“Not from that side!” Roana, which was back in her body, screamed at me.
“Shut up! I know what I’m doing!”
It was the fourth time she tried to teach me how to tame a creature, and it was indeed getting on my nerves.
“You stay down!” I said as I pushed the head of the huge Nethersnake on the ground.
I had to wait for its Phase ability to get on cooldown, but thanks to the proud Netherlion I had tamed, risking my clock-arm in the process, every time the creature became incorporeal and tried to flee, my lion would get it back for me, whether by going into Phase himself as well or freeze the snake with his roar.
After a few backs and forth, my Netherlion managed to keep the snake pinned to the ground while I pushed the full brunt of my will over it.
I had hit him with the hilt of my knife a dozen times and punched it with my clock-arm a few more, but the damn snake was tough; it was a level thirty-four. One of the highest around here.
Adult Netherboa, Level 34 (17528/340000)
Health: 45%
Stamina: 32%
Strength: Phantasmic State, Grasp, Tail
Weakness: None
Abilities: Phase, Crashing Spire
This Flow creature poses no threat to a sentient, but if provoked, it takes on its physical form. The Netherbeasts can phase through matter given their Phantasmic nature. They can live both in the Physical Realm and in the Abyss, and while their connection is good with both, being primarily Flowborn, they prefer to dwell in the Physical Realm.
These creatures evolve to Ancient Netherboa at level 50.
Crystal weight: 0.317kg
As always, as long as it stated the monster’s Strength, weaknesses, and abilities, other information was superficial for the damn whispers.
Like the fact that Crashing Spire enlarged the creature’s body, which had become instantly so massive that it could wrap around me a couple of times and, doing so, it could cover my full body from head to toes.
I narrowly avoided it by launching my Trick Shot to the ceiling, then dropping down on top of the monster and unleashing a stunning punch after a stunning blow on the creature’s tough head.
“Give in, for Sun’s sake,” I hissed, as I pushed my generous amount of Willpower over the creature’s conscience.
Every time I tamed a creature, I was welcomed by images of its birth or its family; it was indeed incredible. They were all born and raised inside of this cave, rarely leaving and always turning back. There was a damn magnet for them, and that magnet was the creature down the light well.
When the, too tired and damaged, creature finally gave in, I felt the whispers I was waiting for.
You’ve earned 3415 Soul fractions. Soul fractions for next Tamer level: 22000/22000
Sub-Class Tamer has leveled up to 22.
Your Focus increases by 1.
Good.
I wished for the whispers to show me the state of my Tamer level.
Soul fractions for next Tamer level: 112/23000
We had been at it for the whole night. She had leveled up as well, but the process was slow.
These creatures were indeed mighty. But they had recognized our pattern. They were growing wary of us.
I was dead tired of fighting them, so I let the now tame but confused Netherboa recover on the side of the well, getting back down the platform.
I rested my back on the rock walls, these ones untouched by the musk, and focused on my breathing, but the pesky whispers that before I unlocked the Trace Major Perk did not harass me as much came to taunt me.
Choose your active Pet:
Unnamed (Adult Netherlion), Level 27 (4528/270000)
Health: 87%
Stamina: 52%
Strength: Phantasmic State, Claws, Fangs
Weaknesses: None
Abilities: Phase, Prowl, Roar
Agility: 24
Constitution: 25
Strength: 23
Focus: 21
Perception: 18
Willpower: 27
Unnamed (Adult Netherboa), Level 34 (17528/340000)
Health: 45%
Stamina: 32%
Strength: Phantasmic State, Grasp, Tail
Weakness: None
Abilities: Phase, Crashing Spire
Agility: 22
Constitution: 31
Strength: 28
Focus: 25
Perception: 13
Willpower: 15
At least it was very detailed.
However, I had understood quite a few things thanks to such detailed whispers.
Such as the fact that when they evolved, monsters could choose their abilities; in fact, I had had two level twenty-six lions with two different abilities.
If the Young Netherlion had Phase and Roar, once evolved, it could have Fear, Prowl, or Track.
Yet the first one I had tamed had been the most useful by now.
I let go of the boa, which was not as versatile as the lion, and I had to pummel it too much before I could tame it. I could hear it slither away, but it had been tamed by me now; whatever happened, it would not attack me.
Closing my eyes, I could feel the Netherlion’s tiredness; it was almost as pressing as mine.
“Don’t worry, little guy,” I said, placing my clock-arm hand on its mane, “I’m going to free you next; you just need to help me up with that panther over there. But rest for now.”
“You are insane…” came a sincerely amused Roana. “You’ve almost died to catch that lion, and now you want to let it go.”
Being the first I had caught, and also without the support from a pet, catching such a strong-willed creature had not been easy, not at all. However, now that I knew that they could choose their Skills, I needed to grow one myself. I needed to find a puppy.
Roana was spent, tired as I had never seen her, but damn satisfied.
