It was early morning inside Vesper, at the city gates a small white light shone and Pestilence materialized inside it. There, right outside the city gates stood Dominik chatting with a city guard. Apparently, the dude was a big fan of the Head Instructor and was asking for a few pointers.

“Oh, hello Pestilence! You are always on time and since you are here let’s depart for the forest”.

They both saluted the city guard and left in the direction of the trees, it was necessary to cross the grassland inhabited by the horned rabbits and Noah couldn’t think of a better target to try his taming skill on, sharing his thoughts with Dominik, he got his consent.

They started looking for a rabbit that was level 1 or 2 since taming at low levels was only effective if the beast was lower or equal to the user level.

After they found a nice prey, Noah opened the Taming skill interface to check for ulterior information:

-TAMING lv. 1

An active use on a low health creature with a level equal to or lower than the user can result on the beast following the tamer will as long as one of them doesn’t perish.

The maximum number of tamed beast is given by the total amount of charisma. Each creature reserve an amount of charisma equal to 3 x it’s level.

Each level up in taming will result in an increased success rate and lowering the reserved charisma.

With his 10 charisma, he could tame 1 level 2 horned rabbits and decided to invest those 2 free points in charisma, increasing the maximum tamed beasts to 2.

He got to work right after, bringing out of his inventory a dull, training sword he began to hit repeatedly the little creature and dodge every strike he received, under the appreciating gaze of Dominik, the horned rabbit health dropped to 1 / 10.

After two uses of tame, the little creature submitted to Noah will. Changing his health bar and level to a friendly azure, Noah noted that its health gauge didn’t refill.

Looking for a way to fix the pet issues he noted that on his bottom left corner of the hud, an icon with a small, circular puppy face appeared. Willing it to open resulted on a table with the list of his tamed creatures; it displayed his available charisma, which was 6/12 and a section for his companion. He pressed on the horned rabbit icon, opened another panel that explained how to raise his health bar: meat was needed to heal a pet, raw was fine too but it was less effective than cooked one.

Turning to Dominik, he found the instructor watching him with a small smirk and a knowing expression: ”Teacher, my new pet needs meat in order to heal up but I have no way to obtain it right now. I fear that in the future, when adventuring, it won’t be possible for me to maintain my pets “.

Laughing as if shown to a banal, easy to fix, problem; Dominik replied: “ You know, back in the days I had many solo adventures. How do you think that I survived in the wilderness alone for a long period of time? Sure, I had many provisions but I bet that your inventory is empty right now. It happened to me as well, the only solution is to learn the methods to take care of the problems with your ability”.

Finished speaking, Dominik took out of his backpack an hunting knife that was almost a forearm length and offered it to Noah.

“ I guess it is the proper time to give you this present, it’s a simple skinny knife that I used back in the days but I guess that you can use it properly as a weapon too. Now I will show you how to skin and cut the meat from a beast, let me catch a few rabbits and then we can start”.

Noah received the knife, while Dominik chased some soon to be training carcasses, he inspected it.

Large skinning knife

Rarity: Uncommon

Durability: 60/100

Damage: 8~10

A skinning knife that can be used to fight, it is a bit worn out by the ages but a great care was taken on the maintenance.

The damage was a nice power up compared to the dull training sword and, since it was a utility tool, no level was required to wield it.

When Dominik came back he started to skin the first rabbit and then extract its meat and presented it to Noah who fed his tamed rabbit right away that started to chew and restored his life to the full. Apparently it didn’t decline the meat that was from his kin, inspecting it only revealed generic meat as a genre. Probably it was all the same and didn’t differ between common monsters.

The next carcass was taken care of and Noah got a feeling for skinning, actually, it was sufficient to stuck the knife behind the neck and then slide it under the pelt, separating it from the meat.

It was a gruesome scene, he felt some reluctance at having to do it but it was necessary.

The remaining 3 carcasses were wasted by his failed attempts. It looked so simple, easy and fast when looking at Dominik but the reality was different, Noah constantly broke the pelt, damaged the meat by puncturing and lacerating it.

“ Hahahaha, Don’t worry Pestilence! A lot of carcasses are required for you to learn the basics of skinning. You will keep practicing every time that there is a chance, in the future I will provide to your pets need for meat. “

There was no other way seeing that with a single mistake the carcass disappeared.

Noah saw a few images of animals feeding on each other in some documentaries and it clearly looked different from what he saw right now. The tissue inside the pelt was an homogenous mass, like a red balloon covered with fur. There wasn’t leaking blood, lacerated strands of meat or tendons inside the dead creature. He like it, it wasn’t pleasant to skin a too realistic animal after all. Even those documentary images were really traumatizing and he remembered the clamor it caused when it was published, after all, many people liked animals and rented them for many days even. It wasn’t considered fine by the society to eat real meat anymore; only a few, wild animals existed in some reserves. Today’s Dogs and cats were raised by government offices as rentable companions in out of city buildings, it was like this since Noah was born. After a reforming law regarding animal tolerance was launched, the view on them changed. They became a prized and precious object and each atrocity against them wasn’t tolerated.

He was sure that only a few people would gladly pick up skinning as a side skill, and probably some protest was going to happen but he could see that the skill was thought out to be inside acceptable margins and tolerable by the society.

Still, Noah liked this new aspect that was so foreign to the outside world. Deep down he was even satisfied when he could skin more of the carcass in a correct manner. He felt the primordial joy of an hunter.

Getting up, it was now time to make way to the forest and tame another rabbit before delving inside the trees. It only took 5 more minutes to reach the outskirts with another follower behind them; Noah decided to call them Horn n.1 and Horn n.2 both level 2 with a full health gauge.

“ Once inside the forest, use your creatures to scout in front of us. While these wolves aren’t dangerous to me, we are here to train you. Stay alert and keep your new knife in hand, ready to strike “.

They proceded in an ordinated manner inside the trees’s shadow, Noah was eager to try his hands at a wolf.