Cweeper

Capturing the lesser females was not nearly as easy as I expected it to be. The forums and current leading tamers making posts and videos all said the lesser females in a dusk imp colony were relatively docile. As soon as Go and I started walking over, one of them chucked a rock that bounced off of my forehead for eighteen damage.

The others were all crowded together defensively but the one who hit me with a rock was on their feet and lobbing a second even as I stood there and watched. I simply caught the rock and threw it back, nailing them in the forehead for half of their HP.

[x2 critical: Headshot]

[Throw Leveled]

[+10XP]

The dusk imp female that was struck by the rock fell flat on their rear in a daze and more blood ran down their face than my own. Even though it had hit me, I honestly liked this one for its spirit. "Dibs," I say with a grin, racing forward to pounce on the wounded dusk imp female. After a second of rolling around to keep the dirty imp disoriented, I wrap her up in my arms and legs and hold tight.

[Successfully Captured: Dusk Imp Priestess]

[+50XP]

[Would you like to Tame: Dusk Imp Priestess?"

[YES/NO]

"Yes," I say while the dusk imp stops resisting. "Go, go grab one of the others and hold onto it until you get the Capture skill and then just let it go. Unless it's the one you want, then just hold it til its tame."

[Successfully Tamed: Dusk Imp Priestess]

[+100 XP]

[Would you like to name your new pet?]

Not long after I finished talking I received the notification for taming the imp but this time I received the option to name my familiar after taming. Duck did not get her name until after Lil named hers when I realized that it was even possible! "Cweeper," I mumble quietly, using the name I had originally intended to give an imp warrior instead of a female.

[Dusk Imp Priestess has been named: Cweeper]

Then a window opened that showed me her actual stats the same way Duck's had after being named.

[Name: Cweeper

Level: 15

Affinity: Darkness, Life, Void

HP: 100

MP:200

PATK:13

PDEF:16

MATK: 32

MDEF: 66

Strength: 17

Endurance: 34

Agility: 12

Intelligence: 42

Willpower: 50

Luck: 77

Description: Cweeper is Dusk Imp Priestess that was Captured and Tamed by the first Classless Beast Master, Life Hack. As a Priestess variant, Cweeper is not only a creature of the shadows but connected to the nether dimensions as well as capable of some healing. After living under the heel of a Dusk Imp Summoner who used their blood for sacrificial rites, Cweeper has few skills but has the highest Intelligence of their generation.

Inventory: N/A

Skills: Elemental Claw LV1 Dark Ailment LV1 Shadow Merge LV4 Rift LV3 Soothing Touch LV5]

"Alright, I got the Capture skill," Go says while I was busy reading Cweeper's description, wondering if I had not lucked out with a hidden boss for a pet. Having let the imp go, Go walks over and asks, "Was there anything special about the next- Cweeper? You named a 'her' Cweeper? Those are some good affinities, can she heal? Skills, skills, skills, s- description?" He asks suddenly, probably thinking he would find what he was looking for in the description instead of right after it.

After a few moments Go starts looking from the inspection window he received from appraising the friendly familiar to me and back again. Repeatedly. Pointing to the window that only he can see, Go asks, "Leo. You know what I'm looking at. Explain this to me."

Opening my Character window, I switch my active title from Treasure Hunter to Classless Beast Master and say, "AI, could you please show my friend the description for my current title? He may see the benefits but others cannot, please and thank you!" Then a window we could both see appeared in the air between us as.

Since it was only Go here who would see this and anything else, I also say, "Actually, if you could be a dear and just show my IRL best friend in front of me my Character page I would really appreciate it. It will help me out a lot in the future."

Initially I expected Go to have a freak-out reaction in which he started yelling at me demanding to know what and how. Instead, he just gave me this oddly disappointed look with his squarish half-orc face and says, "You're carrying us. Again! The dungeon was one thing because the game is still new, but the mastery, Craftiest, Perfect Combo Start To FiniShED? How did you even get a Special EDition like that? No, its yours so I don't care. Why am I only just now hearing about it?"

"It was never a good time or we were talking in the group," I say with an apologetic sigh. "If it matters, I haven't even told my dad about the stuff I got in the Tutorial yet. you're the first to know about my three main trumps."

"Main?" Go echoes, giving me another unhappy look. "What else do you have?"

"You know about Geist, but look at my mana," I point out, pointing from behind the screen at the number that was worth twenty-five more Intelligence points than I had. "Now turn your attention to this perk and the grade of this attack skill. It is an S classless skill and comes with a one-hundred-use initiation, the same as a divine blessing. My first ever active combat skill and it's a Crowd Controller. It even came with a LOONY title."

Go just looked at me and started slowly shaking his head as if I had offended the gods themselves with my actions. Hoping to appease my best friend, I say, "The Beast Mastery skill comes from training capture before actually taming, showing that you are actually advancing the skill rather than simply taming a single pet. You MIGHT get something like it even though you have an actual class?"

"Put the lucky title back on and go pick me a familiar," he says a little stiffly, turning and walking over to the other lessers who had started slowly approaching to check on their captured sister.

Switching my titles back around, I take out the rest of the meat on my character and give it to my new imp who showed their gratitude for good food with five percent affinity. Then I walked over to join Go while looking out over the dusk imp females. "Appraisal," I say quickly to fully activate the skill rather than just bring up a leveled tag.