I smiled, “Oh, come on, you’ve shrieked for joy when you unlocked that Perk, don’t tell me you don’t want to go on and unlock one for your Sub-Class as well. You are just missing a level, no?”
She shook her head, “I didn’t think I had raised you to be such a crazed battle junkie.”
“Raised me?” I laughed out loud, and she did in tow.
“Anyway, how does it feel?” I asked.
Her new Command Major Perk, which was tied to her Willpower, allowed her to utter a command that could not be ignored. In one way or the other, she would have a person or a creature do something she wished.
As it seemed, the effect was heavily dependent and countered by Willpower and extremely Shade hungry. But it was effective.
The creatures practically bent to her will and needs.
The Command was seemingly able to fight the very survival nature of the target. So, someone could hurt or kill themselves or somebody else at her wish. However, it could not defy nature or physical laws. So someone that could not fly would not end up flying if Commanded to.
What we found out was that it was easier for them to attack somebody else if that was in their nature, their current state of mind, the environment, or if in the ideal situation, however, the effectiveness of it, depended on the target’s Willpower.
Anyway, it was extremely useful, and I guessed it would become even more powerful if Promoted.
“Wanna be a test subject again?” she asked.
“It won’t go any different, you know?
We had tried it firsthand, but the results were nothing good. My Willpower was too high for her to push me as she wanted, and the same could be said about Focus, which seemed to be the second Attribute taken into consideration by the Skill, like any other magical Skill.
The results were that commanding me to jump, she had only obtained me getting the brief idea of a jump, not even remotely enough for me to enact it, especially since I knew what she was doing.
But even then, we realized that having such a power as to instill a concept or an idea, even if for a brief duration, in someone’s head was one powerful thing.
“Let’s try anyway,” she said. “Climb the wall,” she said.
When she did, her voice became atonic and grave, but once again, only the first word did the work.
“Climb” only one word was engraved in my mind with the power of her new Skill.
Once again, in my mind popped the idea to climb something; even the wall behind me was enough. But I did not do so, especially since there was no need for it.
“Nopes,” it would not work on me, “you might have to try with… err,” no one from our group came to my mind, no one was an easy target, “our group has some Willpower in them, maybe you could try on someone from the Village.”
“I want to try something else, though, may I?” she asked.
I chuckled, “Go ahead, I’ll just take this time to rest. We’ve been active for the whole night.”
She nodded, then she placed her eyes into mine.
Desire.
Looking at her, I couldn’t help but feel something for the girl in front of me, just for a second, as if the realization that the child I had seen as a bigger sister had developed into a woman.
That she might be attractive, no, that she was indeed beautiful, that I might have wanted her if I didn’t already like somebody else.
Roana closed her eyes when she did not see any reaction from me.
“It didn’t work, did it?”
“What did you do?”
“I used my Divulge Skill to send a word to your mind, and that word was a Command, but I guess it didn’t work, a word too many, I guess.”
“No, I think it worked…” I said, “Was the word, Desire?”
She seemed taken aback, “I said, desire me, so yes… it was that.”
I fell mute for a little while.
“I think that was what we were talking about; you’ve instilled an idea in my head; I don’t think it was intentional… but you probably pushed me into realizing that you are not only a big sister for me anymore.”
“So, it worked…” she realized.
“Yeah, but now I cannot unsee you as a… woman anymore. I liked it more before…” I said, I was sincere.
“Well, isn’t it right this way? It’s not like we are brother and sister; we are friends. Right, Loke?”
“Of course… of course, we are. Never doubt that. Roana, I…”
“There’s no need, really. I get it. I just… I needed to get angry with you, I wanted to stay mad at the world, but Mom… She made me realize that I would only give the bastard that did this to me much more importance than they deserve. If I keep hating them, the result will be that I will be forged into a broken person,” she took a little pause, breathing a heavy sigh.
“However, they are dead now; they’ve got what they deserved. But I can’t stop thinking that they might have been the subject of my anger if they were alive, I could at least have someone to hate now… someone I could sincerely despise and on whom reverse my anger upon…” she stared at me, her eyes red, for anger, for the held back tears, for the sleep that we deserved.
“I don’t know,” she continued, “I don’t know if I should be thankful to you for having freed me both from them and a destiny of anger, or if I should be angry with you for not having come sooner, or because having killed them, you’ve taken away something on which I could express my rage. I… I just don’t know.”
But I as well did not know what to say nor what to do.
The only thing I knew was that there was only one thing that worked when Nova cried, one thing that I had learned.
A hug.
A hug would seldom fail; even if one could not understand how another felt, even if one could not hope to realize what another was going through. So I did, I hugged her and hoped it did not fail, especially now of all times.
I could feel her trying to first jerk away from my arms, then trying to force her body to stay into them, but whatever she did, her shivering did not go away.
And so we stayed there, like that, until we fell asleep, she trembled in my arms until both I and her were overcome by our day’s fatigue.
