"We're here," Skinny said as he rapidly slowed down from his ridiculously high top-endurance-running speed.

While riding him, we must have been going hundreds of kilometers per hour, through the tundra, plains, forests, mountains, and even a sea or lake at one point, without ever slowing down. And even now, he wasn't so much as slightly short of breath.

Truly, the physical capabilities of B Ranked Monsters were nothing to scoff at.

"Thanks for the lift," I said before I gave him a pat on the head, hopped off his back, and stretched a bit. Nearly a full day and a half had gone by since I said goodbye to my friends back at the Ganjier Tundra and all but stopped moving, after all.

"Katherine!" In any other scenario, I might have jumped for how abrupt and unexpected Uncle Armond's surprise greeting was. But, I'd gotten used to expecting as much from him over years of suffering near heart attacks.

"It's good to finally see you again! You've almost made it to B Rank, haven't you?" He asked as he flickered around me and watched as I struggled to maintain eye contact.

Eventually, as he kept increasing his speed, he turned into a black blur melting into the background before me, and I resigned myself to losing this challenge once again.

In spite of that failure, Uncle Armond promptly stopped, seemingly teleporting in front of me with a massive smile on his face as he said, "Yeah, you're definitely getting there. This time, you managed to keep up with Lesser B Ranked Speed before I lost you."

"Yeah," I sighed, "now, I just have to get used to concentrating in the middle of a fight against monsters going that fast. That, and figuring out how to land single-target attacks on enemies capable of dodging at those speeds..."

"Don't beat yourself up too much over it, kid," I heard Uncle Ransel say from the side. When I turned to face him, I saw as he approached with Uncle Tebolt in tow as he continued on to say, "Increasing your reaction time and actually being able to keep up with high-speed movement is always the hardest part."

"R-right," I stumbled over my words as I flared angrily for a split second. As much as I loved him like my real uncle, Uncle Tebolt, I hated how Uncle Ransel almost referred to me as "kid" or "girl."

I knew he didn't mean anything malicious by it. To him, my other uncles, aunties, parents, and grandparents, I would probably always be nothing but a child or a little girl in their eyes.

But…

I wished that after turning eighteen a couple months ago in the spring or my rapid advancement to C Rank would garner me a little more respect from the man. I'd worked damn hard to make it into the extreme minority of people my age who had the power to blow up buildings with a wave of my staff, damn it!

"It's good to see you again, Katherine," Uncle Tebolt said, drawing me out of my internal rambling. "Now that you're here, we can finally see whether or not my idea has any merit."

"I still don't get why you think Nova's going to be able to do much of anything. But, it can't hurt to try, right?" I could hardly hide my doubt as I spoke.

"Relax," Uncle Tebolt waved away my concerns. "It's exactly as you said; all we can do for now is try. And if it doesn't work out like I'd hoped for, then I'll just send you on your way back to Violeteast City while I send another one of my summons to request for backup from the Guild."

"However," he chuckled with evident amusement, "If my idea does come to fruition and your Tamed Beast manages to provide us with enough intel on the Orc Fortress before we go in to raid it… Well," He grinned, "not only will the three of us manage to complete our mission without the need to have a cut of our earnings submitted as requisitions to the Guild for backup. But, you'll be able to take credit for the completion of a B Ranked Job."

"But… All the credit I would have earned would be as a Summoner, not a Mage; and, not even for a Summon that I even remotely cultivated," The thought alone left a bitter taste in my mind.

"The reason you'll get credit, should your Eaglet partner prove himself to be worth it, is because of your strength. Your Tamed Beast is an asset to your strength and even if it seems like it was entirely his efforts that contributed to the success of our mission, he'll only have been able to be called onto our side because you contacted him in the first place," Uncle Tebolt said, somewhat making me feel better.

I mean, it all felt like I would get credit for being lucky enough to meet a baby bird who didn't hesitate to agree to a Tamed Beast Contract. But then again, wasn't it written somewhere that luck is also a type of strength?

Whatever…

"Alright, uncle. I'll go call him now," I said before activating my Summoner's Call Skill.

…

[Alert!]

Hmm, this is new…

[Beast Contract Summons Requested!

Notice: Upon entering the same Major Rank as your contracted summoner, you may now choose to challenge a summons request. Be warned, however, that a challenge can be overruled by your summoner if they opt into overpowering your challenge with Magic.

Accept? Yes/No]

Great.

This might have proven somewhat useful if my summoner wasn't a Mage of all things. As things stand, even with my newly outrageous Magic-related Stats, I don't think I want to challenge an established human Mage.

