< Magic Beast Trainer (2) >

Emptying our glasses, we organized what we had to do from now on.

We decided that raising the familiars would be in collaboration with Haeyeon. It was because it would be too hard for me alone to handle the negotiations with the giant guilds. It was also annoying. There were people who would do it well for me, so why would I choose to suffer?

“As a Hunter, you’re going to remain unaffiliated, right?”

At Yoohyun’s question, I nodded.

“If I contract to be a Hunter with Haeyeon, the number of people on their guards would increase. Even if it’s rare, there’s a difference between having a chance and not having one.”

Even if I didn’t, I was the Haeyeon Guild Leader’s family, so if you added a contract on top of that, they would try to stomp me down before I got bigger. There were tons of bastards in the world who would spit on things they couldn’t have.

“At least outwardly, I should be impartial. If Haeyeon happens to seize the country’s Hunter community, then I’ll contract for you.”

“It won’t take long.”

That guy Yoohyun said, confidently. Even originally, he suppressed them in 5 years, so if you added Yerim and even Myeongwoo, it would be even faster. And it was possible to grow Kim Sunghan to an S-Rank. …Would Suk Hayan also stick to Haeyeon? Since she was Suk Simyeong’s niece… I felt like I was giving a lot more than I had thought.

Eh, so what. It would be good if Haeyeon quickly got bigger. And it wasn’t like Yoohyun would betray me.

“Like we said before, we can put the price of Haeyeon’s protection as raising Peace for you. Let’s get to a specific contract after the attack on the new A-Rank dungeon. You said you’re going in for the attack in 3 days, right?”

“Yeah. I should send out people to auction houses and sweep up monster babies and eggs.”

“I don’t need mid- to low-rank, and would there even be any high-rank ones?”

“If we check overseas too, there might be a few as bad stock? Since they’re just expensive and don’t have much use. I should contract a tamer too.”

…He wouldn’t be dumping fifteen or so at a time, right? I would be busy just with feeding all the kids.

“I can’t raise a lot at one time.”

Just in case, I told him ahead of time. And it was true that there was a limitation. It took time even just influencing them and I had to directly train them for fast growth to be possible.

So looking after about three to four together probably was a reasonable amount.

“Really? How many can you do?”

“Three is reasonable and five at maximum. The growth speed decreases as the number increases.”

“You’re going to set aside one placement for Haeyeon, right? Even if we get two to three at a time, we need ten for even just the S-Rank team.”

“…Ten?”

“Yeah, since an S-Rank attack team is comprised of at least 20 or more.”

Uh… Suddenly it felt like a warning light was turning on that I would become a physical laborer. I just wanted to live well and without greed, reasonably raising some. How long would it take if I had to raise ten?

Since they would be high rank, if you said they would take more than twice as long to grow than Peace, even if I raised five at one time, it would take a full three to four months.

And before all that, the start was ten. For just Haeyeon. And recognizing his intentions, it seemed to me like he wanted to fill up with one per person if possible.

“……It’s already starting to get annoying.”

I pulled Peace into my arms and buried my body into the back of the sofa. I had thought too simply. Even if I trained only the highest ranks and just used the skill on high ranks, I had to feed and look after all of them until they were influenced. With all my sincerity, full of affection.

Far from marriage, I hadn’t even dated, but I was starting with infant care hell.

“Familiars aren’t required for dungeon attacks so wouldn’t it be okay to raise them slowly?”

“They’re not required but just having them would make the pace of the attack much faster.”

“How much?”

“For an S-Rank dungeon attack, it would decrease as much as half or more probably?”

“What? Half?”

“Even the D-Rank dungeon we went to today, we walked for a long time, right? It’s more so for S-Ranks. For personally running, stamina conservation is a problem and the speed too is a lot slower compared to a four-legged monster of the same rank. So it definitely becomes faster in various ways.”

Ah, shit. It was even more of a hit than I thought.

I didn’t know it would make that much of a difference. Was this the difference between an actual hands-on worker and a guy that only knew theory? Even so, I couldn’t say I wanted to slack off after hearing that.

Decreasing a high rank dungeon attack time by half meant that the dungeon’s safety became twice as much. Right now, the number of high rank dungeons was small, but after two to three years, the number of Awakened People started to become difficult to cover the number of dungeons with.

Naturally, the danger of dungeon breaks also became bigger.

But if it was after familiars were supplied, the story would completely change.

‘Even decreasing the attack time by exactly 30% was similar to the S-Rank attack team increasing by 30%… whew.’

A world that was as much as more than 30% safer… My conscience… sense of morals… ethics……

I’ll just work diligently. Yes. It wasn’t like there were that many S-Rank attack teams, and it would probably stop at some point. I demand a retirement as a happy rich man before 40.

“…For now, give me a training room right away first. I’ve used my skill on Peace so the effect duration only has 2 and a half days left. I have to raise him as much as possible to provide proof at the negotiation table.”

