Red stared at the card. Jean was in there, and he held her life in his hands. If it were ever damaged, then she could die, but so long as it existed, he could revive her. He slipped it into the protective deck, and each tamer was issued. Then, he opened the holographic display to see their statistics.
Tamer Name: Red
Girls: 1
Centaur G
Rank: G
Abilities:
Druid I: Share Stamina
Attributes
Vitality G5
Endurance G8
Strength G4
Agility G8
Precision G2
Perception G2
Intelligence G4
Spirit G3
Magic G1
Monster girls gave bonus attributes from abilities. Could he get four more centaurs and have practically unlimited stamina? What did Vitality actually do? Did this watch give him the attributes, or was it just a recording of what he already possessed in terms of the Echidna world?
Red looked through the settings and found the watch scanned and updated its information every 5 minutes.
He recalled seeing a goblin-made mortar round hit a soldier and turn him into hamburger meat. Later, Red took the same type of shell point-blank and walked it off. He had been terrified then, but G5 Vitality could mean he was harder to put down. Pieces of metal ripped through his body, and he passed out. When he woke up, his minor troll healing factor from a green pill had him back in fighting shape.
Jeans' attributes were also in the G-rank, focused more on physical than spiritual but with promising magic potential.
Monster Girl: Jean
Ability
Druid I: The Tamer and the centaur share a combined stamina pool.
Attributes
Vitality G4
Endurance G4
Strength G5
Agility G1
Precision G1
Perception G5
Intelligence G2
Spirit G1
Magic G4
There was a lot of work ahead of them. Her strength was higher than his, which was great. He only trained himself half to death and swallowed pills like a madman. But she was a monster girl, so it made sense that she was a little stronger than he was. It didn't hurt his pride that all his work, and she gained more muscle from squatting on dildos.
Her poor precision would need work before he could give her a long-range weapon. A bow would be perfect for her later. As for spirit, he didn't know how to train it, but when he found a way, she would be trained.
Rock stood outside the ranch, waiting for him. His monster girl stood beside him, an eight-foot-tall behemoth with breasts larger than Rocky's head. She slapped a hammer in her palm, still bloody from caving in a skull.
"Hey, we should have a battle, my girl against yours. Let's see who chose best. I'll warn you now: I've already won two battles," Rock said.
Red thought about it, then pulled Jean's card from his deck. She appeared in a flash of light, dressed in an armored skirt that covered her body with a lance in one hand and a shield in the other. Her hooves pounded the ground as she looked up at the minotaur girl before her.
"Yeah, let's have a battle."
"Maribell, I've wanted to fight you since we first met," Jean said.
"The same, this will be fun," Maribell said.
Jean took time to accelerate, but maybe she had something to compensate. Red looked over her skills. Equip allowed her to hold equipment in a separate space and arm herself with numerous weapons. It was only G-rank, so she was limited in her armaments. Her other skill was charge, another G-rank skill that increased her acceleration. It was exactly what they were looking for.
In this battle, they would share stamina. He front-loaded her with his stamina to power her skills. Rock was playing off false information. Tamers couldn't scan each other and most of the time, scanning another tamer would be pointless.
The minotaur girl slammed her hoof down, and the ground shook. The bond wasn't a psychic link, and he couldn't order her around in combat either. Combat was too fast-paced, and the marigold would adapt to any tactics called out to be used against her. So Red gave Jean all the stamina she could need.
She charged, opening her flank but keeping at the edge of the shaking ground.
"Impressive. Most centaur girls have low stamina and go all out from the beginning to compensate. Wait, are you letting her share yours? She'll drain you dry if you do that. Humans don't have enough stamina to matter at our level," Rocky said.
"We'll manage," Red said.
Her charge skill's duration ran out, taking a chunk of his stamina with it and leaving a small agility buff behind. She sat at Agility G1.5.
Red scanned the minotaur girl to see that her agility was 2.5. In close combat, she would have the advantage.
The quake skill ran its duration, and Jean used another charge. She adjusted her lance, and the Maribell turned to swing her hammer. Jean parried with her shield and delivered a glancing blow, barely penetrating the minotaur girl's dense hide.
"You must be feeling the drop in stamina from two consecutive charge attacks."
Maribell turned her hammer and spun, aiming to take Jean in the back of the head. A charge activation turned a sure kill into a glancing blow. Blood seeped down from Jean's dented helmet as she turned for what could be the final pass.
"Three is the limit for Centaur girls without any training, so there wasn't a line for them. Their skills cost too much stamina in the beginning. They are the worst girls to start with. Too bad you didn't do your research." Rock said.
Red felt like he had used his Mountain Skipping Step skill once. He could normally use it five times without passing out or use his diabolic thrust once. Compared to his skills, Jean's monster girl skills were cheap on stamina. She hadn't even dipped into her own stamina yet, but her head wound would become a problem soon.
"Jean, do you want to withdraw? After some training, we can concede this one and win the next one."
"Without the ability to win battles, you'll decline until you can't afford to heal your girls and be forced to join the workforce. If you lose here, you'll only lose the next battles until you have no hope of healing Jean." Rock said.
