Yugioh Card Summoner

CH.368 Experimental Taming

We ended up staying the night in Krime, because after hearing that we were here, the viscount cleared his schedule so we could tame some powerful monsters tomorrow.

So the next morning, we gathered our group and prepared to head out. From my side, it was me, Einar and Unika. Molly and Cina wanted to stay in the town, as they aren’t tamers, and because Bella wasn’t actually coming with us. When I wondered why she wasn’t coming, Viscount Kramer told me that she only likes to tame horses, so she wasn’t interested in whatever we were taming today.

Not that I blame her. She has her speciality, and she is very good at it, so if she wants to stay safe and work with horses, that is her choice. To be honest, if I didn’t have the ability to resurrect people, I probably would be a lot more reserved when it came to bringing out people like Einar and Unika. I just don’t want either of them to get hurt.

Myself? Well, I’m not that worried. I’m over LV.150 and I have 5 cards set on me, so if something does try to hurt me, it likely won’t succeed. … Maybe I should have set some defensive cards on both Einar and Unika? They both already know of level ups, so telling them about set cards isn’t that much more.

Of course, other than my group, there were the Viscount's men. At first, he wanted to bring a larger group, as it would help keep other monsters busy while we focus on taming whatever we were going to tame, but I quickly said no to that. Kramer was a bit suspicious about it, but I told him that I wouldn’t share my secrets with a large group, and asked him to strip his party down to just him and five others. And the five others are to be trustworthy.

This limit was somewhat of a test to him to see if Viscount Kramer was worthy of getting an invite to the HomeBase grand reveal. If he was willing to go with my selfishness and understand that I have secrets to keep, he should be someone I can invite to HomeBase.

So because of that limit, he did have his smaller group of people. Out of them, three were frontline fighters, one was a magician and one was a tamer to do the taming. And of course the Viscount himself could also tame, so effectively we had 4 + 1 viable tamers, as I also got my Taming skill yesterday.

The interesting part is that I didn’t get a new race in One of Every Race to go with the Taming skill. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it is because Taming is still LV.1. I mean, I got the Guardian race when Shield Technique got to LV.4, so maybe that is the limit? But before I ever evolved into One without a Race, I could have evolved into races like Swordsman and Sorcerer, despite the fact that my Space Magic at the time was LV.2 and my Sword Technique was LV.3. So maybe One of Every Race is a bit more limiting than the Chosen Evolution System ability. Not that I really mind, as understanding the skill better should help me understand the race better, but that might also explain why I haven’t unlocked combined races yet. Things like Spirit Sorcerer that Mariina evolved into. My Spirit Magic just isn’t high enough level yet, and I don’t have the Sorcerer racial skill either.

“No. We don’t need those. We’ll use my ship.” I told the Viscount as we were talking about transportation.

“I’ve heard you have an airship, but wasn’t it quite small? One that only fits two people?” Kramer asked.

“Well yes, but also no. I do have a small one like that, but that isn’t the only ship I have.” I said, as I got a card out of Collection. “B.E.S. Tetran.”

I called Tetran to be our ship for today for a few reasons. One, it has a good open space from the ‘cargo’ compartment that reaches all the way to the deck, so that was nice. And the laser cannons at the end of the mechanical tentacles it has are deadly accurate, so they can be used to pick off extra monsters, even if there are friendlies nearby. And because my ships are living entities, they can do that without anyone piloting them.

Getting on board is of course as easy as ever. Just call down a teleportation beam, convince the suspicious people to enter it, and you are on a spaceship.

Our target for the day was a small hill, not quite a mountain, that was a known nesting place of hippogriffs. Viscount Kramer had the adventurer’s guild keeping a close eye on it, in case the horse-eagle mixtures were to attack his town, but they basically never did. There had been a few attacks, but they were either hippogriffs that were driven away, or maybe a pair of hippogriff parents that struggled to find food for their babies. There had never been a large-scale attack, like the wyvern attack that happened at Alewatch. At least not during the last 100 years.

I mean, it does make sense. While monsters are monsters, they are basically animals. A predator doesn’t just attack a large group of animals, especially if said animals don’t run away. And humans that are inside a town aren’t going to run away, but are going to fight, so they don’t attack the towns. Unless they are provoked, like in the case with the Alewatch wyverns.

Flying to the hills took some time, as there was some distance between us and the hill, but that was good, as we could use that time to strategize. Or as I’d say it, we used that time to cheat. Because among the tests I’ve been doing in the Factory was a large scale test on how Swords of Revealing Light works.

Of course I already knew a few things about it, but it has had some inconsistent results, so I wanted to know the full truth, and this is what I came up with. 

First, as you probably already know, anything within the circle of swords is frozen in place, unless it is powerful enough to resist the effect. And basically only S and SS-rank monsters can resist it.

Second, anything connected to me, well the card activator actually, would be unaffected by the card. So for me, Agunan and Ria were always unaffected because Ria is my slave and Agunan has dedicated himself to me. Alice and Lua were also now unaffected, as long as they wore the engagement bracelets I gave them, as that is a connection to me.

Third, I can make new connections by making a contract. Signed contracts were better, but just verbal contracts would work most of the time. The easiest contract was a party contract. If one was written, or registered with a place like the adventurer’s guild, all of my party members would be unaffected by Swords of Revealing Light.

And fourth, anything that any of my party members are actively touching is unaffected by the Swords. But they will get re-affected 1 minute after the contact.

So because of all of those facts, I offered up an easy way for us to tame some hippogriffs. We’d write a temporary party contract. I’ll freeze them all the hippogriffs with Swords of Revealing Light. Then we just tame as many of them as we want. 

