After offloading from the truck, it drove out and the doors were locked once again.

‘Now, it’s time to get to work, and help these guys tidy this place up.’ Dustin said in his mind.

He was being conscious of time, and didn’t want to do things disorderly. There should be the least evidence that someone was here, he thought to himself just before he began.

After going around to mark what he needed, he realized one fatal mistake he had made. Sil was going to laugh hard at him if he knew about it, he thought. He had come to rob, but didn’t bring a bag to carry what he stole. Truly stupid, he thought to himself.

‘What should I do. How can I solve this?’

“Damn it. Is there really no way!?” He whispered in a frustrated tone.

-System inventory available.

‘Inventory? Bless the, heavens!.’

Dustin wasted no time and opened the inventory. It had around 100 slots, so he was sure to take a lot. But even with that, he needed to test something first. He turned around and found a can containing fish in it, so he used that for the test.

“Canned fish, perfect.”

He hadn’t thought of how the inventory worked and how he was supposed to place things inside. Even so, if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that anime and manga would not fail him.

He stretched out his hand and picked up the canned fish, and then he imagined it inside his inventory window, and boom! It worked. After figuring out how to work the thing, he picked up another can and did the same.

“It works.” Dustin said with a little smirk.

What he wanted to test was if the same items stacked up when placed into the inventory. The test turned out positive. Although he didn’t have time, he still went ahead to try out some other things he was sure were essential.

First was the stacking of items, and that was successful. Second was the range in which he needed to be in before he could put something in his inventory. Using the same canned fish, he gradually moved backwards while pacing them in his inventory until he reached the limit where he could no longer put it into the inventory.

“Not bad. The range’s actually good.” Dustin said as he looked at the distance between him and the stack of cans. He needed to be around two metres of whatever he wanted to place into the inventory, which was a good distance.

He also did a test for the size limit and weight, and it came out positive, for now. The biggest thing there was a drum, and the heaviest didn’t weigh past 100kg. With the testing complete, Dustin moved around and picked everything he thought was needed, and after he was done, the place surely looked half of what it was.

Dustin wasn’t entirely stupid, so he knew to moderate how much he took so that it wouldn’t look suspicious when the guys in the trucks came, so he only took from the back. He took some things from the front, but as for the back, he nearly cleaned it up.

‘Oh, these guys will be so pissed and frustrated when they finally find out about this.’ Dustin chuckled to himself.

After taking everything, he waited for the doors to open so he would be able to leave, but it seemed like something was wrong. He waited and waited, and after close to an hour, he decided to find another way. He remembered the window by one side of the warehouse, and luckily for him, it was more easily reachable from inside.

He wasted no time in climbing towards the window, and with the stack of boxes right beneath the window, it was super easy. The problem now was how to get down from outside. This problem was also solved relatively easily.

As soon as he came out of the window, he stepped on the loose metal frame, and without hesitation it gave out beneath him. Before he could even think of what was happening, Dustin saw himself falling, and in the matter of the second, he was already on the ground. The height of the fall itself was about 20 feet high, and his body hitting against the floor alarmed the guards around.

Before he picked himself up, two guards were already there.

“Hey! What are you doing here!? One of them barked.

Seeing his current situation, Dustin picked himself from the floor and ran for it. He had never being a parkour guy, but as jumping a few fences and such, he had done his fair share. Before the guards could reach him or even raise an alarm, he had already scaled the fence behind the warehouse.

The guards followed him of course, and seeing as these weren’t your typical guards, but thugs. They too easily went over the fence, but it was useless. Dustin was already far gone.

“That scrawny guy’s pretty fast!” The guard exclaimed.

In reality, Dustin wasn’t too far off. He was actually very close by and had used his illusion skill to enter stealth mode, after which he casually just walked away like the badass antagonist.

‘Alright? That’s done and dusted. Time for the second faze.’

Dustin continued walking back, out of the territory of the other group. He wanted to go out into the nearby woods, but it was a bit far. Without hesitation, he grabbed a bicycle from where it seemed to have been abandoned close to a shop building, just before he left the other group’s territory.

He continued ridding the bike down south, until he had left the town completely and was now on a road that lead elsewhere. They lived close to the city, just around the outskirts, but there were some small towns and villages around. It took a bit of time, but 4 to 7 hours of driving would land you in one.

He’s destination wasn’t one of these villages, rather it was the forest that surrounded that whole place. The forest stops some distance just before the city, so he needed to go closer to the village a bit, but still not as close. He just needed to reach a place where he could enter the forest proper.

It didn’t take up to 40 minutes of full speed cycling, and he got to a safe place where the road was even surrounded by the forest on both sides, as it cut through it.

“Looks good.” He said after getting off the bike and parking it close to a tree just by the roadside.

Dustin hadn’t used his taming skills since he got the system, so he was quite excited, wondering how much it had improved.

As soon as he found a small lizard, he activated the skill, to tame the animal, but what followed next surprised him.

A ton of information flooded into his head, and stunned him a bit. It was totally unexpected. There were information on how to use the skill and how it worked, and many other things about the skill.

After activating the skill, a system windowed popped up, detailing the location of all the animals nearby within a certain radius. On the window that appeared was a radar projection that showed Dustin’s location in real-time, and also detailed the location of animals around.

Dustin himself appeared to be the centre of the radar, while the animals appeared as red dots. According to Dustin’s understanding, the bigger dots were bigger animals, and the smaller dots were smaller animals.

The lizard appeared to be one of the small dots, which meant insects and other small animals were not included.

Following the information he got a while ago, he stretched his hand towards the lizard and said calmly. “Tame.”

Immediately, a window appeared before him that read the notification which also rang in his ears.

-Tame successful. View animal’s information?

“Yes.”

