It took some time to set up the bounty board, which was apparently an interface option from the party menu with his team’s name registered, but with Mitchel’s help, Myles’s home was put under a rotation watch by Sindra’s Seekers and another party that quickly volunteered called the Clans. Myles didn’t know them, but he figured the group had to be one of the Beastkin groups he’d seen the night against Gregor. He wasn’t disappointed per say, but he’d hoped that the Warriors Three might. Over the past few days, he hadn’t seen them and was starting to get worried. There was nothing he could do about that particular problem, however.

In the end, Mitchel explained a bit more about the watch and was once again told that the watch would only be set during monster spawning times. That meant that they’d be watching his place during the dawn hours and from eventide to nightfall.

Of Sindra’s Seekers, only two of Sindra’s people volunteered for the duty of watching him since they were the only ones that would gain any experience from it. Mitchel took every fifth morning, and, to Myles great annoyance, Micha Reese, the [Paladin] of Talia, had the evenings of that same day.

It just so happened that the first night was her shift, and his first experience with the woman who had beaten him out for a position on Sindra’s Seekers was not a pleasant one.

Myles had done his best to be polite with her, intending to offer her food and something to drink since she’d be around for dinner, but he learned quickly that being polite by normal standards weren’t enough.

His plans went downhill as soon as he finished his greeting.

No, he could not call her just ‘Micha.’ In her exact words, she made her reasons very clear. “For as long as you treat monsters as your allies, you will refer to me by my entire name and title so that you may never forget my place here.”

Then, she challenged him to a duel.

He responded by shutting the door in her face and then refused to open it again.

Except for feeding his slimes, checking on his core, and soothing Ashra’s nerves about the woman, the rest of the evening was spent by himself, making and storing the dough he could finish.

***

The morning felt almost as normal as the others had, and Myles fell into his new routine.

The [Monster Tamer] got up, took a bath, got dressed in his increasingly disgusting clothes that needed a washing, got undressed as soon as he couldn’t stand his own smell, washed them in his bathtub, let them dry for a little while, got dressed again, and fed his waiting slime pets. Then after a quick once over of his supplies, Myles went out to greet the day.

To his surprise, someone was still outside his home on duty despite the sun having come up a while ago. He was a bit shorter than Myles, wearing simple cloth pants, a tight-fitting cloth shirt, and a belt with several pouches lining it. His shaggy silver hair fed into a silver trail of fur that led down his back and ended at a long, fluffy tail. As Myles had suspected, the Clan team was a group of Beastkin, and the Clans representative was a silver haired Foxkin.

As if that wasn’t enough, he was sparring with Ashra.

At least, it felt more like a competition through their link than it did a fight for her life.

Myles felt no worry from his monsterkin about the conflict. If anything, Ashra just seethed with determination, and her pride skimmed the surface of her thoughts as they bobbed and weaved between each other’s attacks. So instead of interrupting, Myles sat down on the porch, pulled one of the pink petals off the daylily, and chewed as fists and kicks flew.

“Is that all you have?” the man taunted. Ashra was backed into a corner, and the Foxkin threw what, to Myles, looked like a haymaker of a punch straight for Ashra’s temple.

“No.”

Ashra ducked and retaliated, landing a rabbit punch to his stomach before circling with a kick to the same spot. It connected flawlessly, and Myles felt her pride surge. But there wasn’t a glow like the last time Myles had seen her kick. Still, the attack was enough to send the other man stumbling and giving her much needed room to move. Myles swore he heard bones crack the moment her attacks landed.

The man recovered quicker than Myles expected, stepped back a few feet in a matter of moments, and smiled, showing less than human teeth. The Foxkin spit to the side, and then there was red sticking to the white fangs. “Good.”

The man’s fists became a pair of glowing blurs as he dashed forward into a waiting Ashra’s range. She swung with what should have been a punch that put the Foxkin on his tail, but his form moved a split second sooner than it should have, leaving Ashra overcommitment into an attack for an opponent that wasn’t there.

He’d vanished in the blink of an eye.

Then he’d reappeared at her side just as quickly.

Ashra attempted to counter with a kick, but she was a hair too slow. His fists began to glow again before they connected with Ashra’s stomach: one, two, three, four times in the matter of moments, but the blows all seemed to collide with her at once, pushing the monsterkin off her feet and into the air, leaving a trail of red in her wake.