I woke up suddenly because of the intense, sharp fear my new pet was feeling.
It washed over me like a bucket of cold water. It was not mine, yet it was.
But, more importantly, where did it come from?
I followed the direction of the fuzzy feeling. It came from down the well, it came from below ground.
The light had dimmed, and judging from the way I could feel rested and not sleepy in the slightest, it meant that I had slept at least three hours. Which made it around eight bells in the morning.
Roana was still sleeping near me; we had unconsciously formed what was called the big spoon, little spoon position. However, I did not hesitate to wake her up.
There was something that had scared the lion, and I couldn’t see it nor perceive it, which meant that she would.
“Ro, Ro! Wake up! We might be in trouble.”
She did not take long to focus, and just as I thought, her eyes wandered down toward the light; there was something in there that attracted her attention.
“The Titan has woken up; it seems it sleeps at night, however… it does not move. Not that there is enough space for it to move around,” she said as she looked out on it.
“Why is such a beast stuck down there, and how did it get there? How can it even live inside this cave, isn’t it too small for it?” I said.
“I guess… I guess it does not live in this world; it might leave in the other and use this as its lair,” she said.
“Oh… that’s actually a good guess,” I realized. “Anyway, do you want to eat something? Because I’m famished, also… “
“You have to relieve yourself, yeah… same here,” she said.
We moved to a tall place nearby; with my transfer’s help, the Shade and Flow always present inside of this confluence place allowed me to. It was a tall but small platform, away from the beasts, where they could not easily reach us and interrupt us, and did what we had to do; by the time we were back, something had changed, the light was still there, but there was no giant creature.
“What!?” Roana said, “It disappeared! I can’t believe that I was right!”
“Really?” An idea, although rather crazy, started formulating in my head.
“I wish I had seen it do it; I’ve never seen an Ethereal go back to the Abyss.”
“Ro, how much do you think is the distance from here to down there?”
“The distance? I dunno, I’d say at least five hundred meters.”
Five hundred meters meant that I had to make more than a few jumps, and I couldn’t certainly bring her with me. But…
“Are there any more platforms like this one?”
“A few, most smaller but- Loke, what are you thinking about?”
I smiled, almost wickedly, to make the scene, “I’m going to take a look down there. And I need you to be my eyes.”
Roana widened her eyes, “Take me with you!”
I half expected that, still, I was surprised by the emphasis.
“I would but, I’m afraid all those jumps might get you the Shade-Plague?”
“What? The Plague for a few jumps? I don’t think so; also, I have two Black Stars; I’m not that susceptible to shade, you know? But really, now that Nova is a full-fledged healer, wouldn’t she be able to heal me as she did with the villagers?”
“I don’t think we should rely too much on Nova’s abilities. That’s a recipe for disaster; one should not get hurt simply because there’s a healer nearby. It’s nasty, believe me.”
Roana smirked, “If it gives me eyes as captivating as the one you got, then count me in for some trouble.”
“You think it’s captivating? Really?”
“Really. Now let’s go; I’m going to point, and you shoot!” she said, extending me her hand.
“Alright.”
I filled the bag we had brought with as many pebbles as I could; they did not have to be too heavy or too light; they had to be just right, the whole process took half an hour, but I had to be sure, I did not want to get us stuck in the company of a Titan creature.
And so, we started. Roana embraced me, and I held my arm around her. I had to not think about what I thought the previous night; also, I kept apologizing to Harlow in my mind; at least she was not a jealous girl, or I would have felt even more guilty about it.
Since I was blinded by the ethereal light which she could see through, for some reason or another, I would be the arm, and she would be the eyes.
We decided the timing, and wherever she pointed, I threw a rock imbued with Trick Shot.
Whenever she could see that the stone would be reaching its target, I used that frame of time to pull ourselves through the Shade imbued in the flying pebble.
We were down the cave after eight successful throws. I thanked the Sun for having taken so many rocks beforehand because I had used more than twenty of them amid all the wasted throws.
Throwing something blindly was not exactly easy. And I should have expected as much.
When we reached the last of the platform, something changed, I started to see. That was because whatever was emitting the intense light was doing so in a conic form. It was some sort of… mirror of something that looked like water but was definitely not.
The water that wasn’t water belonged to a big pool in the ground. A little strip of land stood in the middle of the pond.
The rest of the place was a vast but empty lair; however, many broken shells that looked like eggs littered the place.
“This is a breeding ground,” I realized, “it’s here that the Titan has its children, the Etherals that are above are nothing but its spawn.”
Roana nodded, “There’s no other explanation.”
However, the place did not only have eggshells; it had a little collection of what looked like trophies.
“Look over there,” said Roana. She was pointing at an especially shiny heap on the ground, “What are those?”
As I turned my head, I did not realize it at first, but then it struck me like a bird hit by lightning.
Lying there, in the distance, was a collection of Shiny Stones and Dark Crystals.
We might have just turned our lives over.
