"Nice! I have soul arts at Rank 1 now!" Stahl exclaimed after finishing the continuos practicing of using different soul stones in different ways, before Jyuuk stepped back over to him.
"Alright, perfect. Now, the last thing is taming. But this is a pretty bad place to do that, because we can't really find any good monsters for you to tame. And it has to be at Rank 0 for you to do that at the moment, so I can't 'give' you any of my tamed monsters either." Jyuuk said as he scratched the back of his neck, before Stahl had a small idea.
"Can't I just dive into the ocean and grab some random fish from there?" He suggested, but the Beastperson immediately shook his head.
"No, you really can't. We're in the middle of the ocean, the place we're currently at has a good few Rank 3 and 4 monsters. I mean, I can send in one of my monsters and have it bring back something for you, but…" Jyuuk muttered quietly in thought as he looked at the young man next to him, who was looking at him with hopeful eyes.
"Fine, fine, we'll do that. But I'm going to have him bring back the first Rank 0 creature it can find, so it's somewhat a lottery." The Beastperson said with a sigh, before Stahl laughed loudly and pat Jyuuk on the back. "Thanks, Dude! Now, undead Battallion, follow me to the top deck!" Stahl exclaimed loudly and looked at his five skeletal animals and pointed toward the door, while Jyuuk waved his hand with a sigh to unsummon his own undead before following him.
Soon, they made their way to the top deck, and Jyuuk was currently looking through his Beastiary, more specifically the pages containing water monsters, before coming to the conclusion to just go with the Ocean Serpent. The Eagles, with the exception of Akatori, were also Water-type monsters, but that didn't mean they were especially capable of swimming amazingly, so a swift and agile Ocean Serpent was really the best choice at the moment.
Swiftly, in a light blue mist, the sea serpent from the Beastiary that slung itself around Jyuuk's arm before turning into the long snake that looked quite a lot like an Python.
"Kaiyohebi, go down into the water and look for a Rank 0 creature. Bring it back alive." Jyuuk commanded, before the snake swiftly hissed and slid down his arm and directly to the edge of the ship and into the water.
"Now it's just waiting, I guess. Although it shouldn't take too long." Jyuuk pointed out with a smile, before Stahl nodded his head and looked at CB-1, which was still floating above him, taking pictures whenever Stahl told it to. And so, Stahl chose to use the time he now had to continue telling it to do just that so that he could finally rank up his Photography skill.
He was also playing around with his skeletal undead a little now and as such did his best to just level his necromancy skill up a little more. And a little while later, the Ocean Serpent Kaiyohebi returned to the ship with something in its mouth.
"Ooh! What is it, what is it?" Stahl asked excitedly as he squatted down in front of the snake, which opened its mouth after Jyuuk told it to, dropping the 'prey' into a small bucket of ocean water that they prepared.
"It's… An octopus?" Stahl asked confused as he looked at the small wiggly creature get used to its new surrounding, and Jyuuk nodded his head.
"Mhm, an octopus…" Jyuuk said as he scratched the back of his head. He knew he didn't expect much, but an octopus was rather… Weird, in his opinion. However, Stahl seemed to be pretty excited anyway.
"Nice, that might evolve into a pretty interesting monster then!" He laughed, and Jyuuk chuckled with a nod.
"Yeah, who knows, it might turn into Cthulhu or something at some point." The Monkey said with a smirk, and Stahl grinned broadly. "That would be dope, really… But how do I tame it now?" He asked, before Jyuuk smiled.
"Well, there's a few ways to do so. You can earn its trust, or start a 'forced' connection." Jyuuk explained, before squatting down next to the bucket together with Stahl, and then continued. "I would suggest the latter. Gaining the trust of an animal like this might be pretty tough."
"Alright, but a forced connection sounds pretty… rough." Stahl said with a sigh, but Jyuuk immediately shook his head.
"Don't worry, what you'll be doing isn't forced, I wouldn't teach you to do that anyway. How a forced tame usually works is to use your mana and pour it into an animal or monster's body. You then take over it's 'source' of mana, as some call it, and that way you can forcefully link its soul to yours. But you will only 'approach' the source of its mana. If it reacts positively and then accepts your approach, you'll have tamed it. First, try to hold it on your palm." Jyuuk explained, before Stahl nodded his head and did as instructed, trying to pick the slightly slimy, wiggling creature up out of the bucket.
"Okay, what now?" He asked, finally having contained the octopus within his hands, before Jyuuk continued.
"Just do exactly what I said. Use your mana and turn it into a single strand while leaving it connected to your body's mana, then lead that strand into the Octopus' body. Because it's Rank 0, there shouldn't be any resistance, and rather a 'pull', so just let your mana be pulled by it, but only let it move forward slowly. Stop right when the pull gets stronger than at the start." Jyuuk explained in quite a lot of detail, before Stahl nodded his head and then did just that.
