Of Taming And Imprinting

The Monster Feria always lasted for three days.

On the first day, rookie tamers would have the opportunity to show off their newly gained or improved skills in front of a massive audience. This was also when accidents were most prone to happen, as quite a few youngsters either overestimated themselves or simply got stage fright and messed up under the eyes of more than a hundred thousands spectators. It was a double edged sword, so only the ones most certain of their abilities or the most foolish ones would try to enter the arena.

To make sure nothing untoward happened and no horrible injuries were shown to the public, many of the Ganesha Familia's higher-ups were constantly stationed close by, to intervene should it be necessary. In any case, on this first day, only some weaker Level 1 monsters could be seen.

As for the more experienced tamers, they got their chance to shine on the second day, where they tamed some of the stronger Level 1 monsters.

The third day was by far the highlight, though. The Ganesha Familia's strongest and most famous tamers, their aces, would showcase their skills in front of the masses. All of them were Level 5 adventurers!

While the Ganesha Familia always kept a low profile, they had a shockingly large amount of Level 5's amongst their ranks - eleven. This placed them firmly below the Freya and Loki familias in a ranking of overall strength. Not all of these eleven were tamers, but the vast majority of them were. They were able to easily tame Level 4 monsters, or even some of the weaker Level 5's. The reasons why none of such monstrosities saw the light of day on the climax of the Monster Feria, however, were manifold.

For one, it was hard to contain them. Without at least one Level 5 adventurer present at all times, they would escape their restraints. Another option would be to upgrade those restraints, but that would be a ridiculously costly endeavour. Still, nobody doubted that the Ganesha Familia had at least a few monsters of such a high Level hidden in their home - it would be stupid of anyone to underestimate this overall good-natured familia in such a manner. There was no god in this city who didn't have at least a couple of trump cards to play, unless they were a new arrival.

The main reason to keep the monsters' Levels low was that average people couldn't follow a monster's movement once they reached Level 3. Even some of the faster Level 2's and some extremely rare Level 1's were too fast for their eyes to catch up with. If the people wouldn't be able to appreciate the spectacle, then the entire festival wouldn't have a point. Strong adventurers weren't the target demographic - the regular people were!

Needless to say, now that it was time for the highlight of the Monster Feria, even more people swarmed to the streets. On the eastern main street, next to which the Colosseum - in which the whole thing took place - was located, it was hard to move even a few meters forward. Throngs of people filled up nearly all available space. Due to the Colosseum being very close to the eastern gate of the city as well, a large number of tourists from outside also flooded into Orario, making the situation worse.

Most people were just hoping to enjoy the festive atmosphere and some others actually planned to buy a ticket. As it would be impossible for the Colosseum to house all of the millions of people that wanted to attend, only tickets for specific time-slots were sold. Of course, there were tickets for an entire day - or even multiple days - but they were made to be far too expensive for most people to afford. This way, in between specific tamers' solo performances or group shows, hundreds of thousands of people would be replaced by the ones who had bought tickets for the next time-slot, enabling millions to participate and attend the spectacle every day.

At around 1 p.m., somewhere on the eastern main street, surrounded by more people than one could look at without getting dizzy, Kalin, Mina and Jakk were hastily making their way through the dense crowd, worried and guilty looks on their faces.

In celebration of this day, they had ended their daily dungeon delving earlier than usual and planned to take Valenoa to the Monster Feria. Mina had also never been a part of it and was quite excited to take a look. Initially, the three hadn't actually wanted to do this, as they were afraid of Valenoa's mind getting impacted by some kind of trauma which most people who went through situations like hers had to deal with. This would worsen her mental state quite a bit - and cause a huge commotion. Still, the girl in question had smiled bravely and assured them that she wanted to go there. After all, it was all just a baseless fear for now. Who knew whether she had a trauma or anything would happen? And even if it did, at least they would then know it was something they had to look out for in the future.

As for Quinn, he was left back at the base to watch over Averin, who they sadly couldn't take along. Thankfully, the cat boy wasn't really interested in huge celebrations like these anyway, so he was quite happy about having the opportunity to stay away from this one.

