Common knowledge said that there were about one hundred animals for every black iron level awakened beast. Gordon thought back to what he had learned in school about awakening. Taking this as a standard he should be able to find an awakened yeast. If he just ordered a beer there could be thousands of yeast in just one pint.
Food stands were spread through out the beast center and it wasn't hard to find a bar. A board hanging over the avenue he was currently on showed a picture of a pig on its back legs and holding a baton, the Prancing Pig. There was another a sign next to it proudly declaring that they had been in business since Empress Jane the Avenger reigned. Which meant that this bar was over two hundred years old, however since it operated on the floor of the beast center the bar and everything else was completely transportable. Every day the bar probably had to move, even if it was just a few feet to accommodate the beast market as beast were sold and new beasts were brought in.
Gordon had to wonder how the bar owners did dealt with moving the whole establishment everyday. They probably employed some powerful beast or beasts to move the bar and its over hanging roof, but the damage from frequently moving everything must be horrendous.
Yet the beer that Gordon purchased was actually really cheap. Shaking his head he didn't know how they could do it.
Taking a sip he shook his head. The beer was not giving him anything. Sighing he realized that this bar must not inoculate their beer with living yeast after it is finished. It made sense now that he had confirmed the lack of living yeast in the beer. These guys probably didn't store their beer at all. There was no where to store it and anything they did store was just more weight that had to be moved everyday.
Technically he was underage for a beer and being a straight arrow he decided not to tempt his parents or his teachers. Leaving the mostly unfinished beer on the bar he quickly left. The bar tender had given him a wink and a smile when he had passed Gorgon the beer. Bartending
'Let's see. I probably won't be able to form a contract with a fungi that is already within another living animal.'
Stating what he had already learned from trying to approach animals, Gordon strolled along the avenue that the Prancing Pig was on. Randomly he had picked a direction to find a bar before and now he looked around to see what area of the hall he was in. With the smell of manure and the sound of mooing he quickly realized that he was currently in the herbivore affinity section of the hall. Around him were various cows, goats, and horses.
A little farther down the row he started to see some deer. A few of which seemed to strongly react with his affinity. Confused why deer would cause his affinity to ping more strongly than the cows or goats Gordon walked up to the nearest deer and held out his hand.
Just like before the deer quit what it was doing, which was munching on some food in a bucket and backed away. This behavior seemed to be the normal now that he had awakened his beast taming ability.
Sighing he started to turn away when his affinity suddenly went off the charts like it had never done before. A little groom, a kid no more than twelve had just come up to the reindeer's stall and casually tossed something light green into the bucket that the deer had just been eating out of.
"Good afternoon and excuse me!"
The kid said something polite and then scurried away.
Leaning over the stall door Gordon reached own into the bucket and pulled out a single green filament of the deer's feed.
Stamping its huff the the black iron level deer snorted as Gordon made away with some of its food. Shaking it's antlers at him the deer went so far as to grunt, but made no further attempt to stop Gordon when it found that the rest of its food was still there.
Gordon walked away while his affinity sense seemed to be mildly buzzing.
'This is it. This is something I can contract?'
He would have thought that the connection between him and the fungus would have been more profound. However as he walked he realized the problem.
'This is probably a fungi that I can tame, but it hasn't awakened.'
Only awakened beast can be tamed. This was something that all school children knew.
But still this was an important step. Now that he had a better idea of what he could contract he was much better off then a few minutes ago.
Carefully following up Gordon proceeded to walk from reindeer stall to reindeer stall examining their feed buckets to see if any of there were any awakened fungus.
It took two hours, because he went to every single herbivore checking to see if anything else would be tamable. Fortunately there were a lot of hits, it seemed that there were a lot of fungus in and around the food that herbivores usually ate. But not a single one of them was awakened.
Beast taming classes at school had taught that while the average ratio of awakened individuals in a population to unawakened individuals was one to one hundred there was a huge difference between species. The deer for example probably had a slightly higher awakening rate. Where as cows that had been domesticated for centuries had a much lower awakening rate.
The same principle must apply to these fungus. Fungi probably don't have many opportunities to awaken. Why would they need to awaken in the first place? Still he searched around until he saw the kid that had been feeding the deer before and followed him back to the feed shed.
"Hey, kid, I don't suppose you would let me look in your feed shed?"
Gordon asked politely.
"What are you an idiot? Why would you want to look in my feed shed?"
The little guy, who before had been polite, suddenly revealed a scrappy personality.
"Well it is my affinity, something in your shed is reacting to my affinity and I was hoping that you could let me look."
Swallowing his pride Gordon respectfully clarified why he was here.
"Oh! You are probably one of those G ranked ability users. They are always hunting around like this looking for something that could spark their affinity. No, problem, come on. You know I had someone come by way back, probably six months ago, who wanted to climb on top of our water tank. That guy was crazy!"
The little man easily allowed Gordon in after hearing his true reason.
"Really? What was he looking for up there?"
Gordon's ears perked up thinking that maybe there was someone else who had a fungus affinity.
"Oh, it was just a robin's nest. The guy evidently had an affinity to robins and he wanted to take an egg. It was pretty funny. In the end I had one of our black iron reindeer lift him up. There was no way we were going to take the risk to let him climb up on his own. Thankfully your affinity seems to be in a much safer spot!"
Opening the feed shed the boy gestured for Gordon to go in while talking.
Inside Gordon was immediately overwhelmed as his affinity continuously gave him feedback that he was near a beast that he could tame.
