Raidishier nearly took a nap during his rest, but a terrifying shriek deeper in the Dungeon from what sounded like a beast who lost a fight got him to his feet, then down on all four “feet” when he remembered his goals. He had to remind himself that, despite being far more effective in combat with his hands free, he wouldn’t take the risk of being alienated by acting too differently. His spawn point was already set to the Shrine of Rebirth in front of the Dungeon and he lost nothing from dying, so though it would likely cause him a lot of health in battle to restrain himself to being on all fours, it was probably worth it.

Unexpectedly, what walking on all fours didn’t cause him was normal muscle pain from being in a strange position for so long. Aff fortunately didn’t go so far as to make his virtual body hurt for keeping bad posture.

‘Damn, a Level 5…’

Turning a corner, Raidishier was met with the sight of a badger mauling the corpse of a bigger, undetermined beast within a narrower portion of the tunnel--that bigger monster probably being what released the shriek.

The badger looked up at Raidishier when he appeared, but immediately returned to its meal when the Monster Tamer stopped to gawk, apparently fine with his presence so long as he didn’t get too close… Which might be a problem, because through this particular entrance into the Dungeon Raid chose, he would need to pass the badger to delve deeper. Only a little farther past the badger did the cave split off into multiple winding paths that he might use to avoid aggressive monsters, but until then, he was stuck going the one way.

‘Well, maybe I’m exaggerating and it’ll let me through without trouble?’ he hoped, slowly taking a step forward, then another, creeping ever nearer. Three steps… Four steps… Five ste--

“Grrrrrruggghrgrgrgguggrrr,” the badger suddenly growled with a strange, sputtering cadence, stopping Raidishier in his tracks and causing a cold sweat to pour.

‘Fuck my life,’ he cursed, unamused at the predicament. Since the monster was feeding off a recent kill it was probably still primed for a fight and wanted to defend its meal, meaning Raidishier’s only possible method of safely getting past it…

‘Besides killing it, but that’ll take me several deaths to accomplish and I don’t want that.’

The Monster Tamer retrieved several loaves of bread--each the size of his handspan--from his inventory pouch and made his form smaller by military-style crawling, wanting to make himself as least threatening as possible. Then he pulled himself forward with his arms--quickly consuming stamina because they were weak, unfortunately--toward the badger. It raised its head to growl menacingly, but Raid only flinched and gulped, not stopping, crawling through the sparse vegetation which populated more of the Dungeon the deeper one went and getting another meter closer. At that point the monster’s tone changed and it assumed a fighting position, so the boy halted, lowered his head to face the floor, and tossed a loaf beside the badger as though it were a grenade.

With his head lowered and nose to the thin layer of dirt beneath he couldn’t see its reaction, but he could hear it. The growl became a sort of bark for a moment--it probably thought the bread was an attack--before it stopped making sound altogether. Then he heard a few sniffs, and Raidishier excitedly peeked up to find the badger taking a bite of his gift. He couldn’t have been sure that his plan would work because, according to Monster Tamer research, monsters had unique palettes and didn’t just eat according to what kind of creature they were...but now that he knew the badger liked bread he could get through.

Raidishier waited for the badger to finish devouring the bread before he slowly resumed his tiresome crawl. He got another meter closer before the beast began to growl softly again, but it soon stopped when he tossed another loaf. Two more loaves later, the boy crawled past the dangerous beast with a nervous smile plastered across his face--both terrified by the thing and terribly happy he was still alive.

‘Disaster averted.’

Raidishier laid down far away from the badger, only able to hear its munching of the corpse, regening stamina and calming his nerves. He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the map again, confirming what he knew but unwilling to be anything but cautious.

‘The cave widens from this point and splits into three different paths, each splitting further several times and leading to wildly different places, but my destination is…’ His eyes settled on the illustration of the nearest pond, where quite a few caves ahead converged. ‘I just need to hope that nothing scarier than that badger stands in my way, then I’ll be golden. It’ll be safest at the pond. But until then...’