“Right now? It’s late.”

“Staying up the night isn’t that hard. And Peace has to rest too so I’ll rest at least during spare moments.”

“Still, don’t do it too excessively. If you’re going to record it, you probably need filming equipment, right?”

“Yeah.”

While Yoohyun was making the phone call, I stretched out and laid down completely on the sofa. It hadn’t been long since I decided to become one with the sofa, but it was like this now. My hurt hip throbbed anew.

‘Person who made the system, I’m going to be busy for a while so please don’t contact me.’

Have to raise the kids. I am handing in my parental leave.

The place Yoohyun gave me was none other than the novice Hunter practice room.

It was a large space that would still have room left over after the still young Horned Flame Lion ran around to his heart’s content, and various machines for training were provided. On top of that.

“There are ten Tooth Moles.”

They even handed over monsters.

“They were weakened, for both novice training and skill experiment use, enough so that even F-Ranks can handle them, but please do not take out more than two at a time.”

The practice room manager said, gesturing to the pen. The manager here was an Awakened Person, unlike other places, maybe for handling monsters. Stat D-Rank with defense specialization, looking at the optimized skills.

“In the case of an incident, please press the emergency call button immediately. Please refer to this booklet for usage instructions for the training machines.”

After finishing the explanation, the manager threw a disbelieving glance at me and then went out.

I had to keep secret about raising magic beasts before entering negotiations with the giant guilds, so I put it as borrowing the practice room to train myself, not Peace. To think that an F-Rank would piggyback his dongsaeng and use the guild’s entire practice room, I would probably get criticized a little.

“Okay, Peace. Obediently stay sitting here.”

First, in order to record Peace’s current state, I sat him next to the Tooth Moles’ pen. The front of the pen was transparent so I could definitely compare the sizes of the two monsters.

-Keureureung

Peace showed interest in the Tooth Moles and bared his canines. The Tooth Moles also kept on shaking their front feet with long claws back at him. Maybe because they were low rank monsters, they were stupid. They couldn’t recognize their opponent.

“You can’t. Sit down again. Good.”

I turned on the camcorder fixed onto a tripod and recorded Peace’s appearance.

“2nd Rank Unicorn subspecies Horned Flame Lion juvenile[1], did not grow for two months after capture. Body length 41cm, body weight 2.8kg. Currently, it is magic beast rearing skill application 1st day, 11:21 pm.”

After the explanation, I turned the sound recording function off. Then, I placed on the table a large clock with a timing function that I had prepared beforehand, and wrote down the current time and the remaining growth time for Peace into a notebook.

“What should I start with?”

First, I had to use each training equipment one at a time to check the efficiency and reactivity. For the first one, I poured balls into a pitching machine.

‘Since I don’t know if it would work if I used machines.’

When I had directly thrown a ball for Peace, the decrease in growth time per 10 minutes was about 18 minutes. Throwing for one hour would be an additional decrease of 48 minutes, so the efficiency was quite good. If my shoulder could last, that is.

“Peace, look here!”

-Kkiang?

Peace, who was sitting down, shot up and came towards me. No, don’t come over. I operated the pitching machine and tried lightly letting one ball fly.

-Keung

Peace’s gaze went toward the ball for a very short moment, and then he ignored it. Hey. When I was throwing it, you went after it really well.

I tried letting another one fly, but this time, he didn’t even look at it and came right to my feet and flopped on his back.

-Kkeureureung

“……Peace.”

Could it be that having to directly train him meant this kind of meaning? My stamina, strength…… I swallowed a sigh and called the practice room maintenance.

“I need equipment that prioritizes the Stamina stat and includes the Strength stat. All of them, for each body part. Do I have to receive permission from Guild Leader directly?”

[No, you do not. He said to provide everything you need.]

“Then, I would like to request for integer increase ones.”

At my words, the manager was little taken aback over the cell phone.

[We only have integer increase equipment that are low in rank.]

“I know.”

Since that guy’s guild only had people rich in stats. I still had to use the ones that were here, what else could I do.

Soon after, the requested equipment were sent over. I packed them on thickly and barely got to 100 in Stamina stat. It was about the level of an S-Rank level 2. Wow~.

Strength didn’t quite reach 50, but Peace was still around the level of a C-Rank so it would probably be okay. And he would be level 1 since he didn’t have combat experience.

“I already checked throwing balls, and this time, let’s try hitting the sandbag.”

I took Peace went to a sandbag that was hanging at one side. Of course, it wasn’t a normal sandbag. It was an extremely durable attack practice tool that automatically measured the damage.

“Okay, look, Peace. I’ll hold it for you so you just have to jump like this and hit it. You can scratch or bite it. It’s durable.”

When I gave a demonstration, Peace followed along by jumping around and piercing the sandbag with the horn on his head. He was pretty strong.

“Good, you’re doing well! That’s right! Just hit it any way!”

-Keureung, geureung!

