea how the strength of such a creature would actually compare to humans.
I had no proof one way or the other if rank S was possible for beasts, or if it was even the limit. Perhaps there were natural rank S beasts out there as well, who in turn could evolve to rank SS, and so on. All I could go on was the fact that my metasystem had labeled the first dungeon I encountered as “rank D,” and everything from there had been my own supposition from observation and drawing comparisons.
The concept of ranks beyond rank S begged the question why the entire naming system would not just have been shifted down. Had there been a rank SS, there was no reason my metasystem would not have just called the original rank D dungeon “rank E” instead, and as such, rank SS would simply be rank S, with everything shifted down rather than having to break the convention. As such, I did not believe rank SS existed.
Everything had a limit. It was the nature of the universe. When a star grew large enough, it collapsed into a black hole. There was a critical mass. Perhaps there was, similarly, a critical mass for living objects—and possibly magical beings—which prevented them from naturally forming any stronger.
Rank S itself may not even exist, depending on how I looked at the ranking system. Until I encountered an unevolved rank A beast, there was no reason to assume that it did. While it was a familiar bonus rank to me from video games on Earth, it was not an absolute. It could simply be the perfected form of a beast, an evolved rank A brought to the very peak of its power and abilities and no further.
In that case, this dungeon may be the single most difficult challenge in this world.