Slowly, he moved the strand of mana into the octopus' body and immediately felt the 'pull' that Jyuuk was talking about, and after a few moments, the pull became much, much stronger and the strand advanced a lot faster, so Jyuuk immediately reacted and stoped its movements completely.
"I stopped… what now?" Stahl inquired, before Jyuuk simply smiled at him. "Now you just need to wait for the notification telling you that you tamed it, or for your mana to be rejected completely from the body." Jyuuk explained, so Stahl nodded his head, now simply waiting for any kind of reaction.
And a few moments later, Stahl saw the notification in front of his eyes.
[You have tamed an Octopus]
[Taming skill learned]
[Name your tamed beast]
With a grin, Stahl read through these notifications before saying the name that he thought of out loud, using what Jyuuk said before as a 'reference'.
"Your name is Thul." Stahl said, and the notification telling him about the fact that the name was accepted appeared, before Thul the octopus slung its limbs around Stahl's fingers, as if to hug him.
"Thul? As in 'Cthulhu'?" Jyuuk asked with a smile, and Stahl simply responded with a nod.
"Yup, exactly! Now, what should I do next with this little guy?" He asked with a grin, before Jyuuk just crossed his arms.
"Neither Brody nor Xenia are available right now, so I suggest just playing around with him for a while. That's the fastest way to have both your skill and Thul himself rank up." Jyuuk explained, and Stahl nodded his head with a grin.
"Gotcha! So that's it for the 'Life and Death' portion of my lessons, I guess?" Stahl asked with a grin, before Jyuuk immediately shook his head.
"Well, I expect you to read through the last of the three books I gave you as well. The one with the different species of animals and monsters in it. Just try to remember the most important aspects of each species' family. But other than that… Yeah, we should be done. Come to me if you have some more questions though. Oh, and the vines with the help for your mana should wither when you go to sleep the next time." The Beastperson said with a smile, before slowly making his way back to the door and the stairs to make his way back down to the training area.
"Alright, I guess I have some free time for the rest of the day. Let's figure out the situation with you guys for now." Stahl said with a grin as he looked at his five undead, before following Jyuuk to the stairs to make his way to the Workspace, where he would, as the name of the room implied, work on something.
And to his surprise, Stahl found not only Sky, but also Bree and Kiron in there. Sky was working on some more books, while Bree and Kiron helped and watched.
"What's up, you three?" Stahl asked with a smile, before they all looked at him and the six creatures accompanying him.
"Well, I'm getting proficiency in bookbinding and scribing… But what were you up to the whole time?" Sky asked with a wry smile, and Stahl just laughed.
"I finished learning Art skills with Evalia this morning, and just now I finished learning Life and Death related skills with Jyuuk. These are some Undead I made, and this lil' guy here is my first tamed monster, Thul!" Stahl exclaimed as he held his hand forward, showing them the small octopus which was still clinging to his fingers.
"Ooh, how cute!" Bree yelled out as she took a closer look at Thul, before Kiron just smiled at Stahl.
"Amazing how quickly you managed to learn all those skills. Most wouldn't be even patient enough to learn half of them." He said, and Stahl nodded his head with a grin.
"Of course, that's just because I'm amazing!" Stahl yelled out with a broad smile, before Sky scoffed at him and nodded his head sarcastically.
"Yeah, and you're humble too." The Fey-Kin boy chuckled, although he didn't expect Stahl's serious response.
"Duh, obviously, I'm the best!" He smirked, obviously just joking at this point. "Anyway, I really love talking about myself, but I'm here for something else. I want to work on some 'improvements' for these guys." Stahl said as he pointed at the skeletal animals behind him with his thumb, and Kiron looked at him curiously.
"What kind of improvements are you thinking about?" The Half-Dragon inquired, but Stahl just shrugged.
"Not really sure, to be honest. I might enchant them after I learned about the skill from Xenia, but for now I just want to fix some deficits on their bodies. Like, make it so that the Birdy here can fly." Stahl explained before sitting down on one of the chairs that the others seem to have brought in. They also brought a table, by the way, because they couldn't use something made of magic all the time, as they didn't have the skills required for that and didn't want to bother anyone else too much.
"And how exactly do you want to do that?" Bree asked with curiosity in her eyes, before Stahl looked through the supply of different materials that he brought over before.
"Well, one of my ideas was to simply make fake 'wings' for it. I was thinking about using very light, thin leather, or maybe some cloth even. Some of the joints that these guys have are damaged, so they aren't moving all that well, so I also want to switch those out with other parts if I can. Maybe just some wood for now, because making them out of metal takes longer. I'll just be able to replace them again anyway… And I guess everything after that comes once I learned enchanting and alchemy. I might be able to get an interesting material or way to work through it, after all." Stahl said with a smile as he placed his 'Desert Crow' skeleton down on the table, already swiftly taking measurements of whatever he wanted to switch out, while also making some rough sketches about what kind of other parts he could implement in the skeletons' bodies.
And when he was doing so and rambling on about his ideas, Sky, Bree, and Kiron could all see that Stahl was truly Eisen's grandson.