“Grrreetings, Serrrgeant,” Shelly said, concentrating hard on pronouncing the human words right and growling deeply on every ‘r’. “I know this crrreeping crrrocodile. Saw in your human camp. Means you caught. Congrrratulation!”
I smiled and greeted her in kind. She was cute and funny. She was somewhere between a human and a wolf. No wonder people started calling the species ‘werewolves.’ She had an almost human face, but fur all over her body and a long wolf’s tail. Although the black furry tufts on the end of Shelly’s ears made her look more like a lynx than a she-wolf. Also, Shelly reminded me of cartoon characters, which were often drawn as human-like animals with exaggerated expressive faces. I recalled the words of the stranger in the restaurant, that “the human species now has competitors, even several.” Apparently, the veichs were a competitor to humanity. But what surprised me was that this new acquaintance didn’t feel like a rival at all, let alone an enemy. I felt only positive feelings for her.
“What are you doing in these woods, Shelly?” Varya asked. “You guys usually hunt farther upstream, where there’s more game. Are you being punished for something again?”
“Yeah, punished again,” Shelly’s ears dropped and she looked like a guilty dog. “I lost daggerrr. Second time now alrrready. Smith Giba said he won’t give new one. Uncle Ugmai said I rrruin hunt for whole pack. I miss prey by two paces and I am… what was that word you said… screwdown?”
“Not screwdown, screwup,” Varya corrected her friend.
“Yeah, I am screwup. Bad Luck. I miss silverrr deerrr when it escaped pack and run straight at me. They chased him half day. And I talk too much. Annoy hunters. Now I hunt alone. What are you doing in woods?”
Varya explained that we intended to catch a second creeping crocodile. The level 32 Scout looked at Tick-Tock and started working a long thick rope coiled up in her hands, tying loops and knots in it.
“Herrre, simple saddle for yourrr monsterrr.” The girl offered me the tangled skein of rope. “Of course, need to make good saddle with leather and wood, because crrrocodile back not comforrrtable, but I not want to bother father too much. These loops work as stirrup for stopping, and you can hold here so you not slip off.”
Since I didn’t quite understand how to attach the saddle to the creeping crocodile, Varya took over and had it done in a couple of minutes. I climbed onto Tick-Tock’s back, putting my feet through the loops at the monster’s sides and holding the rope in front of me. Hmm… Actually it was an improvement.
Choose the learnable skill Riding for your character?
Wow, there’s even a separate skill for riding creatures? I delved into the skill’s description.
Riding. This skill increases your movement speed on a mount by 1% for each skill level and reduces your chance of losing control of the mount and chance of falling from the saddle. Leveling up the skill also increases your mount’s non-combat characteristics (stamina and experience gained) by 1% for every skill level.
The precision of ‘non-combat characteristics’ caught my eye. Did that imply that the mount’s combat characteristics could also be improved? As it turned out, yes. There was a separate skill, Monster Rider, that improved the mount’s damage dealt, its armor, and its resistance to external forces (heat, cold, poison and so on). Interesting, of course, but that was for later. First I needed to just learn to ride without falling off, which was a big deal for my Sergeant with his pathetically low Luck.
Level one Riding skill learned.
8 of 8 possible character skills at level 6 chosen.
While I read the game manual and chose skills for my character, Varya mounted up behind me and even tied herself on round the waist; so that was what that loop of rope in front of me was for. I decided to tie myself on too.
“Can I come?” Shelly suddenly asked. “Sound like fun! I never catch crrreeping crrrocodile before. Everrryone in the village will be excited to hear how is done. And I can swim!”
I didn’t know what that last remark was for, since you didn’t need the ability to swim to ride Tick-Tock at all. I turned, trying to figure out what Varya thought about her girlfriend joining us. The girl just shrugged vaguely.
“Up to you, Sarge. You’re our chief crocodile catcher. But bear in mind, Shelly really does talk a lot. If you don’t tell her to be quiet, you’ll regret it within about half an hour.”
“Alright, Shelly, climb on. Only let’s agree up front: when we arrive at the spot, you shut up and stay quiet!”
