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?] fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
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.]
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