The True Size of the <Shadow Palace>

Kirou locked eyes with the huge badger mole that was staring at him in curiosity. While the thought to arm himself and fight the creature did cross his mind, it just felt wrong for him to attack a creature that showed no hostile intent towards him. That being said, no matter how tame the creature is, he wasn't about to approach the creature without any caution.

As Kirou was thinking about what he should do, the giant badger mole took its sweet time in approaching Kirou, all the while sniffing in the air. Seeing this action prompted Kirou to remember that he had something in his inventory that might warrant such an action. As if to prove his point, the moment Kirou removed an item from his inventory, the badger mole stopped its probe-like sniffing and its snout pointed directly towards Kirou's body.

Seeing this, a certain expectation formed within Kirou's mind as he slowly approached the badger mole with the item in hand. The badger mole grew wary as Kirou approached by staying exactly where it was as if judging that Kirou wasn't a threat to it even if he got close. The moment Kirou was standing less than two meters away from the creature, he placed the item on the floor and slowly backed away. It wasn't until Kirou was back ten meters away that the creature approached the item and started sniffing it before it then started eating slowly.

The item Kirou had placed on the floor was a stew he made from female wild boar meat. Kirou had obtained quite a bit of the stuff when he hunted those boars so he had used his time at General Store Manager Almia's cottage to cook up a bit of it for personal use. Although he had intended to use it for something else, Kirou decided to give some to the giant badger mole since it had apparently sought him out after getting a whiff of it.

Kirou watched as the badger mole slowly ate the stew until all of it was gone. A smile had naturally formed on Kirou's face as he watched the giant badger mole consume the bowl of female boar meat stew from start to finish. Now that the creature was done, it stared at Kirou as if it was asking for more.

The smile on Kirou's face grew even wider when he saw this. He took a few seconds to compose himself as best as possible before he spoke in an even voice, "Looks like you really enjoyed that stew. Unfortunately, that was the only amount I had left on me." As if understanding Kirou's words, the giant creature laid on its belly and started to pout, almost making Kirou break out in laughter.

Doing his best to suppress that urge, Kirou once again spoke up to the creature in an even tone, "I may be out of it now, however..." at this point the creature's head rose to stare at Kirou as if it could actually see and understand him. Kirou saw this but made no unusual moves while he continued speaking, "Just because I don't have any more of it on me now doesn't mean I cannot make any later."

The giant badger mole, as if understanding Kirou's intentions, had its head pointed towards Kirou's figure for a few seconds in deliberation before it slowly went over to him and laid by his feet, touching Kirou with its head in the process. Unlike when he had tamed Shadow Arachne, a system prompt didn't show up before Kirou right now even though the giant badger mole was submitting itself to him. Kirou tilted his head to the side for a moment before he remembered something and use one of the skills he obtained at the time on the giant badger mole.

<Tame Monster>

The moment Kirou used the skill on the giant badger mole, a ring of light left his body and expanded until it was big enough to surround the giant badger mole. The giant badger mole saw the ring of light surround it and instinctively wanted to resist it but managed to resist that urge and allowed the ring of light to cover its body. As soon as the ring of light covered the entirety of the badger mole's body, Kirou was greeted by familiar system prompts.

[System Message: You have tamed the elite monster, the <Shura Forest Badger Mole>]

[System Message: The <Shura Forest Badger Mole> (Elite) has become <Shura Forest Badger Mole> (Tamed)]

[Please give the <Shura Forest Badger Mole> a name.]

Kirou sat down next to the giant creature that was lying on its belly and ran his hand through its coarse fur as he tried to think of a name for the creature. After spending a few minutes trying to figure out a decent name and failing, Kirou took another look at the system prompts before a name jumped out in his mind.

Having decided on a name, Kirou gently patted the giant creature's head as he spoke, "I'll use a character from your species and give you a nice name. From now on, I'll call you <Asura>. Though it doesn't fit the kind nature you've displayed so far, I'm positive you will be a terror on anyone in combat."

Whether the creature understood the meaning behind its new name or not, the giant badger mole got up and gave Kirou's face a lick with its long tongue. Kirou could only form a wry smile on his face in response to this before shaking his head. Now that he had tamed the creature, Kirou was curious to see if the idea that came to him when he first laid eyes on Asura was feasible or not. First, he had to make sure that Asura still had the required skills to pull it off.

Pet Name: Asura (Shura Forest Badger Mole)

Pet Species: Giant Badger Mole

Pet Level: 1

Condition: Healthy (Laidback)

Skills: Seismic Sense (Passive), Keen Senses (Passive), Earth Control, Earth Armor

Just like with Shadow Arachne, Asura had basically reverted to a creature at level 1 and had lost access to a few of its original skills. Taking another look at the creature, Kirou realized that Asura had somehow shrunk in the time it took for him to look at its stats from the pet menu. The original two and a half meters tall and four and a half meters long creature was now just under one meter in height and was one and a half meters long. It looked like a badger mole cub in comparison to the previously large beast that he had first laid eyes on.

While the skill was still present and Kirou was quite interested in checking if his theory was sound, Kirou decided that it was best that he allows Asura to gain some levels beforehand, in case of any uncertainty. And like that, both man and badger mole cub made their way into the formerly nameless forest behind them which seems to have been upgraded on his map to reflect the name 'Shura Forest'.

