The Lightning Cerro area was much less heavily guarded. The baby Cerro were not too threatening, so as long as you wore shin guards, you would be alright until they grew up a little.
[Oh, I have bribes for the baby Thor type beasts.] Cara announced. [Oh, what did you come up with?]
Cara held up a hazelnut, and Karl wondered where it had come from.
[The Lotus made them for breakfast food, and I claimed some nuts for trees.] She declared proudly.
They weren’t naturally a magical resource, they were just Hazelnuts. Tasty, but not rare or special. But after growing up in a Royal Rank beast space, even the common Hazelnut tree was imbued with mana.
What Cara had done was to make a crude copy of the hazelnut butter and insert it into small apples with the core removed. Even a young Lightning Cerro would treat those as a one or two bite snack, and Karl couldn’t deny that they looked pretty tasty.
The Inquisitor nudged Karl, reminding him that he still had someone else’s Moor Cat on his shoulder.
In response, he handed the monk girl a bag full of diced Commander Rank meat. “Feed her that when she needs a snack. High Rank monster meat is the best way for a young beast to grow, so don’t be too stingy, even if the food costs are high.
I don’t know if your ability is like mine, but if it is, you might eventually be able to keep food for your cat in a separate mental space.” He explained.
Nikki looked confused and shrugged. “When she’s not out here, she wanders my spirit ocean, the spot in my mind where I focus energy to grow mental strength.”
So, she didn’t get a separate space for the beast. That was unexpected. It also ruled out keeping resources there.
“In that case, you can put the meat in your inventory, you don’t need to keep holding it.” Karl reminded her.
“Right, inventory. I have a Class now.” “And don’t forget to check your class skills in your skill tree so that you can plan your advancement. You have a lot to do. The same for our first success story. Where did he go, by the way?”
A hand waved from the back of the group, and then Karl noticed that the clerics were taking away a body covered in a white sheet. They really hadn’t been able to resurrect the one who had died to the Moor Cat kitten.
He was going to have to be reincarnated, and that couldn’t be done here. It was a six high cleric ritual.
The grown Cerro group came over to greet Karl, and much to his surprise, they had a lot to say.
[It’s a pack leader. Are we going to move the pack? This place is small. Why do you smell good, do you have food? Aren’t the little ones cute? Are you keeping the predators away?]
Karl had no idea why he could hear all the Cerro in his mind, but he took a pile of feed out of Thor’s space for the pack. Thor wouldn’t begrudge them the good stuff, and it bought Karl some time to try to determine why he could hear the Cerro pack.
If the reason was nothing more than that he was a Beast Master Packmaster, so he could hear pack animals, Karl might actually give up on trying to understand the system.
In his mind, Thor laughed. [All Lightning Cerro share a mental link. We can all hear each other’s thoughts when we’re close to another pack, so we don’t need to bugle except as a warning. I can hear them, so you can hear them. Probably.]
Karl accepted Thor’s idea as the most likely one, and addressed the Cerro Elders.
[I came to make a request. Some of these humans want to start packs with the young ones. They will take care of them and have their packs help the little ones grow up strong. Do you know of Thor, my Cerro partner? Or is he too far away?] Karl asked them, focusing on both Thor and the pack.
[We can sense him, but he’s not close enough to talk to.] The current pack leader agreed.
That made things much easier. If they knew that this agreement could grow stronger than usual Lightning Cerro, they were more likely to agree.
[How many of them? Our pack is already small.] The leader asked.
[Not more than seven. But these white coats will continue to look after your pack and keep predators away.]
The Cerro considered it and grunted before turning to eat. If the little ones wanted to try joining the human pack, they would allow it. The human pack that looked after them was strong, after all.
“Alright, everyone who wants to try for a Lightning Cerro partner, come forward. I will provide you with snacks for your potential partners and then activate the tokens.”
Karl passed out Cara’s apple concoctions, then took one for himself.
[These are good, we should make more of them.]
Cara nodded with hazelnut spread on the fur around her mouth.
[I agree. I will prepare more of them.]
She was using [Disintegrate] to core the apples, so the only time-consuming part was making the hazelnut paste.
The little ones came forward to see what sort of snack was being offered, and only a few seconds later, the first bond formed.
Karl saw that this one was also tagged as a {Beast Ranger} by the system, and the small Cerro in front of him was marked as his partner.
Then two more cadets gained the same class, and everyone began to notice the pattern. Beast Ranger was the default class for people partnered with one of the Cerro, as a regular Ranger was unable to bond with magical beasts, only common animals.
Two more cadets gained the class, and the group was beginning to think that Lightning Cerro was the best option for this process.
Then, things began to go wrong.
One of the Rangers began to convulse, and Karl sensed the distress from his bonded partner. It was part of his pack now, and the pack member was in danger, but the Cerro didn’t know what to do.
It had already put a [Refreshing Lightning] barrier over him, but it couldn’t see the attacker.
Karl examined him as thoroughly as he could, but it just didn’t make sense. The man had the class, the Cerro was a common rank hatchling, and everything looked normal.
The white robed cleric realized it first.
“The mental link is too strong. It’s breaking his mind. I will sedate him, but I don’t know what we will do after that.”
Karl wasn’t sure that would work. The mental link was active even when you were sleeping. But being unconscious should give him the best chance to focus and stabilize his mind.
That left only two of the cadets, and while the hatchlings happily accepted all the snacks that they could offer, they wanted nothing else to do with them.
Then a second cadet dropped to the ground with blood pouring from their eyes and nose.
The cleric rushed over, but the boy waved his hand. “I will be alright, he’s just… energetic. There is a tree of life in my soul sea, and Devon, my Cerro, charged it with his horns.” He mumbled.
Karl chuckled. “You have a smashing post in your mental space? You’re in for a very rough week until you build your mental strength.”
The others all looked confused, so Karl created an [Earth Barrier] post on the far side of the enclosure.
The Cerro herd cheered and began to line up to take turns smashing into it.
“Dammit, we were finally breaking them of that habit.” One of the University workers grumbled.
“It’s essential to their mental health. You need to let them play. If they can’t charge at posts, they need to charge each other, and that isn’t as much fun. If you have mages, they also like mage barriers.” Karl explained.
A number of the nearby Cerro nodded in agreement, making the cadets who were not having a hard time with their new partner laugh.
Mage barriers were good. Posts were better. Magical posts were the best. If they could find one that made a better noise when they hit it, they would revise the ranking system.