Ten minutes ago, the group of four had arrived on the eastern main street and made their way towards the Colosseum. But somewhere along the way, Valenoa had gone missing! The three had been treating her like one of their own, subconsciously believing that she could follow them without a problem. They had forgotten… that she was nothing but a frail, naive and amnesiac girl right now. Such a huge crowd of strangers would surely lead to panic and fear - she wouldn't know what to do. Unless they kept her close, it was pretty much an impossibility for her to make her way through all of these people like they did. And they had failed to take notice of that fact.

After retreading lots of their previous steps, finally, out of the corner of his eye, Kalin spied a familiar head of red hair. As quickly as he could, he made his way through the crowd, until he got close enough to make sure that it indeed belonged to the girl he was looking for.

Valenoa was unnaturally stiff and her eyes were watery. She was looking at her surroundings in confusion and fear and often stumbled when someone brushed past her. Thankfully, she hadn't moved too far from the path they had taken to get here, else it would have been far more difficult to find her.

While she was remarkably beautiful, in such a huge crowd, nobody had the time or was in the mood to pay close attention to the throngs of people they walked past. Thanks to this, she had luckily gone unnoticed by everyone. Why luckily? Because there were far too many people who would take advantage of a girl in her particular situation…

To make sure not to scare her by approaching her from behind, as her back had been facing towards him when he saw her, Kalin made sure to circle all the way around. Very quickly, Valenoa saw him, a familiar face, and her eyes lit up. Without much regard for the people between them, she charged in his direction, her eyes focused solely on him - although she wasn't particularly fast. It was hard to move in this crowd. Still, a few moments later, they finally reunited.

Before Kalin could apologize for losing her in this crowd, she dove into his arms and hugged him tightly, leaving him to blush madly, unsure of what to do.

Jakk and Mina finally caught up with him at that moment and saw this scene. Before Mina could accidentally interrupt the two, Jakk held her back and wordlessly signalled for Kalin to reciprocate the hug.

This snapped the flustered youngster out of his momentary inaction. Very gently, he hugged the shivering girl back, trying to provide her with some safety and security, although he felt pretty nervous himself. Still, he tried his best to seem steady and reliable. After all, it was partly his fault that they had lost her, and he felt really bad about it.

"I'm… I'm so glad I found you!"

With a guilty smile on his face, Kalin listened to her whimpering voice, patting her back lightly with his hand in an effort to further calm her down.

"I'm sorry. I'll make sure to stay by your side this time."

The only response to his apology was a quiet "Mhmm". Valenoa didn't even raise her head, her face still buried in his chest.

Thankfully, it only took her a couple of minutes to calm down. Still, ever since they had reunited, she didn't even give Kalin a chance to separate from her. Not even by a centimeter. She clung to his side and hugged his arm tightly, forcing him to concentrate really hard on ignoring the soft mounds rubbing against him. From her spot next to him, she was cautiously eyeing the surrounding crowds, clearly afraid. Because of this, Kalin didn't have the heart to point out how inappropriate their current positioning was. Not that he really wanted to anyway.

Today, Valenoa was wearing relatively affordable, frilly black clothes that gave her a far more girlish charm than usual. Unsurprisingly, the one who had bought them had been Kalin - he even used his own savings. About two days ago, when the group decided to come here, he had insisted that they couldn't let Valenoa outside in the extremely cheap, bog-standard clothes she wore back at that moment. They almost made her look like a beggar, and he didn't want others to look down on her. The clothes she had now were a huge step up and made her appear like a cheerful, average woman. If only her clothes were taken into account, that is - her outstanding looks made them seem at least a few times better.

These new clothes really accentuated her beauty and Kalin had actually already stumbled across and bought them on the day he made that proposition. Ever since he had started to follow Isaac, his income had markedly increased and the leader of their group even bore most of their expenses, especially the ones related to maintenance, equipment and housing. His savings grew rapidly, so he could afford to spend parts of it to get a cute girl a present. He didn't even have any unsavoury intentions - he only wanted to make her smile. And that, he did.

Jakk and Mina just shot them amused smiles when seeing the two's 'entanglement' and led the way towards the Colosseum, parting the crowds in front of them as best as they could.

Although Kalin felt very awkward about this, he also felt happy. Especially when Valenoa's hand somewhat subconsciously found his - while still clinging to his arm. He couldn't resist his primal urges as a man… and so it was that he held hands with a girl for the first time in his life.

While they passed through the crowd, thoughts along the lines of 'Would others think we look like a couple?' occasionally flashed past his mind, but he quickly and repeatedly forced himself to not get distracted by them. He had a task right now, and that was to safely escort this amnesiac lady to their destination.