I imagined that the veich girl would sit behind Varya and hold on to her, but for some reason, she decided to sit on the creeping crocodile in front of me. And then… I turned away, blushing scarlet. Without a shadow of shame, the Huntress took off her vest and skirt and put them in the bag at her belt.
“So I will not have to dry clothes and wash off mud and grime later!” she explained to Varya.
It seemed to me that fur-covered Shelly would have to dry off after swimming in the river in any case, so this concern for her clothes seemed strange. Best not to comment. I ordered Tick-Tock to set off downstream.
* * *
Varya wasn’t lying. A level 60 female creeping crocodile really was basking on a sandbank in that spot where the river snaked, surging, breaking, foaming into rapids. The shallow water here was a convenient spot for catching fish and other river beasts, and the monster took advantage. The massive armored reddish-black creature basked in the sun on a small island in the middle of the river. The creeping crocodile’s eyes were shut, and she looked full, clumsy and slow. But I already knew how fast Tick-Tock could launch himself across a river, and how dangerous it was to underestimate these cunning monsters.
Neither of my companions had ever tamed a creeping crocodile, so they absolved themselves of making any decisions, left me to think of a strategy to catch the river monster. At a great distance, I walked along the bank parallel to the monster. Yes, the female was a little smaller than Tick-Tock, just fifteen feet long, but that didn’t make the creeping crocodile any less a dangerous predator. On the contrary, I suspected the female could move even faster than the heavier male.
The main problem was how to approach the monster without getting killed. Doing that on the river was unrealistic — the toothy crocodile would attack me and tear me apart before I could feed her a single bite. That meant I had to somehow lure her off the island and trap her, keep her from getting back to the middle of the river.
I walked along the bank again and even rode Tick-Tock a little way down the river between the rapids, studying the conditions. I found a convenient spot about eighty to a hundred yards downstream; two huge boulders sticking out of the water left a narrow enough space between them. I could set a trap there, lure the creeping crocodile in and block her exit. I explained my plan to the girls and both agreed to help.
I led Tick-Tock away to catch fish and stay out of the way while we kidnapped his future girlfriend. Then I spent the new three hours cutting logs with my axe and dragging them to the river, where Shelly and Varya helped me drive them into the mud and fasten them together using repurposed rope from Tick-Tock’s saddle and some steel wire. What we ended up with was the solid frame of a large cage about twelve feet long, six feet wide and five feet tall. A man could run in there and then slip through the logs, escaping the trap. A giant creeping crocodile couldn’t.
Item Crafting skill increased to level five!
Great! My Riding skill had leveled up on the way downstream on the crocodile, first to two, then three. Cutting wood raised my Hand-to-Hand combat to level five. And my Tracking and Eagle Eye skills were steadily progressing too, and would level up soon judging by their progress. Considering that catching loaches in the lake for the coming taming had raised my Fishing to level eight, the journey here already seemed justified and useful even if we failed to catch the river monster. And if it all worked out as I hoped, then all the better.
But now the most important part was at hand: one of us three had to be live bait, to
draw in the creeping crocodile and seal it in the trap. A dangerous business. I suggested we draw straws. That really didn’t go down well with the girls.
“I cannot, I alrrready die six times!” Shelly said in fear. “And I am a loser, unlucky. I will trrrip or slip on the stones, fail mission. Like always. Anyway, I only came to see how it worrrks!”
“The trap was your idea, Sarge, and that means you have to finish the job,” Varya said in support of her friend. “Anyway, danger has been the man’s job since the dawn of time!”
Alright… I didn’t bother arguing. Varya was mostly right. And I didn’t know how many times she might have died in this world. Maybe she was on her last life?
“Alright, only no jokes or laughing,” I carried all my bags to the bank and stripped down to my underwear to lower my weight and increase my movement speed, and so as not to lose valuable items if I died, which didn’t seem unlikely.