************

Kirou had spent the next three or so hours in the Shura Forest with Asura, hunting down practically every monster that they saw. At first, Kirou wanted to go slower and find weaker monsters to fight so that Asura could take part in the fights but this concern of his was unnecessary as the badger mole cub would usually strike at unsuspecting targets by launching attacks using pieces of stone that it manipulates using <Earth Control> skill and when those creatures tried to strike back, it would usually summon up an armor made from earth to block most of the damage it receives, clearly the effect of the <Earth Armor> skill.

Shaking his head at the antics of his new pet, Kirou could only join in on these fights and finish off the rogue monsters before they managed to break the young cub's armor. Looking at the innocent smile on the creature's face, Kirou could only form a wry smile on his face at the antics of his new pet who seems to be a bit mischievous, even though it was so docile when it originally met him.

And like that, the team of man and cub went around for three hours before finally returning to the cliff area just above Kirou's secret base. Due to the forest being home to relatively strong monsters, Asura was now at level 12 when they returned to the cliff area. Looking at Asura's stats, Kirou had a perplexed look on his face.

'Although it is to be expected since we are in a somewhat high leveled area, hasn't this new pet of mine leveled up way too quickly?' Kirou couldn't be blamed for this as it took Shadow Arachne a few days to have reached a similar level while it only took Asura a few hours. It was due to this comparison why Kirou's gaze was perplexed while looking at his pet.

Pet Name: Asura

Pet Species: Giant Badger Mole

Pet Level: 12

Condition: Healthy (Mischievous)

Skills: Seismic Sense (Passive), Keen Senses (Passive), Earth Control, Earth Armor

HP: 4800

MP: 4000

Attack: 120

Intelligence: 80

Constitution: 400

Defense: 250

Agility: 40

The stats were showed that Asura was going the route of a tank, similarly to his minotaur Tank. As for the reason why Asura was able to level up that quickly, what Kirou didn't know was that with the update of Immortal Era's server, the system had granted a buff to the number of experience points both players and their pets would receive for a period of time. Since he was not interested in leveling up quickly like all the other players in the game, Kirou never noticed that there was currently a plus sign next to his experience points gauge.

Disregarding it as something not important at the moment, Kirou decided that it was time to see if his plan could be put to the test. First Kirou brought up his system map and tried to see if he could change the view of his map to display the elevation of the area he was in instead of just the flat surface. He had come across some posts on the forums talking about this feature so he wanted to see if he could do so as well.

After spending roughly ten minutes fumbling about with the controls of his map, Kirou finally discovered how to change the map's view and swapped it to display the elevation of the entire cliff, as well as the underground cavern he now owned. When he did this, Kirou noticed that between his current position and the underground cavern, there was a somewhat large cave in the middle not connected to the original cave system. Looking at it from the elevated point of view that the map is currently showing, the area looks like a four or five-story building, with the underground cavern being the basement that takes up two floors on its own and the space between Kirou's feet and the top of the cavern taking up another two floors.

Kirou looked on at this in enlightenment as he was able to see just how much he had to dive down or up if he wanted to create a new entrance to the cave system. Just as Kirou was about to close the map and test out his idea, however, he noticed something on the map that he had missed before.

When the system map was showing the flat view of the area, Kirou could only see that his secret base was in the general direction of the cliff and nothing more. Using the elevation view of the map, however, Kirou noticed that the area designated as <Shadow Palace> extended much larger than he had expected. in fact, it seems that the entire area from the underground entrance all the way to the sea was counted as his property.

This on its own wasn't all that strange. What Kirou found strange was the fact that using the elevated view of the map, everything from the underground cavern as the base, all the way to the top of the hill that he was currently standing on was being shown as his property. This caused Kirou's jaw to slack as he never expected for the system to give him such a large area after using the <Hidden Land Deed>.

If taken into the context of modern-day architecture, Kirou used the <Hidden Land Deed> to obtain the underground cavern, which can be treated as the base or ground floor of a building, only to later discover that he had obtained the entire five-story building. Coming to this realization, Kirou started laughing. At first, it started quietly but it soon turned into a burst of full-blown maniacal laughter. It got so bad that Asura looked at its master in confusion for a few moments before it just laid down on its belly and stared at the open sea.

This laughter went on for a few minutes before Kirou finally managed to calm down and successfully regain his composure. Following this, Kirou put off any plan of developing the underground cavern for now and was instead thinking about how to deal with that middle layer filled with rocks. Taking a look at Asura laying on his belly, Kirou hatched a few plans almost instantly and couldn't stop himself from saying out loud, "It looks like I've obtained far more than just my personal pier. If I do this right, I might be able to create my own <Shadow Palace> in the future."

Having said that, Kirou sat down next to Asura and started to rub his hand through the badger mole cub's coarse fur. He now had a new large scale project and it just so happened to be feasible because of this lucky charm of his called Asura.

The badger mole itself had no idea what its master was thinking but was instead basking in the attention that its master was giving it. If it knew just what Kirou planned on using it to do in the future, the poor badger mole might have tried to fight Kirou to the death right then and there.