Raidishier greedily smacked his lips as he stared at a particularly dark spot on the cave wall near the ceiling a little deeper down the cave. That dark spot wasn’t just the result of a shadow from large, leafy plants growing nearby, but one among many things that made Dungeons and Mini-Dungeons worth diving for more than just EXP.

‘Pitch Vines,’ Raidishier knew this particular find to be called. The boy gingerly approached the uncommon natural treasure, vigilantly watching his sides for ambushes. Natural treasures were all resources not dropped from monsters that instead spawned and grew on their own. Most plant-type natural treasures could be used in consumables like foods, potions, and pills, but these Pitch Vines were most useful as crafting materials with which to make low-level light armor. They weren’t exactly Legendary-quality natural treasures, but he’d benefit from Michael making him something with them in a week or two when he got back.

‘So long as nothing is guarding them…’

The Monster Tamer cautiously positioned himself just a few meters away from and below the black vines before slowly rising and taking out his whip, standing on only his feet. He could make an exception if it meant gathering valuable resources.

He began striking the vines with his whip, hoping to dislodge them from where they grew. That method of harvesting natural treasures would invariably damage the goods, but having them damaged was much better than not having them at all, nevermind the fact that he just didn’t have the Harvesting skill or the time to acquire it. “Harvesting” natural treasures was an art of its own in Aff, because like Mining and Felling, your Base Level didn’t matter at all, only the level of the skill, which could only be increased by using it. And since Pitch Vines required level 5 Harvesting--which took days of solely harvesting treasures to reach--Raidishier wouldn’t have the time for it.

Without warning a flash of silver leapt out from within the mass of Pitch Vines, disturbed by Raidishier’s attacks. The teen immediately backpedaled, activating the defensive whip skill he’d gained upon reaching Level 2 and successfully deflecting the creature with a whirl of his weapon that created a shimmering barrier around him.

‘A defense-oriented monster,’ Raidishier thought idly as he struck the confused crab with an unaided Concussive Crack, then lowered its health by about a fourth before it recovered and scuttled a few meters away in a burst of speed. Once out of range of his whip and among grass as tall as it, one of the beast’s two claws began to shift in color, and Raidishier had no doubt that if he had points in Willpower he’d be able to sense the flow of mana within it. With a flick of its now-yellow claw, an unremarkable crescent of yellow energy shot from the beast in a straight line toward the boy, who simply sidestepped...then was pelted by the fragments the crescent burst apart to form.

“Gah!”

Raid grunted in both pain and frustration, angry at falling for the simple trick. When the crab began readying another of the crescent shotgun spells the boy wildly charged, bringing himself close enough to use Concussive Crack before the beast’s spell was released. The two spells landed on their targets at the same time, but the crab’s was clearly more effective. While the Monster Tamer’s whip spell left the crab dazed and open to more attacks, it dealt only a fraction of the damage the yellow crescent did, which also staggered the human with pain long enough for the stun on the crab to wear off.

Realizing just how outmatched he was, the human retreated while the crab pursued, using a burst of speed to close the distance enough to grab at the human’s leg, dealing damage with its pincer. Another Concussive Crack landed on the crab, but no more attacks followed as Raidishier booked it, sprinting back the way he came and luckily not tripping on any roots.

Panting slightly, the teen only came to a stop after hearing the badger feasting again, remembering that he was stuck in-between two beings stronger than himself.

“Ugghh, that didn’t go well,” Raidishier complained to himself as he collapsed onto a region of the floor that was made of cold, uneven stone--which he immediately regretted, then scooted over to a portion with dirt and grass. “I even fought on my feet and nearly died!”

He pulled up a YouTube video to distract himself from his frustration as he took out and munched on a loaf of bread, filling his stomach so that he could begin regenerating...but only a few minutes passed before his rest was interrupted. A soft growl echoed from the Dungeon entrance’s direction--the badger made its way down the cave toward him.

