28 Loyalty, friendship and respect

I was impressed for a few moments before the old man dropped to the ground again. He seemed like it was really tiring.

„How did you do that?" I asked.

„This is the path which our people aspire to go. It is the path of our Battle Art. It allows the wielder to use its familiar's abilities to some extent. As you can since this one is a bird" he paused while allowing the bird to descend onto his shoulder „I am granted the ability to fly... or float. I might be able to fly someday for real when the both of us are stronger."

I was fascinated. There wasn't a trace of magic being used but the man's previous actions were truly magical nonetheless.

„How does this Battle Art work?" I inquired.

„It will take some time until you can master it but seeing your adept learning potential and the seemingly undying loyalty which originate from your familiars which can even be felt by others sometimes I think you will definitely be able to overcome all difficulties and master all three stages of this battle art. As I have previously mentioned it was created by two genius scholars who were adept in the ways of magic and they created this battle art while researching the use of beast souls. The use of beast souls is a lost magic practice to improve a wizard's abilities by many folds. Wizards often have frail bodies. The beast soul can strengthen many aspects of a body. It can even grant abilities such as flight. To achieve this one had to kill the beasts and extract their essence. This was obviously not possible for people who lived by the conviction of wisdom and friendship. Therefore they created a Battle Art which utilized the power of a beast soul without damaging the corresponding beasts. After a long time of research they finally came up with the Battle Art <shackles>. Contrasting to its name this Battle Art frees the abilities of familiars to be used by a tamer who practices <shackles> later on. When the tamer has mastered this battle art the beast soul will be unshackled and ready to be used. It is a contract that is based on the beast's essence. It has to be unshackled voluntarily for it to work"

Interesting I thought and asked „Then what is the prerequisite to unshackle a beast soul?"

„There isn't one prerequisite but there are three, three stages to unshackle a beast soul. The first one is the usual approach a tamer often uses. It is simply the gaining of a creature which results in gaining its loyalty. <Loyalty> is the first stage. The second stage might be depending on the first stage. If the tamer used violent means to gain the familiar's loyalty it might be difficult to become friends with it. This might hinder the second stage which is named <friendship>. This stage often takes a long time since it is hard to communicate with a familiar and become friends with it but compared to the third stage it is still relatively easy. The third stage is called <Respect>. Only when your familiar has accepted you as its friend will you have to try to gain its respect. This is most likely achieved by some actions which your familiar would define as impressive. I don't know how strong this Battle Art is if it were put in contrast to other Battle Arts but for our profession, the tamer, it is an extremely useful one. Other battle arts only possess destructive potential but this one was devised to prevent the killings of strong beasts which might be used as materials for a beast soul extraction.

I listened attentively and memorized each word that left the old man's mouth for it would be a shame if any of that knowledge were to be lost.

When he stopped talking about <shackles> I had only one question burning on the tip of my tongue: „how long did it take you to come to this point when you could finally unshackle the bird's beast soul?"

„About forty years" answered the old man as considerate and concise as possible but it was obvious that he thought it would crush my hopes of soon learning how to unshackle my many beast souls.

What he didn't know was that although I was way younger than him at least the first stage was definitely completed for me. How good can a traditional taming version be in gaining a beast's loyalty compared to the decree of bloodline, my <bloodline binding>.

‚The question now is: do your familiars already see you as friends or only as their master. If it wasn't the latter you could already start trying to gain their respect.' said Drake. ‚On the other hand you might already be respected. The problematic factor for you is to acquire the information if your familiars see you as their friend.'