4 Chapter 4: The First Step
On a rainy day, a lone figure stumbled through the streets of Lithallin.
Katsumi had a goal now. Power. He didn't have a plan yet, but nevertheless, he had a goal for the first time after coming to this world.
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The Encyclopedia of the Classes, Vol. 2
The Tamer
The Tamer is a class that is widely regarded as useless. If you, the reader, happens to be of this class, I would like to express my condolences. Also, it may be prudent for you to forget that you even have a class in the first place: your class will have no purpose in your life. While a Cook can turn their class into a career and the Crafter may one day make weapons of the finest quality, the Tamer is likely to simply get themselves killed trying to make use of their abilities.
To capture a monster, a large runic circle is required. While it may not be useful in any way, for the sake of completion, I will still attach a copy in the appendix. The circle must be enlarged to at least two meters across to capture but the most basic of monsters, and requires significant effort to make; even drawing the pattern on dirt may take a dozen minutes, making it quite impractical. Even more difficult is luring the monster into the circle without letting it destroy any part of the pattern; should any one of the runes be damaged, the circle will fail to activate.
Monsters are abundant, but capturing one serves no real purpose. In practice, only the capture of smaller monsters is feasible, which means that any monster captured will be easily defeated by opponents. The number of monsters you can control at any given moment is limited, while the rest enter a dormant state, making victory by overwhelming numbers impossible.
To be fair, the Tamer class could theoretically be used to control monsters with healing properties and provide support, but the fact that healing monsters are found only in the most dangerous of locations and even then the quality of healing provided is still inferior to an actual healer class makes this quite a waste of time, so this has never been attempted before.
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Katsumi understood how useless his class was. It was like that one character in a game that he used to play, who hadn't gotten a balance buff in years, and was now so obsolete even playing them as a meme was impossible. It was that bad.
But it was all he got in this world, unless he wanted to try and fight magic with only brute strength. That was impossible, so he had to make do with what he had: [Monster Control].
There was also that other skill: [Enhance]. Maybe that would be the key. From what he could see, the extra skill was something that gave extra functionality to the base skill a person's class had. [Empowered Armaments] increased the power of Yamamura's blows through a mechanism that Katsumi didn't quite understand yet, but he had seen it in action, and it gave a significant power boost. He didn't know what his [Enhance] could do, but he presumed that it could be used to enhance his monsters. However, the extent to which this ability to enhance a monster was unknown. It was possible that it was equally useless. If so, then taming monsters wouldn't help him. After all, he needed power.
Now, first, where would he find some monsters?
It seemed like he wouldn't have to walk too far. A poster on the wall caught his attention.
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Mari looked out over the royal capital as she leaned on the balcony of her room. After Hirai had been thrown out, she and the rest of the "useless" heroes had been moved and given rooms in the palace. The rooms were still inferior to those inhabited by the "useful" group, but it was still a significant upgrade in luxury compared to the rooms they had been using for the past month.
She wondered how Hirai was doing. He had never been particularly kind to her, but he hadn't insulted her in any way before. There was also that thing he had witnessed her doing a year and a half ago, but he didn't spread it amongst the class… Mari wasn't particularly fond of him, but at least she didn't see him in a negative light.
The emperor had had some guards take Hirai's unconscious body off to dump out in the streets. The remaining members of the "useless" group had all seemed simply relieved that they had not been the ones beaten up and abandoned, but it didn't sit right with Mari. It might be simple self-preservation for the others, but Mari refused to cooperate with the emperor. He had demanded that they train their class skills and unique skills, but Mari had simply claimed that she couldn't figure out how to use her unique skill. It was the largest amount of rebellion she was capable of.
However, she did understand how her unique skill, [Imbued Food] worked. It allowed to to apply properties to food she created with the [Food Preparation] skill. Mari had never really played games before, but she supposed her ability essentially allowed her to create food items with "buffing" or "debuffing" properties.
After a few moments of wondering if Hirai Katsumi was doing fine, Mari turned. It was almost time for dinner. She walked into her room and quickly changed. The clothes provided, while not particularly fancy, were functional and still felt comfortable. With that out of the way, she stepped out of her room.
Something felt off, but she couldn't exactly pinpoint why. After a brief period of consideration, she realized why. It was the hooded figure approaching her from down the hall.
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Under the cover of darkness, a solitary figure was crouching at the edge of the forest just west of the royal capital.
That of course, was Katsumi. What he was crouching over was a giant magic circle which he had just finished inscribing into the dirt. He experimentally placed his hand on the circle. As expected, the runes began glowing with a dull purple.
Obviously, the size of the required magic circle made it impossible to use in combat, but as long as Katsumi drew it beforehand and lured in a monster with himself as bait, that would no longer be an issue.
"Now, lets see what we can catch."
Katsumi glanced at the scrap of paper in his hand. The poster that he had torn off the wall that morning. It was time to hunt.
