9 Ch. 8- Earth Slime Capturing

3 days later, the time finally comes for me to go and retrieve all of the equipment I had commissioned in preparation for me hunting stronger monsters as well as actually fighting myself rather than just my summons.

I decided that with the upgrade in strength from Jareth's evolution that changed my body I would learn to fight off monsters enough to at least protect myself in dangerous situations which will inevitably occur at some point in my summoning career.

The first thing that I do today is go and restock my core food supply at the core exchange as well as pick up my commissions in the trade district near the gate. I enter the large futuristic building and buy 10 tier 1 goblin cores for 10 credits as well as 8 tier 1 wolf cores for 8 credits. I also managed to find and buy 2 tier 2 shield bear cores for 20 credits, and a tier 2 steel shell turtle core like the one that caused Jareth to evolve.

For Brutus, I got him a tier 2 shadow panther core for 10 credits to augment his shadow abilities, hopefully, it will increase his control of shadows and develop into a new skill. In total, I managed to spend 68 credits on my summons food, which left me with 332 credits that I decided to save up for the coming auction so I can buy something worthwhile.

After the core exchange, I go to visit the leather-smith for my tier 2 shield bear hide jacket, boots, and gloves. In preparation for my new equipment, I place my commemorative wolf hide jacket in storage as a memento of my first monster kill and leave it there should I ever need it.

After receiving my sleek new leather clothes, I put on the new clothes that now completely cover me in tier 2 hide except for my head. I decided to not get a helmet of some sort made as they are heavy and restrict my vision which is more necessary for fighting than a bit of extra protection.

I then move on to the weapon-smith and store the steel shell turtle shield into my storage for when I'll actually need it. The shield is too heavy to carry around constantly, especially when moving constantly through rugged forest terrain where it could potentially get stuck on vines or between trees.

After securing the shield, I equip the leather bandolier containing 10 out of the 19 bear claw throwing knives I had made, I place the remaining 9 in storage for whenever I need to replace the knives already within the bandolier.

With all of this taken care of my team and I head over to the forest and plan on going even further into the forest towards the inner area of it, where tier 3 monsters live. Eventually, we get to the forest edge and I feed each of my summons a core for breakfast in preparation for the long day.

They quickly mow through the monsters within the outer forest, killing 15 tier 1 monsters with 6 of those being spiderlings that lived in a large nest together at the top of one of the trees we happened to walk by.

Luckily, Brutus' sense of smell alerted us to them before they could drop on top of us unaware. When we get to the tier 2 area, I decide that it's time to warm up and practice assisting my summons in battle with my new throwing knives. I learned how to throw knives back in summoning school, I did not have an easy time of it at first, but they've grown on me since.

(Flashback to Summoning School)

*Thunk*, I hear the solid sound of a knife finally sliding in and sticking to a wooden target. I cheer for a second before coming back to reality at the sight of all of the knives laying on the dirt in front of the target.

I sigh and go to pick them up so that I can practice with them once more. Luckily for me they are all in front of the target so they are picked up quickly, I don't move too fast as I don't want to accidentally cut myself and add onto my embarrassment. My problem is that I don't know how to put the proper spin on the knives, and while they hit the target every time, they never manage to sink into it.

Setting Up once more at around 20 yards from the large wooden target, I attempt to remember the feeling of the last knife that I threw. Rearing back, I launch my arm forward and snap my hand, this sends the knife spinning furiously, only for it to land with the butt of the knife hitting the target and once more bouncing off.

"You have to relax your hand and let the knife slide out of it rather than flicking it and making it spin as much as possible."

Hearing this, I turn around to see one of the instructors at the academy, he is a rather tall and compactly muscled man with short dark hair. If I recall correctly, he teaches advanced weapons to the seniors in the academy, and he looks the part too with him exuding a deadly strength despite not being overburdened with muscles.

Realizing that he was the one offering advice, I nod my head in acknowledgment and go to try and throw another knife, this time doing as he suggested. I line up the target and loosely grip the knife, and as I go to throw it, I allow the knife to flow out of my hand as if I had dropped it with forward momentum.

