"Aotori! Come here!" Jyuuk yelled out while looking into the distance toward the mountain range that was coming oh so close. A few seconds later, he heard a familiar shriek and a blue blob came into sight.
In response, Jyuuk held out his left arm that was wrapped in ripped up leather strips while the Eagle Lady came into sight, preparing to land on her Master.
"Good girl!" Jyuuk smiled and gave his first tamed monster a small chunk of meat as a treat. During the past week, Jyuuk pretty much spent all his time hunting to level up Aotori, and was able to increase her rank a whole two times!
Whenever she ranked up, her nature changed. When she became Rank 1, she became an Ocean-Feathered Eagle, and her feathers became slightly lighter in color compared to before. In addition to that, she gained the INT and WIS stats and even got MP as well.
When her rank increased to 2, albeit literally just two hours ago, Aotori evolved into an Arctic-Feathered Eagle and gave off a cold air around her, while also growing slightly in size. The color of hear feathers became even lighter, and some of them turned slightly transparent and glittered in the sun like ice.
Of course, Aotori wasn't the only one that grew in strength! Jyuuk managed to reach Level 60 as well! After reaching the Level Cap of 15 for people without an occupation, he talked about it with Brak who pointed him in the direction of an apparent 'Master of Nature'! He was said to have connected with all the plants and animals in the jungle, so it sounded like he might be able to give Jyuuk the perfect occupation for him.
On his way there, Jyuuk found a few interesting things and creatures. First, he was able to tame something that looked like a Deer, but with overgrown branches replacing its antlers. It was incredibly fast while maneuvering the Forest, and was strong enough to do so while having Jyuuk ride on his back. With another quite straightforward name, he called his new companion Tsurishika. The only downside to him was that the limit of possible Tamed beasts had been reached with him. Whether that was because his skill rank needed to be higher or he simply needed a fitting occupation
After that, he also found an interesting egg. At least it seemed to be an egg, judging from the Appraisal of it, but it seemed too soft and fluffy to be one, with a texture somewhat like a marshmallow.
Jyuuk carefully placed it into his bag together with Aotori's eggs and then moved on to meet with that Master of Nature.
He trained with him for only a day and then was allowed to get his Occupation, Beast Master, which let him tame every type of animal, beast or monster there was. It also gave him a new skill, it was called Beast Connection, that let Jyuuk experience some of his Tamed Monster's senses, which he was using for reconnaissance with Aotori to see what she saw to figure out the best path going forward.
Once he got his occupation, Jyuuk decided to go on a Journey. There wasn't much for him to do in this area anymore, so he would love to move on to somewhere else and find what kind of amazing beasts and monsters could be found.
And now, another week had passed that was spent with Jyuuk simply doing his thing, journeying toward the mountain range in the east since it was the closest type of environment that was completely different to the Jungle he had been in up until now.
But before he would reach it completely, Jyuuk had to take care of something else. He heard a few cracking sounds coming from his Backpack.
In a hurry, he carefully placed the bag on the ground and took out the five eggs that he found in Aotori's nest, all of which seemed to be slowly hatching.
One after another, the four blue eggs hatched and the tiny blue-feathered eagle chicks laid on Jyuuk's hands while they got used to the outside world, but the single red egg seemed to be having trouble hatching.
"Come on, I'm rooting for you!" Jyuuk said with a bright smile, hoping that the chick would be able to escape its egg on its own. He really would prefer to not have to break the shell open himself.
Jyuuk slowly grabbed the egg with his free hand while the chicks in his other were being caressed by their mother.
It took another few minutes until the chick's beak broke through the shell, and a truly tiny eagle chick was revealed. Right now, it seemed to be half the size of its siblings, but it was definitely an eagle with similar proportions to them. The tiny eagle didn't seem to be unhealthy, which Jyuuk first thought when he saw its size, but instead more energetic than his siblings. In reaction to the hatching of the five eggs, Jyuuk got new notifications.
They told him that he had tamed four Blue-Feathered Eagle Chicks and one Red-Feathered Eagle chick and that they naturally formed an Aerie together with their mother, which is what a group of eagles was called.
After that, it one after another asked Jyuuk to name each of the five chicks. The names were quite simplistic again and went with the same theme as before.
Soon, he was joined by the Blue-Feathered Eagles Mizutori, Nagaretori, Rekutori and Iketori, as well as the Red-Feathered Eagle Akatori.
Even Tsurishika seemed interested in the tiny creatures and nudged Jyuuk's side. He didn't know for sure, but it seemed like the Deer wanted to help a bit as well.
So, Jyuuk followed his wishes and began to build a small nest between Tsurishika's antlers, where he quickly but carefully placed the five chicks together with Aotori.
"Alright! Now that we have a little family, let's go! Ah, Tsurishika, keep running, but not as fast as before! Don't want these little guys to fall out of the nest." Jyuuk smiled as he jumped onto his Deer's back, who slightly nodded his head in response before starting to run forward at a swift pace.
Jyuuk closed his eyes and remembered the path that he saw with the help of Aotori. At the end of it, surrounded by a few cliffs, was a rudimentary village made up of straw huts and logs that were stacked on top of each other to make a small wall.