Besides, so far, she had treated me with nothing but respect and care, and she was probably still stronger than me. Compared to Darius and his annoying attitude — who I still willingly chose to help — she was a godsend which I would be blind to cast aside just because the option to desert her had presented itself to me.

Also, I was still far from fully aware of how Summoning and Tamed Beast Contracts worked, so it would be beyond careless of me to do anything rash for now. If I really wanted it, I'd have to work for the chance to commit mutiny, first. Though, now that I had the Transmission Spell…

Anyways, I accepted the summons request and was teleported away.

Immediately, I regretted my decision as I had failed to adjust for something which previously could have only been called "trivial."

I'd been sealed away inside a mountainside for hours, days maybe; you know, like in almost total darkness. To suddenly teleport into the outside world, where direct sunshine hit my eyes with what felt like star-collapsing gamma-ray bursts…

Ok, I might have been over exaggerating. I was a newly evolved Arcane Eagle for crying out loud! I mean, it wasn't as horrible a pain nor affected me for nearly as long as the final tattooing part of my recent evolution. But it was still god awful! Like, I almost would have preferred to get bitten by one of those Dark Venom Cottonmouth Snakes back at the Swamp; at least then, I'd be able to Self Heal the pain away.

Such was the curse of feeling pain, but having so much vitality and defense that my Health refused to budge.

Pity me…

"Uh… that's not an Eaglet," a foreign voice said, stirring me from my internal tirade.

"Nova?" Katherine called to me, prompting me to ignore the three men beside her. They seemed friendly enough after a quick glance, even if just looking at them made me feel horrifically unprepared to face them.

Well, no one's attacking us, so naturally, I fired up a Transmission Spell and casually greeted her by saying, "What's up?"

As jaws hit the floor, I knew I had fucked up.

What? Even if I'd raised my proficiency with the Spell to Lvl 4 and mastered using it up to Tier 2, I made sure to only use the normal Tier 0 version. Using anything higher was reserved for screaming or wanting to announce something to an entire floor filled with talking people.

"He already knows the Transmission Spell?"

Hey, I recognized this guy! "Uncle Tebolt" is what Katherine called him, I think.

Yeah…

He's the one who pointed out I'm a male; not female. I like this guy.

"Yeah," I decided to explain myself, "I met this guy in the Black Swamp. I helped him find his way out, in exchange for having him teach it to me."

"You learned Communication Magic… from someone who's not even your Summoner?" One of the two guys I didn't know, the one with a scar running down from his chin to his collarbone who also had a massive claymore strapped on his back, asked.

"I mean, it's not like it was that hard. The Transmission Spell is Foundational Communication Magic, and while that's not something that was included in my Bloodline, it was similar enough to Sonic Magic, which was included, for me to figure things out quickly enough," I said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"So, you somehow managed to evolve into a Sonic Eagle, then?" The other guy, dressed in black, asked.

Before I could respond, however, Tebolt shook his head and said, "No, Sonic Eagles are distinctly brown and white in color, and grow into a much more aerodynamic form which better suits their ability to perform Sonic Skills. This guy right here..."

He slumped his shoulders, "Sorry, I'm not an expert on Eagles, so I can't tell what he is. To me, he just looks like a better armored Eagle Soldier with lighter-the-normal coloration."

"It doesn't matter what kind of eagle the little demon grew into," the scarred man said. "What matters now is that he's here, he's stronger than we could have hoped for, and he's more than articulate enough for the plan to go from possibly succeeding to probably succeeding."

As all the humans before me just started looking at one another with myriad expressions flashing across their faces, the tense silence of it all eventually got to me. I couldn't help but ask, "Uh, guys?" When they all looked at me, I started sweating as I asked, "Aren't you all like, hundreds, maybe thousands of times, stronger than me?"

"Honestly, it'd probably be millions of times stronger, but yeah; we're all much stronger than you. What of it?" The scarred man asked, a bit too aggressively for my taste; but, whatever.

"Well, I'd kind of like to know what kind of suicide mission you plan on sending me on," I said before uttering a weak chuckle. Being under their scrutiny was starting to make me regret not challenging the summons request when I still had the chance.

"I wouldn't send you on a suicide mission!" Katherine said as she scooped me up protectively away from the men. "We just need you to scope out a Fortress from above," she said as she started petting me. "You can do that from afar with your evolved eyesight right?"

Can I?

[Skills:

Name: Evil Eyes Lvl 1

Description: A special skill specific to only Arcane Eagles in the Eagle Family of Avian-Type Magical Beasts that allows for peerless eyesight. Lvl 1 transcends from Lvl 10 Acute Vision, granting you perfect telescopic vision with a range of fifty kilometers, night vision, thermal vision, and an underlying sense for visually perceiving Magic.]

You're god damn fucking right, I can!