59 Rotten Deal

It was a while until the laughter stopped, Serb's eyes shining as he questioned Stanis.

"Forget all the difficulties that would come up due to such a partnership for a moment and tell me why I should even consider it in the first place?"

Sil nodded at this, Caleb looked exhausted and Orena had her eyes closed. It was almost as if Serb was doing them a favour by asking the question they had all been thinking, as Stanis's actions over the previous days had only degraded, now at a point that they were nonsensical.

"We're both natives of Earth, aren't we? Isn't it just natural to help each other out?" answered Stanis, his answer being two rhetorical questions. In truth, they should have been anything but rhetorical as his answer didn't make any sense, a few of the Jaguars chortling with laughter whereas the Humans felt their hearts sink.

Serb himself had a good sense of humour and so too began laughing at this: a hilarious joke. He wasn't even angry when he responded a few seconds later, his funny bone thoroughly tickled.

"What a good point, you have my respect, Human." said Serb, his face stone-cold as he spoke. Another batch of Jaguars exploded into laughter at this, their howling soon dying out as they realised Serb wasn't being sarcastic.

"Wonderful, us natives should stick together" said Stanis, this conversation now dream-like for the audience as they watched with disbelieving eyes.

Serb squinted at this, his matt-black eyes darkening. He was no fool, he now knew that this Human wasn't either. This meant that there was something clearly behind this partnership, something this Human was hiding in clear sight. Perhaps this Human meant to exploit the Jaguars! Whatever it was, it was fine as Serb had his own personal strength to keep the Jaguars alive; all he would do was go along with this Human's ride meanwhile grabbing every advantage possible.

"But-" said Serb, " you are the one coming to us to make a partnership, to ally yourselves with us. Tell me what is in it for us? As the initiator, you must have something to give us in order to set good relations, no?"

Stanis thoughtfully rubbed his jaw for a second before answering Serb's question.

"Nope. I was hoping you would have something in mind that I could do in order to set the relationship."

He knew what he was doing; he knew that he was playing into Serb's hands. In fact, his larger plan wasn't as malicious as Serb was guessing right now, instead all he wanted was for the two races to join forces.

When he had first left the mountain, he had initially wondered which path was the right one for him: the lonely path or the path that grew from the many little ones that made it.

The lonely path was good as he would forever be chasing pure power, his true desire, without any distraction.

As for the larger path with space for many others, he would forever be at risk of betrayal and other fickle events: he would be distracted from true power. And thus his wonderings had been solved like this, his focus solely on himself.

But that had changed. The time he had spent with Rikky, and then Kevin, and then during the long trip to here with Caleb, Orena and Sil. Sure there were bad sides to it, but it was during these times that he realised he liked the company of others; they might not be as giving as Yils and Zelgard had been, but they were Human, just like he was, and they all had a little good in them. Humans were social creatures: the lonely path was not made for them; there was no need for him to torture himself when the world was already eager to do so!

However there was a problem. His feelings of shared humanity couldn't win over his desire for true power or vice versa. This left him at a bit of a crossroad...

But then he had figured it out how to get the best of both worlds when he had been fighting the Jaguars. He had a sinking feeling then that these Jaguars were not invader lifeforms, and thus maybe they could become his key to opening a new door.

If he could train these Jaguars up, that would allow him to make sure that the Village stayed afloat by using these Jaguars to control and protect them, while still being able to focus on his training without worry. But typical of life, his plan hadn't worked perfectly so far, variables he hadn't expected jumping out, mainly the Jaguar leader's intelligence and strength being so high. But it was fine, he was still certain he could get it to work…

Serb took a pause, acting as if he needed a moment to think and not as if he had already thought up a whole plan.

"How about two little things? You do both of them for us, and you have my word that we, the Jaguars, will join you. How about that?"

"Sure" said Stanis, following Zelgard's example by showing a toothy smile after he spoke, although his was far greasier than should have been.

Serb's heart slightly lurched at this but he managed to keep his stomach, noting to himself at the same time that he had to be careful of this strange human and its weird tactics.

"Here's the first one: teach all the golden Jaguars about mana. I know they will learn of it over time as many have already done, but we need to be at maximum strength as a race if we want to survive this hell-hole. I'm sure you can do something about this considering your magic abilities, no?"

"It would be my pleasure" said Stanis. The white Jaguar was clearly talking about the circulation of mana and not just teaching about its existence. He would have struggled with this task before but after teaching Rikky how to do so, he now knew a quick method of allowing someone to circulate mana, although not to the quality Sils had taught him to.

What followed this was Stanis baptising Jaguar after Jaguar, introducing them to mana and how to circulate it. At first, he was just going to do a sloppy job and finish it quickly, but Serb made sure that this wouldn't happen by sitting down close and watching Stanis as he baptised the Jaguars. Perhaps Stanis could have tricked the golden Jaguars but it was much harder to trick a tier-3 monster, who although didn't have even close to Stanis's sensitivity, had enough to notice obvious bad work.

And thus in total this work took 2 full days, Stanis successfully having baptised just over 300 Jaguars. The other three had first found themselves in terrible situations as they were free, since they had nothing to do, but also not free, since the 50 or so black Jaguars, tier-two, watched them with suspicious eyes. Their predicament, however, lessened after Stanis had baptised a few of the golden Jaguars, as they became friendlier and began to play. This wasn't to say that their hands weren't close to their weapons at all times though…

Since all of the Jaguars were now at least tier-two, Serb once again held another meeting. This time both the audience and Serb himself were more friendly and accepting of the Humans.

"You have finished one of the promised tasks. Finish the second one and the partnership is set, Stanis" said Serb, his whiskers slightly twitching as he talked. He had learnt that these Humans weren't as bad as their reputation said so, and thus wished to go forwards in a partnership with them. However, he was still strictly set against doing so if they declined the second task, after all this was the important one.

"All you have to do is assist us burn the Spectres to the ground." said Serb.

"How many?" asked Stanis, purposefully avoiding the topic of why. He was sure he would find out later anyway.

"Every. Single. One. Of. Them." answered Serb, the words barely escaping his clenched teeth…