Some of the guards that came with Kramer were obviously suspicious of my idea, as they didn’t think I could use a large scale spell like that, but Kramer shut them up and agreed to my idea. But his guards would still keep an eye out in case anything went wrong with it.

After we got to the target area, I located a few hippogriffs just laying around. I don’t know if I’d call it a herd, but it might be one. That was going to be our target area, so I got ready to head out first.

“Einar, when I give the signal, you can bring everyone down.” I told the catboy. 

“Yes, Master.” Einar accepted the assignment. He was one of the few HomeBase employees that fully knew how to operate the teleportation beam on the B.E.S. ships, as he had to learn how to use it to use the HomeBase version of it. Getting up to HomeBase was easy, if you had the access device, but when you head down, you have to quite carefully pick the drop-off point, and Einar quite often helped those that didn’t know how to pick one.

I got down not with the teleportation beam, but by opening a hatch on the ship and simply jumping. Then I slowed down my fall with Telekinesis, before bringing myself to a full stop some ways away from the ground. From there, I had Laura choose the target area for Swords, before I activated the Spell card.

With the hippogriffs frozen, we could get down to the ground, so I gave Einar the sign that he could let people down and I also lowered myself there.

We grouped up at first, just so I could confirm that everyone could move freely inside the Swords. The mage even tested a small spell, just to make sure everyone could use their skills.

With that confirmed, we began looking over the hippogriffs. We didn’t want to tame too many of them, but our goal was to get four of them. Kramer would tame one, the tamer he brought with him would tame one, Einar would tame one, as would Unika. And if any of them failed, I’d probably try myself, as I had a way of cheating the tame. And I wouldn’t mind a hippogriff to go along with the horse I tamed yesterday. Maybe I can have the horse pull my carriage on the ground and then have the hippogriff pull it in the air. I just need to make a flying carriage first.

I was on watch as the others got to work taming the hippogriffs. Viscount Kramer began working on his by first having one of the frontline fighters unfreeze it with a touch, and they then began beating the eagle-horse. After weakening it and having the monster surrender, Kramer himself began the taming process. A bit violent, but effective. They then repeated the same process for the second hippogriff.

Einar and Unika both used a slightly different strategy. Einar had Lumi freeze a part of the hippogriff so that it couldn’t move, while he then began the taming process. Unika on the other hand used a paralyzing potion to make sure the hippogriff couldn’t move, and then tamed the beast.

After some time, three of the four tames were successful. The only one that failed was Einar, and he seemed quite apologetic. 

“Don’t worry. Let me try.” I told him, as I asked him to have Lumi unfreeze the beast.

For my try, I wanted to try something a bit less aggressive. Basically gentle taming. I began by approaching the hippogriff, which was again frozen because of the Swords. I just got real close to it, and gently put my hand on the monster to release the Swords control of it. 

It quickly reacted by biting my outstretched arm, but I just let it do so. It didn’t hurt much at all, and only did just over 10 points of damage to me.

“Don’t worry, it will be fine.” I gently said to the beast, while I stroked it with my other hand, while also using the Taming skill. I then got some meat out of Storage, and held it in front of the monster with Telekinesis. “Why don’t you eat that instead?”

The hippogriff released its beak from my hand and looked towards the meat, then to me, then back to the meat before deciding that the feast floating in front of it was the easier meal, so it dug in. While that was going on, I gently kept stroking its fur, while transferring mana into the monster.

It took just over ten minutes for the hippogriff to eat all of the meat I offered it, and honestly speaking, I expected the taming to be over by that point, but apparently I was wrong. I mean, the horse took about six minutes and I didn’t even have the Taming skill, so why is this taking this long?

I was fully expecting the monster to attack me after it finished its meal, but instead, it just laid down on the ground, like it didn’t even care that I was right next to it. I also got down so I could keep on stroking the monster. To me, it almost felt like the hippogriff wanted me to do so, as it seemed to really enjoy the stroking I was giving it.

It took another 8 minutes after that till I felt the taming complete, and unlike with Einar, the taming succeeded. Maybe a more gentle approach is better? Though you can’t really do that, unless you are massively overleveled like I am.

Since our taming succeeded quite easily, we soon headed back to the village. I just hope taming these hippogriffs won’t cause an attack. I don’t think it will, since we didn’t kill a single hippogriff, but you can never be 100% sure.

On the way back, I got praised by both Unika and Kramer’s tamer for my unconventional taming method, but I just told them it was something I felt might work. After all, it is basically how I tamed the horse, so it should work with a hippogriff. The problem of course being that a horse is a lot weaker than a hippogriff, so no one would ever try my method with one.

And after a quick stop by the village, so we could pick up Molly and Cina as well as my horse that was there, we got into a different B.E.S. monster so we could return to HomeBase. Not before I gave Viscount Kramer his invite letter to the HomeBase reveal ceremony. It included all the details on when someone would come to pick him up, so all he’d have to do is send me a letter saying he would attend, with a letter exchange box I gave him, and then be ready for the pick up when the time came.

And so, we returned to HomeBase. Molly and Cina even more looking forward to their evolution, which I will help them with, and two hippogriffs and one horse also now with us.

And don’t worry Einar. When I locate a few griffins, I’ll take you to tame one. A griffin should suit you better, being half lion, right? And I never got to test if I really can force a tame with Change of Heart, and I still want to do so. Maybe I should ask the adventurer’s guild if they happen to know any areas where griffins are common? Or should I take Einar inside the HomeBase dungeon? I know there are griffins there, so he could tame one from there.