Jyuuk didn't want to risk Aotori getting too close and potentially getting attacked by something unknown. But there was one thing that he could tell about the creatures inside: There were a lot of them. If they were aggressive, Jyuuk needed a main attacker in his group. Neither Aotori nor Tsurishika were especially good at fighting large groups.
Both of them were far better at combat with single enemies, so they were not a good choice for this kind of fight. And then there were the five chicks as well. He couldn't just leave them in the nest between Tsurishika's antlers while he was fighting, that would just be reckless!
There were three predator animals that Jyuuk could immediately think of that lived in mountain ranges in real life. Bears, Wolves, and Cougars. There probably were a bunch of other animals and beasts roaming the mountain range, probably some fantastical creatures that didn't exist in real life.
And like that, Jyuuk prepared to find the perfect attacker.
---
"Come on now! I'm not trying to hurt you!" Jyuuk yelled out from the top of a tree, while a bear with deep black fur was trying to attack him. At first, he had tried to tame it when he saw it inside its cave that he saw deep inside a forest, but the bear seemed incredibly aggressive the very moment it noticed Jyuuk's presence.
"How do I calm it down..? Maybe I need to assert my dominance? It seems far stronger than me, though…" Jyuuk muttered out to himself while holding on to his staff and the branches above him.
That was when he had an idea. Maybe if he could use gravity to his advantage, then… Jyuuk carefully ripped off as many thick and heavy branches off of the tree as he could hold, already weighing him down immensely while he climbed as far toward the top of the tree as he could.
Jyuuk looked down onto the top of the Bear's head and gripped his staff tightly as he took a leap of faith.
After dropping the five meters until his target, he hit the bear dead-on in the center of its head.
The bear stumbled around stunned from the impact but didn't seem to have taken a lot of damage other than that.
"Please work…" He said and dropped all of the branches onto the ground, then jumped in front of the bear's face and grabbed it by the sides. "I don't want to hurt you. I'm your friend!"
He yelled out and thought deeply about connecting with this new creature. Jyuuk felt its anger and hatred through that short moment and felt pain spread around his heart. Why would the bear feel that way? Did something happen that its hatred grew?
Jyuuk just hated this feeling. He loved animals with all his heart, and especially noticing the feelings of such a magnificent creature made him just so… sad.
"I'm sorry. Don't worry, you're safe with me." Jyuuk said with a bitter smile and moved his fingers through the bear's deep black fur while it slowly calmed down to the Monkey-man's voice.
[Congratulations! You tamed a Darkness Bear!]
The Darkness Bear in front of Jyuuk now stood up and rubbed its head against him with affection. Seems like this method worked out after all.
"Now, let's give you a name! Yamikuma sounds good!" Jyuuk said to himself and the Bear stood up and nodded at his new master.
"Okay guys, you can come here now!" Jyuuk yelled out. He didn't want Tsurishika or Aotori and her Chicks to be in danger during this, so he sent them away when he noticed that the Yamikuma was aggressive.
Now, they came back up to them from behind the trees.
"Seems like now I have a great attacker for that village. Come on everyone, let's go!" Jyuuk said with a smile and pointed in the distance while sitting down on Yamikuma's back, directing the group back toward that village.
It didn't take long until they reached their destination, the rudimentary front gate of that village Jyuuk saw through Aotori's eyes. Once more, Jyuuk confirmed what he saw and even dared to have Aotori move a bit closer, and what he saw only made him even more excited: Goblins.
Those tiny humanoid monsters that you could see literally everywhere: Games, Movies, or novels! Everywhere!
Jyuuk revealed a wide grin and told Tsurishika to take care of the chicks. He wasn't really a fighter, at least so far, more like a companion with non-combat uses. So, he commanded the deer to wait out of range and run away should anything run up to them anyway, and then prepared for combat together with the rank 2 Yamikuma and Aotori.
He held his staff forward and rode toward the gate on the bear's back. Just before they reached the gate itself, Jyuuk jumped off and climbed over the wall while his two tamed beasts took care of the few small and weak-looking Goblins roaming around outside. He jumped down the wall and stunned another apparently stronger and better-equipped goblin, then quickly opened the gate up for Yamikuma to come inside.
Like this, the trio fought hard and slew every Goblin that stood in their way. There weren't actually that many there, and the village seemed mostly abandoned, so it didn't take nearly as long as Jyuuk expected.
After making sure the whole village was wiped out, Jyuuk called for Tsurishika to come back and then looked around if he could find anything useful.
And there was one thing that definitely was! There was a tunnel in one of the cliffs behind the village.
Jyuuk and his beasts carefully moved through, until they began to react aggressively, screaming and growling at something that was apparently at the end of this narrow passage.
Carefully, Jyuuk held forward his staff and continued on to face whatever was there, and his heart began to beat strongly at the unknown threat.
When his eyes once more began to get used to the bright outside light, he saw the outlines of two figures. Something that at first looked like a giant ball with tiny legs at the bottom and the other was basically a giant of a man, holding a giant sword pointed toward the exit of the tunnel. At first, Jyuuk wanted to send his beasts to attack the two figures, until he heard a wholesome, genuine and sweet laugh.
Jyuuk was sure he heard this before.