It was the day after I had began to truly delve into crafting, and I was currently sitting in the clearing in the woods with a pile of spears bundled together in front of me. The reason I had made more spears was because I had noticed that the spears tended to break upon hitting tougher objects such as the tree I was using as targeting practice the night before. I wasn't really upset at this development, quite the opposite actually, it gave me a chance to improve my wood weapon crafting skill after all.
Through the skills I had gained the nigh before, my understanding of the system had improved by a large margin. The system seemed to have been purposely designed to mirror the skills that I would gain through my actions, just giving me a numerical value of them and speeding up my efficiency at gaining skill at different crafts. This could be clearly seen in how the spears laid before me were far better in craft than the ones from the night before.
From what I could gather, the system gave me skills specifically related to what I had accomplished, this was the reason I had gained a wood carving skill instead of a carving skill. It also seemed to have some understanding of how certain skills could affect others, this could be seen by my gaining a wood weapon crafting skill rather than a wood spear crafting skill, seeing as my experience crafting wooden spears would affect how quickly I could pick up crafting other wood weapons.
And the last thing I had learned was that the max level of skills depended entirely on how high a specific aspect of crafting could be evolved. That was the reason why the max level of my wood carving skill was higher than my weapons crafting skill but lower than my trapmaking skill, because the max I could reach with them was a lot lower.
Learning this had led to me creating a theory that I planned to test out today; I wanted to see if creating multiple skills that could all fall under the same overarching category could create a skill with a higher level.
The was I would test this is through hunting animals with my spear. If I gained a tracking skill through following footprints left by animals, as well as a skill for actually killing the animal, I wondered if they along with trapmaking, could come together to create a hunting skill.
That was the reason why I had spent some time crafting one final thing, something currently resting on my back.
It was a wooden basket, something to carry my spears with that would allow me to take a larger number of them on this trip. Before heading out, I had decided to train my accuracy, hoping to get it to a decent level before I would feel comfortable hunting an animal.
That was the reason I was currently looking over my skills list, looking at the levels of my skills with a feeling of deep satisfaction.
Skills
[Trapmaking Lvl 6/150]
[Wood Weapon Crafting Lvl 12/50
[Wood Carving Lvl 8/75
[Spear Throwing Lvl 15/100]
As I glanced at the level of trapmaking, I couldn't help but to gain a reminiscent glint as I remembered what I had woke up to early in the morning.
~Flashback~
Hearing a loud 'Ding!', I snapped awake, not expecting the sound of system notifications to ring out in the early hours of the morning. Still, as I looked at the system notification, all of my grogginess was thrown out the window at what I saw.
Ding!
Your Trap Has Caught A Level 4 Raccoon, You've Gained 50 Experience Points!
Looking over this notification, I withheld my excitement at the prospect of gaining free experience for the traps I created and instead turned to another feature of the system I had found; the notification log.
After clicking on it, I scanned through the last few notifications, finding them all to be based around traps of mine catching different animals, with only one being a major difference from the others.
Ding!
Your Trap Has Caught A Level 10 Spirit Beast Cub, You've Gained 200 Experience Points!
This notification caused my breathing to quicken, my heart palpitating at an increased rate with barely contained excitement. This reaction was natural, finding Spirit Beast cubs was incredibly rare after all.
Spirit Beasts were beasts that had the instinctive ability to cultivate, with cubs naturally being young Spirit Beasts. The reason that they were rare is that they were closely safeguarded by their parents; this was caused by human cultivators capturing them any chance they could. Cultivators hunted Spirit Beast cubs because they could train them into guardian beasts for their sects or as personal mounts, something older Spirit Beasts couldn't easily become as they had long grown past the point of susceptibility.
Another reason behind this was that Spirit Beasts that were trained by humans could typically cultivate far faster than they would on their own, growing faster than most humans. Top this with their long lifespans, and sects loved them for their ability to become guardian beasts that would be around for far longer than most cultivators would be alive. The reason they cultivated faster under human care had to do with the way Spirit Beasts cultivated; they did it by instinct, meaning they had no technique. With a human guiding them through an actual cultivation method, it would speed up the Spirit Beasts cultivation multifold.
As I was lost in thought, a loud feminine voice snapped me out of my dazed state, "Leo, come down here for breakfast." This voice obviously belonged to my mother.
~Flashback End~
Glint returning to my eyes, I continued on my journey through the forest. However, instead of heading for an animal, I instead started to head toward the location of my traps, following the markings on the tree, anticipation growing in my eyes as well as a hint of greed.
It wasn't until the third trap that I'd found what I was looking for, that being the currently trapped Spirit Beast. Ironically, the beast that was supposed to be the smartest among the ones I caught was the one to fall for the most basic of the traps I made.
I couldn't help but to have a bit of a smirk on my face as I walked toward the wooden box, listening on to the thrashings and growls of whatever Spirit Beast I had managed to capture.