In such a manner, the group of four made their way to one of the Colosseum's entrances. They deliberately didn't even try to take the one situated directly at the eastern main street and switched to one located in the smaller streets branching off of it instead. While the density of people there wasn't lower, there at least were fewer people overall that could be crammed in this space, leading to shorter wait times.

About thirty minutes of standing in one of the many lines later, they finally got the tickets for today's main show... which would start in about ten minutes, so they had to quickly follow the instructions of the various Guild employees and make their ways through the various hallways and staircases. Originally, they had planned to get here a lot earlier, but the previous mishap had caused them to lose a lot of time, causing them to cut it relatively close.

Thankfully, due to the well-organized routes to the various seats, it didn't take long for them to make it out into the open again. After they had followed such relatively narrow, almost cramped paths for a while, the open-air area of the Colosseum felt a lot larger than it actually was. Not that it wasn't truly massive even without that stark contrast.

There were about a hundred rows of seats all around, broken up into sections at various points by stairs and paths leading back into the Colosseum's hallways. While the seats at the very back were higher up and would give people a better view, they were also the furthest away from what was actually happening in the arena itself. If one sat on those highest seats, at the outermost edge, a human down in the arena seemed barely taller than an ant thanks to the distance. At least that was what regular people would see. Adventurers could partially disregard this problem as the higher their Levels, the better their eyesight became.

But as most people in attendance were just part of the average populace, the Ganesha Familia obviously wouldn't ignore them. With the support of the Guild, they had procured special magic-stone powered devices that looked similar to gigantic mirrors. They could provide a much closer look to what was currently going on in the arena. Hundreds of them had been put up all around the spectator stands. That way, no one would have a problem following along. Even sounds, which would usually quieten down or even be inaudible over such a large distance, were transmitted by the mirror-like devices. If Isaac had been present, he would have probably raised an eyebrow at the modernity of it all and complimented the designer for taking into account the sunlight, which didn't intervene with the view at all, no matter from which angle the mirrors were viewed.

The group quickly found their seats, which were located about halfway up the spectator stands. Of course, Valenoa sat down right next to Kalin… well, she hadn't let go of him ever since they reunited. Mina sat down next to her to keep an eye on the two - just in case - while Jakk took the last seat. If one wanted to be poetic about the whole thing, then it could be said that the two guys were like walls, keeping the girls in their midst safe from strangers. For the record, that hadn't actually been their plan, this was just how the seating arrangement happened to end up.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it's finally time!! Watch as our beloved Captain displays her terrifying taming prowess. Let's hear a big round of applause for Miss Shakti Varma!!"

An announcer of the Ganesha Familia, a man with an almost bare upper body and brown goggles covering his eyes, energetically shouted into the microphone-shaped magic device in his hands.

The applause following his words was deafening. It was so loud that quite a few of the more aurally sensitive members of the audience had to put their hands over their ears tightly, a couple of tears close to escaping their eyes. Over this ruckus, the sound of two of the arena's gates opening couldn't even be made out at all.

From one of them, a Mammoth Fool, a Sword Stag and a Troll marched out into the open. To be fair, marching honestly wasn't the most fitting description. They were escaping.

Whenever monsters left the bounds of the dungeon, they usually grew less feral and almost obtained intelligence rivalling a normal animal. Well, almost. At least they weren't entirely made up of bloodlust anymore, which was the reason that taming them was even possible in the first place. While still under the dungeon's influence, no monsters could be tamed.

With a few of the stronger Ganesha Familia members urging on these three monsters from the entrance they had come out of, they charged into the open field.

The first thing they did the moment they took note of their surroundings was to run towards the walls surrounding the arena, no doubt trying to either scale them or crash through them forcefully. But before they could even touch the walls, a barrier made of magic stopped them in their tracks, making it impossible for them to advance forward by even a single centimeter. They weren't injured, however. Instead, they were subjected to a lot of pain, which made it abundantly clear for the simple-minded beasts that the walls weren't a viable path to take - they had to turn somewhere else.

Because both the Ganesha Familia and the Guild were responsible for keeping everyone safe during this event, the Colosseum was outfitted with a huge number of state-of-the-art magical formations. Almost nobody would dare to make a ruckus here for fear of not having the ability to escape.