"I can still fight, I think I have one more charge in me."
Rock cackled. "She's shaking on her hooves. I doubt she can even activate a fourth charge. This battle is ours."
At three activations, her stacked agility buffs brought her agility to G2.5, equal to Maribell, who breathed hard while Jean used Red's stamina. The blow to the head had drawn blood, but Jean wasn't in as bad a shape as Rock presumed. He was operating on false information and made dangerous assumptions.
In any other circumstances, he would be right.
Jean charged while Rock sneered as Marigold raised her hammer, timing her strike with Jean's acceleration.
"It won't matter," Rock said.
Then Jean activated a fifth charge just as Maribell prepared to swing, and the energy from her fourth charge ran its course. Her spear pierced Maribell's chest, exiting out of her back. The hammer tumbled out of her hand as the monster girl coughed blood, and the momentum carried her off her hooves.
Jean turned and slung the minotaur girl off her lance. The corpse of the minotaur girl tumbled before stopping at Rock's feet.
Red sighed as he relaxed. Monster girl battles were intense. He could only give Jean the resources to fight; it was ultimately up to her if they won or not. Keeping the number of charges she could use a secret until the last minute had changed the outcome of the battle. If the minotaur girl had fought more defensively and conserved her energy or fought all out to take Jean out before she could build up her agility, then the fight would have been different.
Sweat poured off Red's face even when he hadn't moved a step since the battle began.
"I didn't think we could lose. This isn't fair. Stamina share is terrible without girls in a deck with attribute-enhancing abilities." Rock said.
A notification appeared on his watch. 2000g appeared in his account. He started with 5000g, so he had 7000g to buy more girl cards, restorative items, and heal his girls.
Red returned Jean and paid the fee to heal her. It was a head wound, but not a dangerous one, so he only lost out 50g for the injury.
Seeing the price showed him how losing battles could drain an account. If they were going to be successful, he would have to quickly rise through the ranks and find ways to make as much money as possible.
Each girl was a treasure for his cultivation, and he wanted many of them. In contrast, Jean was enough to get him to the next rank of chi gathering in a few days of indoor cultivation. Her precious lewd chi mines beneath her tail wouldn't be enough alone to reach higher ranks.
He prepared to leave when Rock grabbed his shoulder. "Where do you think you're going?" Rock grabbed his shirt and got into her personal space. "You're not getting away with this. I am the best. I studied and learned all the strategies. Now I have a defeat on my record. That wasn't supposed to happen. Battle me again right here, right now."
Red pushed him off. "You lost, get over it. Even if you beat me now, it won't change anything; you'll always have that loss on your record."
"Not if I beat you again and report you for cheating. That's the only explanation. No one has enough stamina to pull off five charge attacks. Four should have been impossible. I don't believe you could have beaten me without cheating somehow. Did you use an illegal drug to give yourself more stamina? Either way, the authorities will know unless you battle me again and lose and agree that our first battle was a bug in the system." Rock said.
"Have you called them already?"
"What's going on here?" Jean's mother approached.
Rocky pointed in Red's direction. "He cheated."
"That sounds like a loser talkto me. Do you think he tricked the tamer watch's biometric readings? You could read his attributes."
Rock scanned him, and his face blanched. "Tamers can't getting readings on other tamers."
"So you can't say for sure how much stamina Red has. It happens that some humans devote themselves to one attribute or another and train themselves to the ground. In this case, he prepared for our stamina share ability and used his preparation effectively."
"You're wrong. I'm calling the police, and the tamer board will hear about this."
"Go ahead, you'll receive a black mark on your record from a false accusation that will never disappear."
"If this loss doesn't go away," Rock said.
Red looked between the elder centaur and the tamer. She seemed to have an authority even among tamers. It was another layer to society he hadn't expected. Did the power come from her, or was it her tamer's authority she wielded?
"You lost, get over it and move on with your life."
Rock glared at Red with fire in his eyes. "We'll battle again, and next time I'll be ready."
…
Echidna Quest 5 Recurring
Complete an in-world Quest
100pt
1 girl card
As a G-rank tamer, there weren't many quests he could take that paid out well, except for one. There was a request to bring supplies to a farm near the edge of the Verdant Forest, a territory spanning hundreds of miles. Online maps sold for ever-increasing prices, noting secret monster girl nests that cost between 40,000g and 250,000g. The farm in question hosted prize pig girls that were raised before being butchered to be eaten.
Red felt sick.
He was being sent not to save them from their fate but to deliver food to help fatten them for their eventual slaughter. Then there was the second quest.
A wolf from the Verdant Forest has been hunting the pig girls. The job was to either tame the wolf or kill it.
Both quests paid handsomely. The supply run paid 1000g while the wolf extermination or taming paid 5000g. Doing both would nearly double his money. And he needed a second girl. Rock might have already captured numerous girls and used their abilities to increase his attributes. He spotted one on the way. An abandoned farm where some tamers heard strange noises at their camp coming from a nearby dry well.
