Leon sat on his usual log by the fire as he whittled into a piece of bone. He continued to make his small animal totems like always but the material used now was much more difficult to deal with than with regular wood.
Despite that, his movements were just as fluid and beautiful as when he worked with wood. The fact that he was carving directly into bone didn't change the outcome, as he finished holding a little bear totem.
{ Mini Bone Bear totem (F) - A mini totem made out of Bone in the shape of a Bear. It represents the spirit of a bear, granting you a small amount of its stats once used. Since it was made using the bones of a bear, its effects have been enhanced.
+5 Health
+2 Attack
Effects last for 3 hours }
Satisfied with his work, he threw it in his inventory again and looked over to Kona who was making an awful lot of noise. In her mouth was a crudely made stuffed animal in the shape of a bunny.
She gnawed and chewed on it like her life depended on it but it was hard for her to make so much as a scratch on it.
"Shut up. You're loud." Leon complained as he opened up his system page.
Kona paused her biting and turned her head slowly to glare at her master. It was a funny sight to see, an animal like her making facial expressions like a human, but it had become normal for her after spending a little over 3 weeks now with him.
*woo* *woo* *woo*
"Of course you can't," Leon responded like nothing was out of the ordinary, "Its E rank hide and your stats are abysmal."
*woo* *woo* *woo* *woo* *woo*
"They're trash," Leon didn't mince his words, "Intelligence and mana are only two stats. Your other four are still F rank meaning no matter how high those two get, you will still be an F rank monster. Its a miracle you can kill monsters at all. Plus, mana doesn't even have a rank so you still need two of your other stats to get higher before you can ruin that thing."
He pointed to the bunny in between her front paws with a knife before he suddenly stabbed his arm with it. Instead of blood gushing and pain following, it almost sounded like the dull clang of metal striking concrete.
"Even at +0% I can't break through my skin so easily." Leon mumbled and made a mental note.
He was currently testing out his Bone Overgrowth skill, which he hadn't had a ton of time to research even over the last few weeks. There was so much that went on that he wasn't even sure where to start.
Taking a moment to go over everything that happened, he took out a notebook he got as a reward last week and took a look at everything he wrote down and write more information about his Bone Overgrowth skill. To him, he could see his sloppy handwriting he was practicing with after not having wrote anything for over 20 years, while to anyone looking over his shoulder, all the pages would be blank.
The notebook was an E rank item called 'The Secret Diary' that only allowed the Player bound to it to read it. It had a limited number of pages and someone with a detection or dispel skill of the same rank could reveal what he wrote, but it wouldn't do much as nobody could read that shitty handwriting.
Within the pages, it went over most of what he had gone through, mostly noting down things about the system that he definitely wanted to remember. Even though he had a lot of knowledge from the skill 'Don't ignore me!' that the system so graciously gifted him, his mind was only human.
He was bound to forget something on top of closing in on his twilight years. Twilight years was an exaggeration now though, as the Leon now looked just like he did 20 years ago when he first ascended this mountain to live alone.
His wrinkles had tightened to his face a bit and color had begun to return to his aged skin. His muscles grew bigger and popped out more from underneath his armor while he also trimmed that mess of a beard for once, showing off his thick neck and strong jawline again.
To him though, he felt naked.
He had become so used to not shaving or keeping his hair well that he looked like some sort of caveman. The reason he did it trim up his looks though was because of his change in mindset after the first Main Quest ended.
He had fallen asleep that night tossing and turning about what he wanted to do now with his life. He had run away from his problems for so long that he couldn't make a proper decision but he knew that the Universal Law's 'pep talk' that night had stuck to his mind.
He wanted to change.
This would not have been the life his wife would have wanted for him, no matter how much he denied it. She was a strong woman, willing to beat him up fearlessly despite his decade plus long servitude to the armed forces and her short stature.
She definitely was the boss of the family, but he knew his son would have cried too if he saw him this way. Just thinking of the kinds of faces they might make if they were to see him brought a smile to his face and made Kona drop her stuffed animal out of her mouth in shock.
To Kona, he was a devil in disguise, who forced a wee pup to grow faster than she could physically keep up with. She may have looked almost a year old now, pretty much the size of a fully growth Grey Wolf, but she was still only around 3ish months old.
The reason she looked so much older was simple, the system.
The system not only could reduce the aging process that effected Leon, but it could also speed up the growing process that Kona was going through. It used the status of a creature to determine what was best for their growth, to give them a fighting chance, so it was able to 'turn back the clock' and 'speed up the clock' depending on a living being's age.
Leon didn't care while Kona was a bit frustrated, as she wanted to continue being a cute fluffball longer. She wasn't as cute now that she had grown up to more of a teenager, maybe around 14 or 15 in human years thanks to her high intelligence, but she did feel like she looked more majestic than before.
Leon grumbled as he looked at the strange wolf that continued to try and be a human with all its might. He had no idea why it was fixated on that but he had to admit that she was quite strong, even if she wasn't considered an E rank yet.
Back a little over 2 weeks ago, he had been training the little pup like she was a new army recruit.
She had also been trying to give him hints for a while, trying to convey that she managed to gain a few stats from all the food she ate, but the message was hard to get through due to the language barrier.
He realized she could understand what he was saying, but not vice versa. As such, he called out the name of a stat and had her draw lines in the snow depending on how many she got.
She was a smart girl, being able to finally talk to Leon a little bit and he learned she had actually earned quite a few points from food, but still not enough to make her strong enough to fight other animals with the average level becoming around 3 or 4 during that time.
But that changed a bit when he got a system message he did not expect, nor did Kona.
*ding!* [Your bond with the Wolf pup, Kona, has reached a level of 'Understanding.' Would you like to attempt to tame the monster?]
This kind of message was not something he was expecting, as taming any kind of monster was extremely difficult, even for God-like beings. It required both the tamer and the tamed to consent, but the issue was that most monsters ran on instincts.
They may become smarter as their stats naturally increased over time, but the red eyes was a sign that they were still not capable of full conscious thought. Most of the time, the only way to get a monster tamed was to force it into submission by beating it to the brink of death.
That way, their only way to survive was to give their consent to be tamed, but over half the time, monsters rather chose death than subservience.
Kona was very odd, since she had such a high intelligence stat, she could physically see and understand the system page! Because she kept her rationality even when Leon forced her to level up to 2, she was capable of truly making decisions on her own.
This led to man and wolf, to mutually agree to be Tamer and Tamed.
Giving Leon access to Kona's personal stat page, and to acquire any one of her skills.