The girls were quietly whispering and smiling about something from afar, discussing me, but I didn’t hear their conversation. Probably for the best. I couldn’t afford to be distracted right now — I had a creeping crocodile to capture. I shouted at her and threw stones from twenty yards away, but she didn’t show the slightest reaction. Didn’t move a muscle. If I hadn’t known Tick-Tock, I would have felt comfortable going closer, but I knew the creeping crocodile’s speed too well. Good thing I was careful. How that machine of death instantly spun all the way around, I have no idea… But a second ago it looked like a log, and now it was a deadly monster flying straight at me!
I ran as I could, jumping from stone to stone, hearing the approaching feet at my back. I didn’t look back, afraid to slow down or trip. In a spot where I had to cross a little way in the water, my speed fell and the girls screamed — things must have looked dire.
Sprinter skill increased to level four!
Just in time! There was the trap, finally! I bowed my head as I ran through the low cage and almost immediately heard the sound of the creeping crocodile’s broad shoulders smashing against the log walls. The monster had almost caught me! It must have been only inches behind. All the same, I did it. I managed to escape between the stakes of the opposite walls.
“Close it!” I shouted. Varya and Shelly jumped out from behind the boulders and blocked the entrance to the trap with a thick log, then another.
We did it! I fell exhausted onto the stones, trying to catch my breath. I’d never run a hundred yards so fast in all my life! Let alone through water and rocks!
* * *
Evening began to fall before we could tame the river monster, the setting sun kissing the mountaintops on the horizon. Until then, Katy, as I’d named the female creeping crocodile, stubbornly refused to eat the fish thrown at her, raw or cooked. She fought the cage, dealing mighty blows with her tail, testing the strength of the logs. If not for the two massive boulders at either side, which took the brunt of the enraged creature’s blows and kept her from turning around, the cage would have long since fallen apart from those heavy strikes.
But the taming bar didn’t seem to want to appear at all. We probably needed to wait for Katy to calm down and get hungry. Only I recalled reading that the Nile crocodiles of my old Earth could go without food for two months or more. Maybe their creeping crocodile cousins from this other world were capable of similar hunger strikes. Two months was too long, so we needed a way to calm down the trapped monster sooner and make her eat.
Shelly suggested we pacify her with darts dipped in a brew of red villus mushrooms — the veich warriors used them to weaken the strongest monsters, burning away their Stamina Points. Only we couldn’t find any of the Huntress’s mushrooms nearby, and making a sleep potion would probably have required special character skills like Alchemist or something like that. But I came up with an easier way. I could supplement the Taming skill that I already had with the Calming Touch ability, which temporarily lowered aggression in even the fiercest beasts. The ability cost a whole ten mutation points, but it seemed like a reasonable expense. I invested ten of the eleven mutation points Sergeant had. Good-bye, dreams of wings at my back and the freedom of flight. I had more earthly requirements.
As it turned out, Calming Touch cost Stamina Points. A hundred and twenty for each use. I wouldn’t be able to use the ability often. But that was just a detail. The main thing was that we had a way to tame Katy. I got to work. The creeping crocodile preferred loaches to chunks of roast fish, and live fish were much better than dead ones. Sometimes the taming bar stalled or even lowered a little when the beast started flailing within the cage and had to be calmed again. The job took patience, patience and more patience. But in the end, I did it — the taming bar reached a hundred percent!
Taming skill increased to level eighteen!
Your character is now level seven!
Reward: three skill points (total available: six) and one mutation point (total available: two).
Varya inspected the tamed creature, frowned. “Huh? Why is she yours? We agreed that I’d get the second creeping crocodile!”
It was true. The captive monster’s description stated clearly that she belonged to me:
Katy. Level 60 Creeping Crocodile. Female. Sergeant’s pet.
Hmm… The female listened only to my commands and completely ignored Varya. I didn’t know why. I’d have to figure out whether it was possible to give a pet away, and how it could be done. In the meantime, we said our good-byes to Shelly, giving her a generous share of our leftover fried and raw fish. Tick-Tock had found entertainment. He’d dragged another eight-whiskered catfish onto the bank, albeit it not as large as the first specimen. He’d also killed a six-foot paralyzing lamprey which looked more like an overgrown eel than the little lampreys of Earth. Shelly confirmed that her kinsmen had caught such lampreys before. They were edible and very tasty.