He followed Route 21, an old road that stretched east to west from the eastern Spire Mountains to the western flat lands near the Stark River, which runs North to south through the region. Even near the small towns, Route 21 was a wide concrete road with channels beside it to collect rainwater and prevent flooding. According to his GPS, there was a fork in the road leading to a supply depot.
It was a large, squat, fenced-in warehouse with two massive apartment complexes practically stitched into its frame. He was waved in, and after his identity was scanned through his tamper-proof watch, he was directed to a loading dock.
There were no cars or other small craft in the world. When monster girls could efficiently run hundreds of miles per hour over rough terrain carrying massive loads, infrastructure was focused differently.
The only aircraft in the world were sky ships, which were used to traverse the large natural disaster areas that separated regions.
Red paid 1000g to take the quest, which would be returned to him with the payment once he delivered the goods.
"Hey, kid, it's my break. How about a battle? You're one of those tamers who got their first girl from the ranch. Let me guess a Rooster girl you look the type."
"Centaur girl, actually," The man chuckled.
"Well, how about you battle me, and I'll tell you where you can find a maggot girl?"
"No thanks, you may be on break, but I'm not," Red said.
He needed special equipment to work on Jean's low agility. It cost 20,000 for a G-rank centaur agility training set. Most other agility training sets would only cost him 2000g, but specialized equipment was unsurprisingly more expensive. But he had an idea.
Red smirked at the guy.
"How about I fight your girl instead?" Red said.
The man snorted. "I'm not going to jail for attempted murder. Whatever your pack tailer should be, this way we just slapped it together."
Humans fighting monster girls seemed impossible or something that only happened with more experienced tamers.
"What kind of abilities does a fly girl give a tamer?"
"Wouldn't you like to know. If you battle me, I'll tell you if you win."
Red wasn't falling for it. If there was a chance, maybe, but a fly girl had to be at least an F grade. Between the G and F ranks, a maggot girl became a pupa, and a fly girl fully in the F rank. That was how insect types rolled. Some took even longer to change from a maggot into a form with more defensive capabilities.
Fly girls were known for their agility. If the dock worker wasn't an idiot, he knew that centaur girls, especially starting, had low agility. That's what the charge skill was for: to make up for their shortcomings.
The dock worker led him to a wooden wagon laden with boxes. He requested an extra heavy load. He released Jean from her card, and the centaur equipped her with traveling clothes. When she saw the wagon, her shoulders sagged.
"I thought you summoned me for battle, not to be a beast of burden," Jean said.
"Hey, this is for your own good. Think of it as endurance and strength training."
"Do you need me for anything else?"
"Thank you for your help, but we have it from here," Red said.
"I don't know, your girl seems ready for a battle. We can always have a quick one."
Jean lit up only for Red to rain on her parade. "No, I told you before we're good."
Red fiddled with some straps while Jean watched the man leave before whirling on him. "Coward, how could you decline a battle? Didn't you feel it when we fought Maribell? Battle is right; it's how we grow into a better team."
"You aren't fighting a fly girl at the F rank for your second battle.
"With enough charges, I could match it."
"Not at the bottom of G-rank," Red said.
"This increase will hardly matter. I've trained my whole life to be the best centaur I could be. Mother wouldn't buy us agility training equipment, so I focused on my strength and endurance. You didn't seem disappointed."
If she had G2 agility, she would only need two uses of her charge skill to out pace Maribell and one more use to alter her acceleration and guarantee a kill.
Her build was nonexistent. Jean hoped her lance could pierce her target, and her shield would hold up until she could inflict enough charges to match or surpass her enemy.
Maribell stomped, which caused an area-control trimmer. Her spin attack was a complete waste. It didn't seem to power her up at all. She did have attributes that surpassed Jean from the beginning.
Red was slowly getting the hang of the attribute system.
Agility determines combat speed and acceleration, while strength determines maximum speed. Precision determined where the lance struck, and it was barely better than agility. Vitality was an attribute Red had no idea how to improve upon, except maybe exercise.
A notification dinged on his watch, a message from his mother.
"Check the tamer forums."
He saw the video of his fight. In captions added to the video, the cheetah flashed. People in the comment section seemed to agree. There were theories about him secretly giving Jean illegal medicine.
Well, jokes on them, he did give Jean medicine, but it wasn't illegal.
Suppository pills were much cheaper than their oral counterparts. Even custom-made for Jean's build, he could afford them for half the price of regular pills.
If he was already accused of cheating, he might as well go all out.
"Do they believe I cheated?"
"Who cares what they think. We have a job to do. It's two days on the road to the farm. We're going to get there in one."
He gave her a red pill designed to promote physical growth and stimulation. Jean stepped forward, and the wagon rolled. He was going to make his centaur girl strong.
…
Inspector Cole read through the file on his watch and checked the data on the tamer's attributes. They were impressive, a sign of a young prodigy. He checked the kid's file and saw that he had taken a quest on a road out near the Verden Forest, where anything could happen. Well, if he investigated and happened to find the kid killed by the wildlife, then well, not everyone makes it.
He took his assigned E rank team. They wouldn't be questioned. Girls who worked for the government knew to keep their mouths shut.
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