Myles cringed feeling the shock and pain across their connection. He felt the echoes of an injury in his gut and felt the disorientation as she lost all sense of gravity before the Foxkin’s attack finished. From his spot on the ground, the Foxkin held up his glowing hand, manifesting an ethereal palm above Ashra. For a moment, everything hung in place, defying all laws of reality, before slamming her back into the ground.

Then, it was over in a cloud of grass and dust. The Foxkin had won.

Ashra was pained, but every instinct she had was telling Myles not to interfere. Short of yelling at him from her downed position, she gave every sign not to get involved yet.

To his surprise, the silver Foxkin went over to Ashra, helped her to a knee, and offered her a potion as he spoke.

“You did well.” The words came out as almost a growl. It was gruff but not wholly unpleasant to hear, but he couldn’t help but think that it sounded like the Foxkin had gravel for vocal cords. Still, there was no malice there. If anything, he sounded happy about the fight. “You over committed though, and that was your downfall. When you’re fighting against a class like [Phantom Fist], It’s dangerous to over commit. Better to whittle us down. We’re good at capitalizing on mistakes.”

For her part, Ashra took the potion, downed it, and gave the two of them relief as the feeling of pain and disorientation vanished. The only wound left was to her pride, but it was one that left Myles with a familiar impression. It was almost like when his father corrected his work in the kitchen. “I will remember that.”

The Foxkin gave her a warmer smile and helped her the rest of the way up. Then, he turned to Myles and bowed. “Silvertail of the Western Mountains, [Phantom Fist], I am the first of my clan to guard your property, Myles Chase.”

Myles smiled. He’d met Foxkin before, though none of the Western Mountains, and held out his hand to clasp. “Whose idea was training?”

Silvertail grasped his wrist, squeezing a bit in response. “Hers. Your monster has a spirit that would have done any of the Clans proud. She saw me practicing my forms and just couldn’t resist a challenge.”

Ashra glared.

“You were encroaching on my home.”

Silvertail smirked and brushed the words away. “I am guarding, as was requested of me by my leader. Tonight, you will meet Foliage. Between leaders, a meal is customary, so I would recommend having a meal ready.” Silvertail smirked, at least, Myles thought he did. Sharp teeth, even on a humanoid, was a bit worrying. “Speaking of, I have overstayed my welcome and most likely will miss breakfast if I don’t hurry. I must be off.” He bowed again to Myles and Ashra. “I will hope to see you improve by our next sparring.”

“You will not see until it is too late,” Ashra said sternly.

Silvertail grinned a bit wider. “I would expect nothing less, warrior.”

The one thing Myles could say about Foxkin was that they were fast when they wanted to be. One moment, Silvertail was there, the next, he was gone into the forest nearby. When he was sure the Foxkin was gone, Myles turned to Ashra.

“Are you okay? It felt like quite a hit.”

“Sparring is permitted when accepted by both parties,” Ashra said, not answering the question at first. “We were training, not fighting.”

“Looked like a fight to me.”

Ashra was silent for a moment, finishing the healing potion she’d left half drunken. “I want to fight like that.”

“A [Phantom Fist]?”

Ashra nodded. “He outclassed me. Silvertail countered me like I was nothing.” Her expression twitched, shifting for just a moment between annoyance and her more placid features, but against their link, Myles could feel how dangerous the waters below were. “He played the entire time with me. His speed was unlike anything I’ve seen in one of your kind. I could not determine the real attack, and I suffered for it.”

“Then, we’ll have to talk with him more later,” Myles offered. “Not everyone comes into the Run with a new Class. He may have cultivated this one on his own.”

She took it for what it was and nodded. “I will speak with him in a few days when he has returned. It would be good for me to become stronger.”

“For both our sakes,” Myles half-joked.

***

Before they left for the afternoon, Ashra requested to feed the slimes. Myles explained the process and the end goal, warning her not to give the potion slimes the glass vials and stoppers.

While she did that, he checked on his supplies for the day and a few other small things before reviewing his reserves.

—

Dough: 22/100

—

It wasn’t horrible…

Well, it wasn’t too horrible for a [Succulent Mage], but it was horrible in that it represented everything he had left in the world. He was spent with nearly everything riding on his slime scheme. He didn’t expect to come across whatever monster dropped wheat or processed flour in the near future, so he couldn’t rely on getting more anytime soon. Doughnut would have to come through, but until then, Ashra would still be doing the heavy lifting for now.

As if to punctuate his thoughts, someone knocked on his door.

“Come in!” Myles yelled from the door of the bathroom.

The magic lock disarmed, and the door opened, revealing the bundled figure of Tail. They looked into the room, saw Myles standing in the door of the bathroom, and twitched their tail strangely.