Expecting to hear the tinny sound of a metal knife reverberating after being deflected by the target, I am instead surprised when I hear a thunk and see that it not only sunk into the target but was nearly dead center in it as well.

I turn around to give my thanks to the instructor for the advice, only to find no one there. He must have snuck away as soon as I turned my back. Vowing in my head to repay him or thank the instructor when I see him next, I go back to my practice and continue to sink the knives into the target, with each throw getting successively closer to the bullseye.

(End of Flashback)

We first run into a group of 3 plague rats, Jareth takes 2 on and Brutus gets the straggler of the group. I inform them to remain wary of the rats' teeth as they carry infection over to anyone they bite but are relatively harmless otherwise. While Jareth catches the attention of the two rats I decide to help even out the odds and throw one of the knives in my hand.

The first throwing knife lands on the hind leg of one rat, to which Jareth quickly capitalizes on the provided opening and smashes its head in. I follow up the first knife with two more shortly after, both of which hit center mass and stall the two remaining rats long enough for my summons to finish off easily.

We continued to do this and killed 10 more monsters in short order due to them being grouped up at least in pairs. After the 13th kill of the day, I decided that I had a good enough grasp of how effective the knives were and that I could confidently use them to fight or at least assist from a distance in the case of multiple monsters.

After that, we moved on to the inner forest with tier 3 monsters inside. We got unlucky and were beset upon soon after by a hobgoblin that was luckily alone, and only after coordinating together were my two summons able to put it down without any major damage.

They took it down together thanks to the opening that I gave them with one of my throwing knives going into one of its' eyes. After killing 4 more lone monsters, we came across an interesting sight. We spotted a moving boulder that upon closer inspection turned out to be an earth slime variant that had the appearance and toughness of rock.

I took the time to study and observe the slime for a while before deciding to bond with the monster due to its unique variant that seemed to have a lot of potential as far as evolutional choices were concerned.

While it may not be powerful or dangerous now, that doesn't mean that it couldn't be in the future. I send Jareth to quickly kill off the unique monster by using his large iron mace to bash in the slime until it died after having its' core struck.

This took longer than expected due to its hard outer shell of rock, despite it being classified as a slime, it was more like a moving tank of rock. Extracting the core from the slime and placing it on the body, I prick my index finger with one of my unused throwing knives and drop blood on top of the core to bond with the slime.

After bonding with the earth slime and storing its' core in my storage, I decided to call it a day and head back towards the city, despite my increased stamina and strength, I was still tired after having walked and fought since the morning.

I return to the core exchange and sell the 15 tier 1 cores, 13 tier 2, and 5 tier 3 cores, earning me a grand total of 270 credits from cores alone. Then I go next door to sell the monster bodies at the summoner association, of course, I go to max to cash in on my stored trove of valuable corpses.

I start with the 9 regular tier 1's for 27 credits, then the 6 spiderlings for 6 credits each, the 3 plague rats for 17 credits each, hobgoblin body for 85 credits, and the other 4 corpses for 70 each, adding up to a grand total of 749 credits made in one day.

I also go ahead and register my new slime summon Emett at the desk after all of the bodies have been taken care of. Max once again stares at me with an incredulous look on his face at me once again bonding with another unique summon. I just awkwardly chuckle and say that I got lucky while hunting, likely because I push so far and hard into the forest to make as much money as possible.

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I kept the hobgoblin core to feed Jareth later for his dinner, and also decrease my funds further by increasing my storage by 5 cubic meters for 125 credits, totaling up to 32 now, it's probably large enough that I don't need to upgrade it for some time and so I can just save up money for stronger equipment and summon food.

After seeing how many credits I've managed to earn in one day I decide that sometime soon I should talk to Mira about moving closer to the center of the city since I can now afford to pay rent in that area and it will be much nicer and closer to both of our work.

The amount of credits I'm earning currently is far outside the norm for what a beginner summoner makes, usually, they are cautious about fighting any monsters and stick to the outer edges of the forest where the weakest monsters reside. They also usually hunt in groups, and as a result, the price of any monsters they hunt must be split equally among them.