It did kind of surprise me that the system didn't give me the name of whatever Spirit Beast it was, but I figured that the system must only tell me the name of species that I already knew. I had sort of confirmed this through interacting with people in the town; whenever I met someone new, their name wouldn't automatically appear whenever I observed them, only after they told me their name would it show up.
I decided that caution would be the better part of valor for this specific interaction, so instead of raising the box to see what was inside, I instead decided to carve out a small hole on the top of the box. I only did this as I could tell from the sounds it was making that the animal was large, something that definitely wouldn't be able to escape a small gap.
Using my knife, I gently carved into the box, careful to not poke too fast to not accidentally stab whatever was inside.
Glancing inside, I could see what appeared to be a young panda, its face currently containing a fierce scowl as it looked up at me. And yet, as I looked down at the figure, there was only one thing that came to mind, "Cute."
I only realized I had said that out loud after the poor panda made an attempt to lunge at me, probably figuring me to be a threat considering its circumstances. Even through its aggression, I couldn't find the energy within myself to be angry at it, it was just too cute after all.
After a couple minutes of thrashing, the panda seemed to calm down. Its next actions took me completely by surprise; it chose to lay down, letting out a yawn before going to sleep, clearly realizing it was just wasting its energy attempting to attack me.
Typically, even a baby Spirit Beast would have the strength to escape from a wooden box; however, I wasn't stupid enough to trap animals without ensuring my own safety. The way in which I did this was by placing poisonous berries within the traps. It seemed the poison had another unintended side affect on the little Spirit Beast, that or it was just naturally lazy.
Deciding that now would be a good time to start building trust with the young Spirit Beast, I took it out of the box and placed it on my lap, deciding to forego my previous plans and instead take care of it.
However, I wasn't dumb enough to give it an easy way to attack me, instead using some wrap that I carried with me to wrap up its claws before using a stick and some string to create a make-shift muzzle for it.
I headed back to the clearing I had previously come from, deciding that building trust with a young Spirit Beast would be a much better way to spend my time than what I planned before. After all, humans in this world couldn't cultivate until a certain age as their bodies wouldn't be able to handle Qi, so having a Spirit Beast to protect me before that point was a huge investment.
Reaching the clearing, I placed the basket I was wearing down before sitting with my back against a tree, the panda still held within my arms.
Finally having some free time, I finally noticed that there seemed to be a notification from the system.
Ding!
Host Has Discovered A New Species Of Spirit Beast, The Combat Pandas!
As A Reward For This Feat, The System Will Give An Introduction To This Species And The Basics Of What It Can Do.
'The Combat Panda species is a Spirit Beast that seem to either come from the same lineage as Giant Pandas or are a mutation of them. They share a similar appearance, the main difference being the size. Combat Pandas typically reach around 3m in height (10 foot). One other major difference aside from this is the Combat Pandas balance, unlike other bears who can stand on two feet for short periods of time, Combat Pandas can do this indefinitely. While rare, in the occurrence that a human find a cub, these Spirit Beasts have been known to fight with weapons, specifically of the polearm variety.'
As I read over this paragraph, I couldn't help but notice that this had clearly been taken from somewhere else. I figured the system must have access to resources from this world, and that this must be an introduction to the species by some sect of this world.
As I looked over the rather lazy looking figure in my lap, I couldn't help but to gain a rather strange glint in my eye. After all, it was kind of hard to compare this barely 60cm creature to a beast that would tower over me at 3m.
Still, this only caused my excitement to further increase at the prospect of owning such a beast. It appears that finding a cub such as this one was a rare occurrence, something I planned to take complete advantage of.
After waiting with the sleeping cub on my lap for around half an hour, I felt the figure of the Combat Panda still within my lap. It was clear that it had awoken, and its attempts to hide that by not moving only made it seem cuter.
Lips twitching, I opened my mouth to address the creature, "I know you're awake."
This seemed to snap the cub out of its state of pretend, it attempting to lunge at me with its claws, something that had little to no effect with them being bandaged up and all. Reaching down, I picked the little creature up, bringing it eye level with me, hoping to convey to it that I meant it no harm.
After holding it there for a couple minutes, the beasts struggles seemed to stop, it staring me straight in the eyes. After a couple more minutes, the beast seemed to shrug its shoulders before it went back to sleep.
Seeing this, I couldn't believe how easy it was to gain the beasts trust. I figured that this must be the reason people were in such a frenzy for Spirit Beast cubs, it seemed to come to trust me enough to sleep before me in a matter of minutes.
I was interrupted by a noise I had come to love,
Ding!
Congratulations! Through Specific Actions, The User Has Gained The Skill [Spirit Beast Taming Lvl 1/∞] As Well As Completing A Hidden Quest, 'Tame A Spirit Beast'.
Reward: 20 Stat Points And 500 Exp
Ding!
The User Has Leveled Up!
Status
Level: 6 (75/600)
Strength: 10
Endurance: 8
Intelligence: 22
Agility: 13
Creativity: 29
Stat Points: 22