When I shook the sandbag from time to time, he became even more excited and came at it. It felt good. I had a hunch that the training efficiency would be considerable. I finished exactly 30 minutes of training and then checked Peace’s remaining growth time.

“Oh, it decreased by over 1 hour!”

While training, the growth speed became about 2.3 times. If it was like this, then he would probably become an adult by the time I apply the skill on him for the third time?

If we trained for 3 days without sleep, we could reduce 15 days to 7 days or less. But that was a little excessive, so if we comfortably grabbed 9 days, then it would take exactly two months.

“Good, let’s try something else too!”

-Kkiang!

Maybe because playing with the sandbag was fun, Peace jumped around excitedly. Our Peace, even his stamina was good.

Then, we tried training for five hours by using various equipment in succession. The most efficient one was 3-times-increasing mock combat and what saved me was 1.7-times-increasing moving a laser pointer.

“……I’m going to die.”

-Kkeureureung?

Peace tilted his head, looking up at me, who was draped on a long chair.

I clearly had a higher Stamina stat but why wasn’t he tired? Was his recovery fast because he was young? Or was this the difference between a C-Rank born to be an S-Rank and F-Rank pretending to have a high rank with equipment?

Awakened People’s stats weren’t just the five that were displayed. Awakened People researchers all said there should be stats hidden for all sorts of senses and such, like resilience, endurance, durability, intellect, or good fortune.

The proof were the results of an experiment that showed that there was a difference in ability even when stats were matched exactly with equipment and skills weren’t used. Even if the stats were the same, the one who originally had the higher rank was superior in all facets.

So there was a limitation on relying on equipment. Sadly.

“Still, my current Stamina stat should be three times higher. Monsters’ resilience seemed strong, so was it true?”

-Kkiang, kkiing!

“No. I can’t play with you any longer. Let’s rest a little.”

It would be nice if I had a stamina potion, but there was still 1 year until it was created. It was because the dungeon that contained the ingredients for it appeared 1 year later. It would be great to take that dungeon too, but it was overseas.

‘It was Japan, right?’

Why there of all places? If Haeyeon quickly took its place, should we try attacking Japan? Killing two birds with one stone[2], that’s good.

-Geureureung, keureureung!

Begging to play, Peace eventually bit the hems of my pants and started to shake it. Hey, punk.

“Did a lot of things pile up since he was living cooped up inside the house all this time? Peace, do you want to play with those moles over there?”

We should experiment training with those too. Like wet cotton, they raised their heavy bodies and came towards us. The Tooth Moles bared their front teeth fiercely towards me. Things that were weaker than me even without the equipment were really being flippa-.

-Kyaaak!

Abruptly, Peace’s fur stood on its end and he let out a furious sound.

“P-Peace?”

-Kyaang! Kyaaat!

-Kiiiik!

When Peace rushed at them, the Tooth Moles yelled back from where they were between the pen door. Then, even the Moles in the other pens started to join in.

-Kiik, Kiii!

-Kiiik!

Geez, what kind of fuss was this. Even as a baby, as expected, a monster was a monster.

“Calm down for a bit. I’ll take them out for you.”

When I pressed the button on top of the pen, the door opened. Then.

-Kkiiit!

The Tooth Moles were simply torn to pieces in the blink of an eye. Whoa. Our Peace… was pretty tough. Him rushing at me when we first met was at a cute level.

-Keuheung!

Peace hummed proudly with his blood-covered face. Then, as if telling me to see, he kicked over the remains of the Moles with his front paws and placed them at my feet.

“Right, right. You did well.”

It seemed like I couldn’t train him with monster matches. He finished them too quickly. And it was too dangerous to use monsters with higher ranks.

“Come here, let’s clean your face.”

-Gyareureureu, geureureureung

That guy, seemed like he was in a good mood. That’s right, quickly grow up and go to dungeons with Yoohyun and plow your way through to your heart’s content.

[1] SO. Wayyy back in ch. 10 there was a word that tripped me up, and that was 유체, though I didn’t make a footnote about it. But I asked my dad what it was and he was like it’s ‘liquid’ and I was like well that makes no sense bc then it would be saying the HFL is a liq which it decidedly is not. So I checked the krn-eng dict again and it said it could also mean corporeal, and I was like aight that makes slightly more sense maybe there are incorporeal monsters too and the sys is differentiating that so I guess it’s that. Fast forward several (many) ch to now, where I realize, hey wait 성체 means adult (from 성 = adult, 체 = body) and I’m p sure 유 = young, so I check up my hanja (bc a lot of words have corresponding hanja, as the krn alphabet was only made in the 15th c), and sure enough, 幼, I was right. I texted my dad like hey is this right and he’s like yeah and I’m like well ok why didn’t u tell me last time when we had like a 5 min discussion about this and he’s like I only realized bc you put 유체 & 성체 together in ur text, so. Yeah. I haven’t changed ch. 10 bc I’m too lazy to

[2] lit. ‘eating the pheasant and eating the egg’

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