After running against the barrier safeguarding the walls in multiple other places, the three Level 2 monsters soon noticed that even the two previously open gates had been closed - and the barrier extended to there as well. They were all alone, with no way out. The only other living being with them was a lone human woman who stood in the center of the about 500 meter wide arena.

She had relatively short, azure blue hair that just barely covered her ears and eyes of the same colour. A uniform-esque, brown-orange dress with many clasps covered most of her body. Her shoulders were exposed, however, and so were most of her legs due to the very high cut of the dress that exposed them. Although it had most likely simply been chosen for the increase in mobility, the underlying thighs and stockings made certain parts of the audience quite excited - in a different way from the rest. A few pouches were strapped to her waist while boots made of white-ish metal and gauntlets of the same material rounded out her outfit.

She clenched a long, wooden spear in her right hand and didn't even wear any protective equipment under that dress of hers. Besides her feet and lower arms, any hits to her body wouldn't get cushioned. Her face was focused and serious and she didn't show the slightest bit of nervousness at all - as if the three monsters in front of her couldn't possibly withstand her harmless, wooden weapon and wouldn't be able to touch her at all.

And she wasn't wrong about that. After all, she was already at Level 5 and therefore one of the strongest adventurers in the city. Even the monsters could feel that she was far stronger than them, but attacking her was the only thing they could think of in this situation - no matter how afraid they were.

Watching this mature and beautiful woman calmly dodge the monsters' desperate attacks and giving them no more than the equivalent of slaps on the wrist time and time again, without ever being in danger, left the attending crowd on the edge of their seats. It looked too dangerous of a dance to the untrained eye, after all.

Some felt like she had only been able to dodge an attack by a hair's breadth, due to sheer luck, and clenched their fists tightly. Some others were able to comprehend that Shakti completely outclassed these monsters. And the rest, they simply cheered loudly.

Valenoa fell into the first category and Kalin's hand felt quite uncomfortable when she unknowingly used her full strength to grasp it. But like the heroic man he was, he didn't let anything show on his face and simply blinked away the few tears that had been gathering in his eyes. At first, he had been worried that she had been overcome by some traumatic experience, but by looking at her expression, he was quickly able to ascertain that she simply felt very nervous for the beautiful lady in the arena.

Kalin, Mina and Jakk fell into the second category of spectators. They felt their blood boiling from excitement and paid close attention to the spectacle, almost breathless. A little bit differently from most people around them, they knew that soon enough, they would also reach the heights that Shakti had already reached. Maybe it was a matter of months, or even years. But they would get there.

When the first one of the monsters, the Sword Stag, took a subservient pose in front of Shakti, as it couldn't possibly beat or resist her, she took a cut of meat out of one of her pouches and fed it to the surrendered monster. The other two didn't even attempt to approach her and just kept a fair distance, staring at her in horror.

As if to showcase that she had indeed tamed this beast, Shakti patted the stag's head and it made a strange purring sound in response. It sounded somewhat revolting but oddly endearing, causing even louder cheers to erupt from the audience. With a tamer's Development Ability at work, as soon as such a thing happened, something akin to a 'contract' would be present in both the tamer's and the tamed monster's head, forming an inseparable connection. There would be no need to fear the beast's revolt, as it would genuinely see the tamer as its master.

Finally sure of the beautiful lady not being in danger, Valenoa relaxed her grip and somewhat weakly leaned against Kalin's shoulder. There was no seductive intent behind her action, it was simply an instinctive behaviour. She wanted somewhere or someone to lean on after she had been on edge all this time and as Kalin was the one she was most comfortable around - Jakk would even occasionally mutter that she had imprinted on him - his shoulder became her chosen headrest. Although he knew about all of this, Kalin still couldn't help but blush all the way to his ears.

When he glanced over for a moment, Jakk smirked happily. The scene he saw was just too cute to keep a straight face. He was genuinely happy for his friend that such a beautiful girl felt so comfortable around him.

At the same time, he wanted to punch himself for not having had the balls to ask a certain bunny girl out on a date himself. Well, judging from how shyly Rakta usually behaved and how she would choose to shun people whenever she had the opportunity to do so, it was highly unlikely for him to get the reply he wanted anyway, especially if he told her that he wanted her to accompany him to a place like this. Still, he hadn't even tried. And it left just a little bit of a sour taste in his mouth.