As he looked around Gordon thought about how likely it would be to find an awakened fungus here. When it came down to it awakening didn't just happen. Usually an animal awakened as a result of some opportunity. Most animals awakened with enough time after becoming a leader. In practice the vast majority of awakened beasts were leaders of their pack, herd, pride, etc. So there really was a rank between normal animals and beasts. Leaders, mutants, animals with a physical characteristic that stood out and more, these were all traits that primed an animal to awaken.
The problem was that it was highly unlikely for fungus to awaken. Was there such a thing as a fungus leader?
"Are these moss?"
Gordon asked carefully hoping that the boy would continue to talk. Gordon was too far away from his high school and college classes which would have taught him that moss and fungi are two very different things. All that knowledge was a would away and more than thirty years had passed between the time spent as a functioning adult in that world and time spent as a kids in this world.
"Yes, this is reindeer moss. We ship it in from our provider from Nosvard county. It is highly nutritious and is the preferred food for beast masters who want their beast to evolve into the snow deer beast at the silver rank. Nosvard grows the best moss around!"
The boy said with some pride.
"That is interesting. I believe that my affinity might just be this moss. Have you ever come across some awakened reindeer moss?"
"Awakened reindeer moss?"
Confused the boy frowned before going on.
"That must suck to only be able to contract with reindeer moss. Oh, man, that is so tough!"
Instead of answering the question the boy started to have pity on Gordon instead. Just when Gordon thought that the boy was never going to come around to the original question the boy paused for a moment and then waved to Gordon to follow him.
"If I see any moss that is a different color I will replant them. Come see my collection."
Excited to show off the boy lead Gordon around the side of the shed and to the back where there was a closet built onto the back of the shed which when opened revealed a lot of tools hung up on a peg board.
What immediately caught Gordon's eye and his affinity too was a little pot down on the floor of the closet which contained four or five clumps of moss each of which had a slightly different color. From light blue to yellow there was almost a rainbow of colors. And Gordon could tell that each one of them was awakened.
"Wow, this is awesome! They are awakened, I didn't think it was possible!"
Now Gordon was also excited he could feel his affinity practically screaming at him, but when he looked up he could see that the boy's eyes were a little conflicted.
"Oh, hey, I won't take one of them if you aren't okay with it."
Gordon said carefully.
"No, it is okay. You can have some of it."
The boy eventually said after he had thought about it.
"Are you sure? I can pay you, I have a little money!"
Trying to sweeten the deal a little Gordon offered some of his hard earned money easily.
To his surprise the boy just shook his head and seemingly spontaneously he broke off a sprig of a light green moss and handed it to Gordon.
"Wait, wait, ..."
Backing up suddenly Gordon tried to move his hands behind his back. If someone had an open allotment it was possible to spontaneously contract a beast on contact.
"Oh, sorry!"
The boy laughed at Gordon's plight when the sprig touched Gordon's hand and a bright light flashed.
[You have contracted a Cladonia portentosa. Congratulations! Well done!!]
The system popped a line of text for him to read.
Stunned Gordon looked down at the little bit of moss that the boy had just thrust into his hands.
"Hi, my name is Gordon, it is nice to meet you. What is your name?"
Instead of getting angry Gordon just relaxed after suddenly tensing up and asked what the boy's name was.
"Akio, my name is Akio."
"Well, Akio, I have to thank you for your help today. Without you I probably would have had a much harder time finding a beast to tame. Thank you so much."
Calmly Gordon reacted by thanking the boy, he didn't want Akio to become sad after this little awkward accident.
"Sure, no problem. Will you come by later and show me how your reindeer moss is doing?"
Akio still had some sort of weird attachment to the moss and obviously had some attachment to it.
"Did you grow it for a long time?"
Gordon asked.
"Yes, since I was five, but it is only a little branch, it will be okay."
Akio quickly sobered up and talked himself out of his melancholy before Gordon had to do or say anything.
"I am sure it will be okay, and I will be happy to come back and show you how my part of your moss is growing. No problem."
Reassuring Akio, Gordon made a promise to the boy.
"Okay, that is great! This color grows the best! I have to get back to work now! I hope you have a good night!"
Akio suddenly startled himself and then put the pot of moss back down on the floor of the closet, shut the doors, locked it and ran off leaving Gordon there behind the shed.
Surprised at the speed with which this all happened Gordon just smiled to see Akio get back to his reindeer.
'That kid is a good worker.'
He said to himself and then opened the system to see what it had to say about his new pet.
[Cladonia portentosa (critical condition)
Symbiotic Partners:
Chlorophyceae (mutated)
Microsporomyces magnisporus
Description: A fungus having undergone lichenization generations ago now consists of two partner groups an algae and a yeast.
]
There wasn't much here, but Gordon was surprised to see the information on the symbiotic partners.
'What is lichenization?'
He had a question in his mind, but what struck him the most was the fact that his new lichen partner was in critical condition. He didn't think the boy would have so casually broken off a limb it there was true danger, but just to be careful he knew he had to summon the lichen into his allotment space. There the little sprig would be in the best possible environment to heal, or at least that was what everyone said.
Concentrating he willed the little twig into his beast space.
To his surprise it was extremely easy. And further once the little lichen entered the allotment the space began to change. Morphing in to the perfect environment for a [Cladonia Portentosa]. It wasn't like it was a physical environment. Instead, at his G ranked level, the energy surrounding the lichen automatically changed to provide exactly the right sustenance to heal and support. It would have been the same no matter what pet he had bonded and if he was ever able to rank up to GG the environment would continue to give better and more tangible support.
For now he committed to letting his new [Cladonia Portentosa] heal. It shouldn't be good to take it out until it had fully healed!