Behind the counter Dan was led down a staircase, worrying slightly about how the animals would fare down the steps, Dan looked back and was relieved to see the rabbits hopping their way down, two steps at a time and the fox loping down the steps easily enough. There was plenty of natural light despite going down a long winding set of stairs, though where the light was coming from was a mystery. The deeper he descended down the stairs the greater the stench of animal musk was as well as an assortment of noises from what sounded like whinnying to the roars of monsters.

“My daughter is going to be oh so glad to have some new domesticated animals to take care of! No one seems to want to bring in regular pets since all the travelers and soldiers just want things to kill others. I started off this job just selling pets but as the war with the wolfmen ramped up I started selling more and more monsters and my stock of regular pets has dwindled. It’s sad that so many have forgotten the comfort a simple cat can bring to oneself.”

As the store owner was talking they emerged into what looked like an underground barn, complete with all the smells of a barn and none of the charm you see in books or movies. At the noise of Dan and Fluffy coming down a young woman poked her freckled face out of one of the stalls and gave a squeal of delight at seeing her father. She ran out of the stall to nearly tackle him to the ground in a hug.

“Hi Daddy! I’ve been busy training the war horses! The zoo wants another ten by the end of the week, someone came in earlier to tell me while you were shopping, so I need to rush the training.” She seemed a fair bit more energetic then her father but he gazed down at her with love in his tanned face. His eyes widened slightly when she said zoo, he glanced at Dan before shushing his daughter.

“Good job! I’ll do what I can to help later, but I got a present for you before all that. I know you miss working with more domesticated animals, so I had this traveler bring in some more for you.” He gestured behind him to where Dan was standing and she gave another squeal of excitement as she rushed over to the Cottontail Fox and began to pet its soft fur. It gave an uninterested harrumph and flopped to the ground as the girl examined him. Finally she squealed again and stood back up looking over at Fluffy.

“Daddy, this one gave me a five point buff to luck just for petting it! Can I keep it?” She was bouncing on the balls of her heels as she looked pleadingly at her father. He looked back over at Dan with an exasperated expression as if trying not to think how much work that fox would be to keep.

“We’ll think about it Darling, first I need you to appraise the rest of the animals and get them put away. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of customers for such finely domesticated animals.” Fluffy turned back to Dan before speaking again. “On top of the permit for bringing animals into the city I’ll offer you a total of twenty gold for the animals outside the quest. Deal?”

Dan took Fluffy’s outstretched hand and gave it a shake. “Deal, maybe I’ll need to do this more often, I can’t imagine many people can make so much gold with a day’s worth of work.” Dan muttered the last part to himself but the shopkeeper obviously heard him. “I can offer you a quest next week for it, though I won’t be able to do so every day as I don’t know quite how many customers I’ll attract with this.”

Fluffy began to lead him up the stairs while the animals began to bound around the girl while she led them further into the large underground barn. “So why have all of this underneath the city? It must have cost a small fortune to build all of this.”

“Oh, trust me it did, but it was worth every penny of it. You can only store so many animals above ground before they just have no room to move and it lowers the animal’s cleanliness and grooming stats so they won’t sell as well. I could have bought a warehouse but I didn’t want to pay the cost to transport animals across the city and buying a farm outside the city has the same problems as a warehouse but also would attract many monsters. While there are some that are skilled in monster ranching it’s not my main focus… or I suppose it wasn’t before the war began to escalate. Either way it just made the most sense to have an underground area to raise the animals.”

That was a lot to take in and it made Dan start to wonder and think about whether every building in the city could be extended underground and how that might mess with the infrastructure if they could be. Although magic could probably explain most of the architecture and how many of the buildings that were built at odd angles didn’t just collapse in on themselves.

Finally they made it up the steps and the man gave Dan his money and a slip of paper. “Come by sometime next week and we’ll see if we can work something out about getting more pets. It always is a joy to see someone find their perfect friend when they come to my shop and that aspect has been sadly lacking as of late.”

After Dan left the store he decided his best bet would be to go to the inn his group has been staying at and see if anyone was there. So he began his journey through the darkening city and noticed some of the guards giving him nods or waves. A bit strange, but maybe his reputation with them had increased. He’d have to check it out tomorrow morning in the game. After a few minutes of walking he made it back to the inn and noticed Revon nursing a mug of ale in the corner and grinning at him sheepishly. Dan made his way back to the man and ordered an ale for himself.

“Hey, thanks for carrying my body back here. I forgot I had to go to my wife’s office party and she pulled the plug on me early since she wanted to be extra sure I was ready.” He said with a roll of his eyes. “Anyways did you and the rest of the group get up to anything fun while I was gone?”

“Nothing really, Alicia won’t be back on until tomorrow, I haven’t seen Greg since we got back to the inn and I just got a profession and leveled it while you were gone. I made a fair bit of gold off it as well.”

Revon’s eyes lit up at the mention of gold. “Oh really? How much did you make and what profession did you choose? I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be my own profession.”

“I made twenty gold from taming rabbits and a fox. Though I’m not sure you’d be able to make quite as much as myself since my class allows me to tame Rabbits very quickly. I’ll only be able to sell them once a week I believe.”

At that Revon slumped slightly in his chair. “Well two hundred extra dollars a week is nothing to turn your nose up at, though I would rather something a bit better. I’m surprised you managed to tame anything though, I remember hearing from a druid I met that even taming rabbits is tough, not to mention foxes. They require a ton of food during the process or something. How did you get around that?”

“I didn’t get around it really… I just fed some of the rabbit’s I tamed to her and let it be besides that. What, why are you looking at me like that?” Dan asked in response to the look Revon gave him.

“Isn’t that kind of… I dunno, messed up? You got a bunch of innocent rabbits to follow you around and then fed some monster all of the cute bunnies?”

Dan’s face flushed from the ale and slightly accusatory tone in Revon’s voice. “It’s just a game. A bunch of ones and zeroes in the server. How else was I supposed to feed it?” Revon just raised his eyebrow at Dan until he finished his mug of ale and walked up the stairs to his room, making sure to lock his door this time, and laying down in bed, and logging out.

As soon as he logged out he could feel his stomach tying in knots and his mouth as dry as parchment. He sat upright in his bed and took off his headset while his head underneath pounded from a combination of dehydration and hunger. He then realized he had spent the entire day there without any food or whatever even for breakfast that morning. As he stumbled off his bed he realized that he would need to make sure he didn’t do something dumb like this again, or at least take off the headset once per in game day to take care of himself.