“If you are busy…”

“No, it’s fine,” Myles said, waving them over. “I want you to see something.”

Tail stared. “No… I think I am fine here.”

“No, it’s okay. Ashra’s here too. Even she’s impressed with it. So, that should tell you something”

Tail hesitantly took a step back. “Myles, I’m not sure…”

“Please,” Ashra’s voice echoed from inside the bathroom. “There is much to see. Myles has outdone himself.”

“I don’t think…”

Myles felt concern radiate from his teammate and looked at them curiously. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s not proper to go into someone’s bathroom, no matter how proud they are of what they’ve done, Myles.”

Myles face turned deep red as he realized what he had asked and felt like no small part of a bad joke. “No! It’s nothing like that! I’m raising slimes in here.”

That did nothing to calm the Korgan, and they took a nervous step back with their tail between their legs.

Myles just sighed.

“No, I’m raising clear slimes to grow into potion and resource slimes.”

Tail was curious now and walked in, quickly followed a few moments later by Lyna, who didn’t bother knocking and let herself in through the unlocked door. “What are we all doing?”

“We are going to Myles’s bathroom to see something unique.”

Lyna simply shrugged. “I’ve heard worse pick-up lines, but in the future if you’re interested, the bathroom isn’t the best place for romance. Trust me on that. It’s hard to get a grip on tile, ya know?”

Myles groaned.

In his bathroom, which Lyna gave a whistle of appreciation for, Myles directed the two to the far end by the shower where the slimes were now nestled in a nest of towels next to what Myles assumed was the air purifier.

“Tail, Lyna, meet the supply team.”

By their fourth feeding, Myles’s support team was already starting to change in appearance, a good sign that his plan was working. Topoff was tinged blue, Medic was a soft reddish, Doughnut was a tannish-white, and Squishy… well, Squishy was shiny. It wasn’t the kind of shine something wet gave off but something metallic. After the first feeding’s accident, Squishy had become more of an experiment than a full blown plan, but it seemed to be working. Their status hadn’t updated yet, but Myles was sure they were close to stage two.

Tail got closer, examining them with a careful goggled eye. “They are variants?”

“They are,” Myles explained, once again curious about other’s abilities. “Topoff, the blueish one, is being fed exclusively mana potions. Medic, the reddish one, is being fed healing potions. Doughnut, the doughball at the end there, is getting bread dough, and Squishy, the shiny one, is getting metal.”

“Fascinating.”

Myles nodded, but he wanted the other element of Squishy’s to be a surprise. “What does your ability tell you about them?”

“No ability, but I am trying to cultivate one. It seems too useful not to have,” Tail explained as their tail tweaked curiously. “They are just much larger than the ones we fought but not large enough to be like the Mother Slimes, and they are not the right colors.”

Lyna nodded, poking Squishy curiously. Her finger didn’t even break the membrane though, and Squishy’s large, black eyes immediately opened and turned to her as it jiggled in annoyance at being interrupted.

Myles translated the feeling for her.

“Please don’t touch the slimes.”

“I wanted to see what would happen,” Lyna defended but pulled back her had all the same. “Besides, they’re tame, right?”

“So?” Myles asked. “Would you poke Ashra even if she’s tamed?”

Lyna considered the question, looking over Ashra like she might a puzzle she was attempted to solve before setting the entire thing on fire in boredom. “If she were made from slime, maybe.”

“Lyna…”

“What?”

“Please don’t touch the slimes,” Myles reiterated, adding a little more information this time to make sure she understood. “You could ruin their progress if they absorb your armor or something on it. They could become acidic for all I know.”

“Fine,” Lyna pouted.

“Are they acidic?” Tail asked.

“Not sure,” Myles admitted. “They can eat solid iron, so I assume they have to be. At least, they can do something to break down metal. Only reasons that they could do it to flesh just as easily.”

Tail nodded, Lyna seemed to reconsider touching Squishy again, and the three left the bathroom slightly more refreshed than they had entered.

Upon leaving the bathroom, Myles and the rest noticed that Kendra and Will had arrived in time to make themselves comfortable in his meager living room. Kendra waved at their arrival from their bathroom. Will just looked slightly more perplexed than he had been.

“What took so long?” Kendra asked as she got up to greet them.

“Myles wanted to show us something,” Lyna said suggestively, waggling her eyebrows and smiling. “It was pretty impressive.”

“Was it now?” Will chuckled, looking at their leader. “And you didn’t wait for Kendra?”

“Mists take you, Lyna,” Myles groaned.