[Name: Lizard

Type: Reptile

Hp: 10

Mp: 0

[Stats]

Unavailable.

[Skill tab]

Passive:

Active: ]

“Just a lizard huh? Seems the system doesn’t really care much for taxonomy. Why isn’t there any stat though? And no exp bar either.”

-Stats are too low for the system to display.

-Lizard is unable to level up.

“Well, that explains that then.”

After taming the lizard, Dustin could feel something he had never felt before throughout his time of using his gift of controlling animals. He couldn’t explain it, but it was as if he could understand that lizard, almost as though they were connected to each other.

He found another lizard, but didn’t tame this one. He wanted to see the difference between the one he had tamed, and the others. Also, unlike before, he could instantly control these little animals now.

After experimenting for a bit, he found out that there was no difference at all. If there was no difference, then what was the point?

“System, what is the difference between tamed creatures and the ones I haven’t tamed?” Dustin asked.

-Tamed creatures can be used as summons, and will never betray you, the tamer. 10% of any experience point they receive will be shared with you the tamer. You are able to fuse with them after favourability reaches a certain stage. When favourability reaches max, the tamer will acquire one skill from the tamed monster. Distance apart does not affect the taming.

-Creatures that have not been tamed are exempted from all the mentioned benefits and effects.

“So that’s how it works. I got to say, taming is pretty cool, especially at the later stages.”

Dustin had already started to think of various possibilities in his head, but something else struck him. Doesn’t this mean taming these normal animals was sort of useless? Seeing skills and the mana stat, he could pretty much visualize the kind of monsters the world would face during the apocalypse. These normal animals would be no match at all.

He continued deep into the forest, walking towards a bigger animal. He didn’t head straight for the biggest dot he saw, instead he went towards one of the middle sized ones.

On getting to the place where the dot shown on the map, he looked around, but didn’t find anything. He wondered if the radar was broken, but that was unlikely. It had to be an animal that could camouflage itself.

“System, highlight all the tameable animals in the surrounding.”

Beep. Beep.

A sound rang in Dustin’s ear just as he caught the silhouette of a snake. While he looked closer to confirm his suspicions, a blue circle outline formed around the animal, and Dustin could now pin point it’s position.

“A python? That thing’s kinda big, shit!” Dustin exclaimed in surprise.

He hadn’t seen such a big snake before in his life. Of course he had seen plenty on television and had even watched some movies about a snake in the Amazon rain forest, which was totally exaggerated, he hadn’t seen one this big before, face to face.

The way his skill worked, if he didn’t try to control an animal, it won’t be subservient to him, which meant a predator would remain a predator, unless he controlled it. After he

Dustin wasn’t in anyway curious to know what being crushed felt like, so he took control of the snake before calling it over. If it was before he got the system, some animals would appear to be under control for a while, then after some time he would lose control over them, and if it was a hostile animal, it might even attack.

There was a time he nearly got bitten by a dog after he lost control of it, but luckily there was a fence between them. With his new (A) rank skill, he doubted the chances of that happening.

After playing around with the huge python, Dustin thought of an Idea. Whenever he was absent from home, he always worried about Sil’s safety. Now that he had awakened, he was sure that they would be others that will appear just like him. If for whatever reason he had too leave the house and a monster attacked, Sil would be totally defenceless.

Dustin thought of placing an animal with him that would be able to protect and keep Sil company while he wasn’t home. They tried getting a dog once, but it died soon after from an illness. It was a street dog after all.

“I’m not sure how strong these apocalypse monsters will be, but I’m sure they’ll be stronger than normal animals. They do have monster as their general banner. It’s only safe to think so.” Dustin said as he let the snake go.

He also used that opportunity to remove the lizard which he had tamed from his tamed animals. It was useless. Besides, he only used it for an experiment.

He went on deeper into the forest, towards the largest dot of them all. Although it sounds exaggerated, it wasn’t really that big, but it was still the biggest.

As he approached the location, he appeared in a part of the forest that had a little clearing, probably just enough to fit two cars. Towards the middle of the clearing, Dustin once again was surprised. This time however, his eyes were wide open and his mouth almost dropped.

“Is that a tiger?” He questioned himself as he looked at the spotted animal sitting on top a mound of dirt and grass.

He had suddenly stopped moving, only staring at the animal that was showing a bit of hostility while standing up slowly.

“System, can you identify that animal?” Dustin asked as he wasn’t all that sure if it was a tiger.

Beep. Beep.

[Name: Jaguar

Type: Beast]

“A Jaguar ay? I knew these spots were different.”

Dusting had immediately forgotten about his skills and was now slowly backing away when he remembered. His taming skill wasn’t the weak one he had before. There was no need to be afraid.

He walked up to the beast and activated he’s skill. Maybe it was because he had the gift prior to the system’s arrival, but he didn’t need to do anything special when activating his skill, he just did on instincts, with his mind.

The beast immediately retrieved it’s hostility and sat back down.

Dustin thought for a moment, and then he tamed the jaguar. As he did, a notification popped up telling him it was successful, before a window opened.

[Name: Jaguar

Type: Beast

Hp: 100

Mp: 0

[Stats]

Strength: 20

Agility: 15

Sense: 15

Vitality: 10

[Skill tab]

Passive:

Active: ]

“No shit. It’s even stronger than me, but there’s no intelligence stat. I remember there being one. That means it just like in games. It’s related to mana. Since this guy is also unable to level up, I don’t think he’ll be able to face the monsters. Maybe the weaker ones.”

“Alright!”

Using the information he had in his brain that had been transferred when he first activated the skill, Dustin used the aspect of the skill that was able to treat the tamed animal like a summon, and immediately, the beast disappeared.

Simultaneously, a new section appeared in the system interface.

[Tamed Monsters]