I did not get to see their stats but instead of 'Dusk Imp' their names became their magic types. There were no other priestesses like mine but there were two that caught my attention. One was a Summoner just like the queen who looked younger than mine and the other looked the same age and size as mine but was a Shaman.

The difference between a Shaman and Summoner was specialization. Essentially, a Summoner would pull random creatures or intelligent Contracts from other dimensions, sometimes as themselves and sometimes as spirits to inhabit a body. A Shaman was a dark elemental magician who used necromancy to summon temporary allies or make permanent abominations.

"Summoner or necromancer?" I ask simply. "They both build their own teams but the Summoner has healing potential like my Priestess, and you read mine's description. The necromancer will have less Intelligence than mine while the Summoner is the queen's direct inheritor because the queen had the same class. Mine is basically an upgraded version."

"Summoner," he decided with no trouble at all, grabbing the female imp I had pointed out and pulling her aside. Surprisingly, she did not struggle at all as Go picked her up by the shoulders with a light shake for intimidation. "Captured," he murmurs only a second later. Then, "Tame!" A few seconds later, "Missy!"

"You named yours Missy?" I ask with a smirk, wondering where he got the balls to question my naming sense.

Giving me a sour look, my best friend says, "Missy is a good name, you could call a person by it as well as name your dog by it. Cweeper, however, is the name you give a pet rat. Your priestess is a rat."

Pretending to wipe a fake tear from my eye, I clap my friend on the shoulder and say, "Have I ever told you how much I love this side of you? That's the kind of fire I want to see when we're fighting goblins!"

Go did not end up acquiring Beast Mastery because he already had a class but since he had managed to get Craftier from messing around at the smithy he still had access to skill fusion and acquired 'Beast Taming'. Unlike 'Mastery' it did not increase the amount of pets he could have beyond two but it still came with a Beast Tamer title that had a set buff of five points added to each pet's stats.

In lower levels, that was plenty. In higher levels, it barely changed anything between your pet and a wild version.

My title, though, kept track of the perks from my Mastery skill with a percentage buff to more than just stats. Right now it barely made a difference except for a few points in my familiar's higher magic and Endurance stats but after raising the skill the buff would rise as well. For now, I simply had to worry about training my current pets so I could have more.

Once we had handled capturing our familiars and I hurriedly mentioned to Ivana that there was still a team building imp left before working with Go and our two imps to herd the others outside. Skooma's team were excited at the prospect of taming female imps for their magical abilities but nobody actually knew how to do it.

Honestly, if not for my blindly attempting to keep a creature out of combat for Lil to bond I would not even know how to do it.

It took about ten minutes of making playful suggestions before the others figured it out, even though they had been there w hen I captured my nightwing. I actually took things a little far with one kid, telling him that he needed to straddle his imp and keep it pinned with his hands on their chest while showing dominance and strength with his weight by bouncing up and down on her, but lower down by her hips and legs where he would not hurt her if he fell.

He actually did it for four or five seconds before saying, "I'm not getting any notifications, yet."

"Try saying, 'Thank you, daddy'," I suggested with a shrug.

"Thank you, d- HOLD THE FUCK ON," he kid finally starts yelling when it finally made sense what he was doing, jumping off of his imp and running at me to try and tackle me. I did not even stop him but let him tackle me to the ground while I laughed pretty much in his face until Skooma finally pulled him off of me before he could try to hit me.

In the background everybody was laughing at the poor kid and Papi was giving a thumb's-up and this smiling nod that said he was going to clip that.

On the way back to the city we once again traveled in distant pairs but this time I paired myself up with Go so that we could work on taming our familiars together. For me this mostly entailed working on my Strength stat by letting the hundred-pound owl ride on my shoulders while teaching the imp basic words like 'food', 'hand', 'run', 'sword', and so on. Surprisingly, she picked up on these things with easy and every word she learned was worth three percent of affinity.

By the time we got back to the city both my Strength and Endurance had gone up to thirty-one and the sun was peeking up over the far side of the sky. Skooma and his people decided to split up at the gates because they needed to log out to finish living their lives before bed so they gave me the necessary materials and left. Go and Ivana chose to leave for similar reasons at the gate since I still had business.

Papi and Lil were not content with their current selves after last night's goblin challenge and wanted to go work on Guild ranks with missions. I did not have to worry about most of it since I was classless, so I went back to my tavern.

I had some trouble with the innkeeper of the building because I was bringing 'foul monsters inside' but then I flashed my beast master title at them and they were no longer allowed to complain because my room was already paid for. They were extremely unhappy with this, but I now had all the qualifications of a Beast Master. My party of animals might as well be me.

Since it was becoming daytime the nightwing was sleeping perched on my shoulders, sustained by another increase in stats and my First-Aid skill. Thanks to this, though, our affinity was over thirty percent and they would be spending another nine hours with me, still. My affinity with Cweeper was still in the twenties but unlike nightwing the naturally submissive dusk imp female already belong to me from the proper taming method.

Lana was still asleep in our room but the dog was wide awake and waiting just in front of the door. When it saw me stooping and crouching while walking and entering the room, it tilted its head up at Duck as if wondering why the monster was still alive. Then it saw Cweeper hiding behind me while peeking warily at him before simply yawning at her.

*