Varya and I returned to Pan’s Landing as evening fell, both astride the male creeping crocodile with the female following thirty yards behind. Even from afar, I didn’t like that a whole crowd of villagers awaited us on the bank. Engineer Max Dubovitsky stood at the front, torch in hand, a dark expression on his face. Plainly, Varya’s father was angry as the devil. My companion, up to now carelessly laughing and chatting over our little adventure, completely lost all her luster. She drooped, even drew her head into her shoulders in fear. I could tell the girl truly feared her father.
I have to admit, even I got scared. And although I’d made sure that my behavior with the Engineer’s daughter was beyond reproach all day, and Varya and I had spoken on exclusively neutral subjects, all the same my heartbeat quickened. I had a difficult conversation ahead of me.
Well, if anything, we were about to test the veracity of the girl’s phrase: success is never blamed…
Chapter 15 [Kitten]
Father and Daughter
THE SUN HAD ALREADY dropped behind the mountains on the horizon and darkness was falling fast. Very soon, the night beasts would appear at the village walls. My master and Varya still hadn’t returned. Max Dubovitsky, who at noon had been grinding his teeth and publicly threatening to strangle ‘that bastard’ Sergeant and banish him from the village forever, had calmed down a little. Maybe my Soothe skill had helped a little; that would explain why it had been leveling up all day. Or maybe concern for his daughter overcame his desire to punish the youths for their unapproved adventure. Either way, the Engineer stopped swearing and spent more and more time up a watchtower, peering worriedly into the distance.
He didn’t go to dinner with the rest, claiming a bad appetite. Instead he went to the river, nervously pacing, his hands behind his back. He stared into the dark evening forest on the distant bank. Then the Engineer suddenly returned to the common house and tried to convince the Hunters, who had recently returned with a rich haul, to go search for Varya. The anxious father met no support. The people had returned exhausted and barely able to stand up, and the hunters’ leader Washington saw no particular reason to panic.
“
Why are you so worried, Max? Varya is an experienced Scout. She’s spent the night in the forest before a few times when she couldn’t make it back to Pan’s Landing before dark. And she has a much higher chance than usual to survive this time, since she’s not alone.”
“That’s the whole problem. She’s not alone…” the Engineer lamented. “And there’s a fog coming in…”
Further discussions were interrupted by a joyful cry from Pan in one of the watchtowers:
“They’re coming up the river! On a crocodile! No, two crocodiles!”
“I told you everything would be fine!” The Hunter gave the Engineer an encouraging clap on the shoulder. “Let’s go meet them. We can hear what happened and where the second crocodile came from.”
I tore ass to the bank with them. Almost all the residents of Pan’s Landing were gathered there. Including Julie, who had been helping Anna with chores all day and was already at level seven. The girl stood on the bank too, watching with a frown as the monster swam upriver with two people just barely visible on its back.
Grip, the village’s strongest warrior, was also there, holding his ever-present spiked club. The big level 44 Warrior placed a heavy hand on the Engineer’s shoulder. Max stood at the very edge of the water and impatiently shifted from foot to foot. The Warrior whispered:
“Let’s be civil, Max. No hysterics. I appreciate your parental instincts, but don’t overdo the disciplinary measures. The village needs Sergeant and those beasts more than he needs us.”
Max Dubovitsky gave a short nod, said nothing. In the meantime, making waves as well as any motorboat, Tick-Tock the saddled creeping crocodile sped in with Varya and my master on his back. Behind them swam another massive creeping crocodile, apparently a girl this time. Wow. ‘Katy,’ a sharp-toothed and terrifying level 60 female.
The assembly broke out into excited chatter over Sergeant’s new pet, which would double the strength of the defenses at the water side of Pan’s Landing. The rich catch they brought in was also met with cries of joy. At the sight of the giant lamprey, the Asian Ashot started shaking with excitement. He rushed to get the fish to the kitchen, promising to make “a breakfast that will make you lick your fingers and thank the cook a hundred times!” It sounded so promising and appetizing that I nearly started drooling. I really hoped they’d spare some for a poor little kitten.
A Cat and His Human (League of Losers Book #1): LitRPG Series Page 12