“Bloody hell,” the teen found himself cursing as he jumped to his feet and backpedaled, whip in hand; the wrong move. The badger’s growl deepened at the hostile reaction and its back arched, causing Raidishier’s face to fall as he recalled how he’d dealt with the beast before.

‘Damn my jumpy nerves.’

Rethinking his actions, the boy wasted no time falling to his knees and laying on his side before emptying his pouch of several more bread and scattering them around himself. At the sight of free food the badger once again traded in its fighting stance and warning growls for gluttony, even scooting in close to Raidishier to nom on the tasty morsels.

Despite sweating bullets in the fetal position, the teen’s mind was not so clouded with fear that he stopped thinking altogether, and a simple plan began to form.

‘It seems this badger won’t be a problem for me… So maybe I could use it to help me get past the crab?’

He’d seen players on YouTube pit monsters against each other by throwing rocks while remaining hidden, causing the beasts to assume the nearest creature to them was the aggressor. Could he do something similar by leading the badger down the cave and scattering bread around the crab, causing the badger to kill the crab to defend its food? Or maybe the badger would just defend him if the crab attacked because he was a source of bread?

No better way to find out than to try it, Raidishier quickly decided as he gingerly rose onto all fours and moved deeper into the cave, leaving a loaf of bread every ten paces or so until the Pitch Vines were within sight.

‘It’s probably nested within the vines again,’ he thought while nervously waiting for the badger to follow the breadcrumbs...or more literally: to eat the bread trail. When the beast finally appeared it moved a little more sluggishly--a simple consequence of eating too much, since Aff didn’t put a hard limit on how much food entities could consume--but still persisted, munching on every loaf in its way. When it gobbled the last one and stood directly next to Raidishier it displayed none of its previous aggression, even looking at him expectantly.

‘Aww, it’s like a dog,’ the boy realized, stretching out a hand to pat the good boy--

“Grrr,” it huffed at his hand, showing teeth.

‘Nevermind! Still a monster!’ With a gulp, Raidishier quickly took out another loaf to appease the demon of gluttony before rising to his feet and retrieving his whip. He struck the mass of vines--probably to the badger’s confusion--several times before the thing began to shake on its own, at which point the Monster Tamer retreated.

Just in time, because a flash of silver shot out from the plant mass toward where he previously stood, surprising the badger.

‘Yes! Now help me kill it!’

Raidishier began the dance of combat with the crab, exchanging whip strikes for pincer slashes and Concussive Cracks for the yellow shotgun crescents, all the while the badger...watched. The badger just watched, seated a few meters away, apparently only as invested in the human’s circumstances as a bad teacher passing by students throwing down in the halls.

‘Really? He’s gonna do me like that?’ he thought, having expected the badger to at least growl at the crab after how much of his bread it ate! ‘Fine! I’ll kill it by myself!’

Then a minute passed, Raidishier’s health was deep in the red, and his mild frustration turned to panic.

“BRO!?” the teen shouted in a mix of anger and confusion, dodging the crab’s charge and retaliating with yet another Concussive Crack to give him time to put space between them. He wasn’t going to win the fight without assistance, but the assistance he brought wasn’t assisting! Did the badger really feel no connection to him? After all that bread?!

‘Probably, considering that it’s WATCHING ME DIE!’

Clearly, that badger bastard was holding out. It knew he had more food on him, and like a lottery winner’s “friend” wasn’t going to do anything until it was offered a meter and took a kilometer.

“FINE!”

In-between ducking under a shotgun crescent and preparing to roll toward the badger, Raidishier retrieved two more loaves from his inventory pouch. When he arrived besides the creature more suited to be a fox, he dropped the loaves and hid behind it, then watched as the crab hesitated for only a moment before continuing its pursuit. Not a smart crab.

But obviously a smart badger, as after spending only thirty seconds finishing off the crab it enjoyed its meal of carbohydrates, then looked up at Raidishier with what he swore was a smile.

“I hate you.”