6 It's cool guys it's just a bear.

Day seven was blisteringly hot, and to make it worse the entire day they were crossing a meadow. There was no nice cool tree shade to shelter them and not the slightest wisp of a breeze either. By the time the sun finally set they were all to tired and hot to continue. They didn't bother to set up their tents as they were specifically designed to retain heat. They directly rolled out some tarps and their sleeping bags, ate some rations, and went to sleep.

Jack didn't sleep very well that particular evening, not only was it hot he also had repeated nightmares of being crushed by rocks and cave-ins. He couldn't be sure but he felt like he woke up several times, it was too dark to see anything and he still couldn't move. He could only slowly drift back to sleep.

While he was rather uncomfortable he had plenty of experience with being unable to move in his half asleep state he thought he was back in his dorm with lynxet sprawled on top of him. He drifted back off and slept peacefully until dawn when he was rudely awoken by shouting.

"Everybody up! Enemy spotted we have a Wild beast in the camp! Jack don't try to move you might anger it!" Clay was up and shouting as soon as the sun had crested.

Jack opened his eyes and looked around, while he couldn't sit up he could move his head around fine. Iris was the first one up after Clay's shout and immediately had daggers out ready to fight. Amber was slower as she scrambled to get her shield on her arm. Clay was up and ready with his sword out. Meanwhile Rust propped herself up on her elbow and casually glanced around before collapsing back on the ground and going back to sleep.

Jack glanced down at himself. There was a small bear creature sleeping on his chest. It looked exactly like a beat but it was smaller, the size a Common beat cub would be. Jack was rather surprised by it.

"Would you look at that! A tiny Wild bear! Never seen one before, this is a first. Ah, it's cool guys it's not a threat." Jack raised his hands in a general gesture of surrender.

Clay was not impressed with Jack's 'bravado' and started moving in. Iris and Amber took a few seconds to asses the situation. The bear or perhaps cub was sleeping on Jack's torso, it didn't deem to have woken up from Clay's shouting, and there didn't seem to be any other Wild creatures about. There was no really immediate danger so they relaxed a bit.

"Care to explain Jack?" Iris asked fully confused.

"What exactly is this about?" Amber was on the same page as Iris.

"Heh hehe ..." Jack gave an awkward laugh. "Well... who knows really, what it comes down to is that Wild creatures seem to absolutely love me."

Rust had already known this but the rest of the party was shocked silent by this nonsensical statement. Jack realized his explanation was somewhat lacking and decided to start over.

"As you can see Wild creatures quite like me. They also act like domesticated creatures more or less... as long as no one attacks them or me. That's pretty much it. That's all I know anyways, it's been like this for as long as I can remember. The reason I have an abandoned dorm to myself is because I keep several Wild pets."

Iris was entirely unimpressed by his attempts at explaining.

"That's it? What an odd person. This most definitely is the party of oddballs."

Amber was only interested in one point of Jack's story,

"So the bear cub is peaceful?"

"Yeah, it should be completely passive as long as it's not injured."

"So... I can pet it?"

"Sure, if you help me get it off of me, it's terribly heavy and it's been sleeping on me all night."

Somewhat relieved but still cautious of this strange ability Clay and Amber carefully lifted/slid the bear off of Jack. Jack then got up and started to examine it more closely. The bear was a very dark brown nearing black. It didn't seem to be a cub, at least it's head proportionately wasn't as large as a cub's. It seemed to just be a tiny bear. Amber began stroking it's fur.

Jack decided that there wasn't much point paying attention to the mini bear, he'd learned over time that Wild animals would inevitably be attracted to him and follow him around he was fully expecting this sort of event to occur frequently during the field trip. He decided to do something useful and grabbed everyone's water bottles.

Jack wandered around the meadow for a half hour while everyone was alternatively petting the mini bear, eating some ration, and packing up their sleeping gear. He found a small spring feeding a little brook to the south west of their camp and walked over to fill up their water bottles. The spring looked empty but when he filled a bottle from it he noticed little organisms in it. It was normal for there to be single celled organisms and such in water but there were little creatures about the size of one's fingertip swimming around in the water. This was definitely not something you wanted to try drinking who knows what these little buggers would do to a person's insides. Jack dumped the water into a box that originally held rations, he wanted to take these things back and study them a bit maybe one of their teachers knew what they were. Jack had never seen anything like them and he hadn't heard of it either.

Since the clearly couldn't use the water here without significant filtering he headed back to grab the filtering gear included in their kits and a scroll of purify water while he was at it. He handed the case of amoeba water to Rust as he walked to his bag.

"Have you ever read about anything like this? Seems to be mutated single cellular organisms can't tell if they're Wild or Magick beasts though not sure how you would..."

Rust curiously opened the case and stared at the little things swimming inside. Jack left her to her musings while he filled the water bottles making sure to thoroughly filter it and casting the scroll afterwards. He carefully examined each of the water bottles for little tag-alongs. They seemed to be clean. It'd have to be good enough since it was likely most of the water sources from here on would be contaminated.

Rust had finished examining the container when he was done.

"Never heard of these specifically but all of our lessons emphasized that outside the Remnant all water sources were contaminated and to use the filter's if we didn't like being cripplingly ill. Fair bet it's 'couse of these guys."

Jack decided it was logical and handed Rust her water bottle while taking the box back.

"I'll ask Mrs. Mint when we get back, if she doesn't know I don't know who else to ask. Does the wizardry professor know anything about Wild creatures?"

"Probably not much but there'd be no harm in asking if Mrs. Mint doesn't know."

With their water refilled the party finished packing and continued their trip southeast. They were now firmly in Wild beast territory so they moved slowly on day eight. Their caution was mocked by the entire menagerie of creatures, they did indeed encounter Wild beasts around every turn as the left the prairie and entered a coniferous forest however they all wandered over like domesticated cattle or pets and nuzzled up against Jack. The scene that appeared as they wandered through the forest seemed like a cartoon or maybe a horror movie.

The majority of Wild beasts were much larger than their Common counterparts but not many of them looked too different. The party was tromping through a forest surrounded on all sides by horse sized deer, dog sized squirrels and rabbits, cat sized birds, and the occasional ten foot bear coming over to investigate. The crowd of animals slightly hampered their movement but surrounded like this there was no need to cautiously creep along. They made decent progress that day and camped out in a small hollow in the forest.

The next morning they woke up surrounded by dozens of Wild creatures and nearly had a heart attack. It wasn't something you get used to immediately. They had plenty of time to get used to it though, the entire second week of their trip was spent in the company of a colorful variety of Wild animals, massive insects, mammals, birds, and reptiles in all kinds of colours with various mutations. Some a bit more memorable than others among them a deer with wings on it's back, a bird with two heads one of which's beak was a completely different shape than the other, and a rabbit with a horn growing out of it's head.

By the end of the second week they had traveled more then three quarters of the way to the end zone. With the progress they were making they should arrive in three or four more days, well ahead of schedule. They stopped early, at sunset to relax a little. While two weeks was far from enough time to become good friends while they were walking through the woods they'd gotten more familiar with each other and started to work better together. They'd also gotten very efficient at setting up and tearing down camp. They decided to set up a little fire to heat up some of the rations as there wasn't any danger from the Wild animals they were with. It was a terrible idea, they'd been told time and again never to light a fire in the Wilds not for fear of forest fire but because it would attract every beast for miles around. They reasoned that they were already doing that and that there'd be no harm it could possibly do. It wasn't their brightest descision.