Pet Taming

The beast came to a dead stop just in front of Lance unable to take another step. The squad's rifles were all aimed towards the beast as Andrews gave the order to hold fire.

Lance kept communicating with the beast, "I can sense your hunger. Did the Gnolls starve you?" The Hound barked in the affirmative and Lance asked "Have you ever tasted Gnoll before? Would you like to try it?" motioning towards the dead Gnoll.

The Hell Hound wasted no time before quickly moving beside one of the Gnolls and biting through it's neck. It started to devour the creature and seemed to be taking great joy in it. It intermittently looked back towards Lance as if making sure that it was still okay that it keep eating.

"It seems that these beasts are not used to getting such good treatment." Lance thought. "Maybe I can use this as the carrot to keep this Hound on our side."

"Is that Hell Hound listening to you Private?" Andrews asked.

"It seems like it can hear my intent if nothing else. Though I'm not confident in falling asleep beside it yet. We will see how it goes. Might need to lock it up at night." Lance suggested.

"So what are you gonna call your new pet?" Dan said with a smirk on his face.

Without missing a beat, Lance said "Subwoofer" with a straight face as the entire squad burst out laughing.

The other mini squad made their way over to Andrews squad to thank them and asked if they checked the bodies of the Gnolls.

Confused, Andrews asked them "Why? What are we looking for?"

In reply, a stout man named Corporal Scott said "These Gnolls formed a society in the abyss along with other more intelligent beings. They sometimes have decent materials on them."

Andrews ordered Lance and Candy to search the Gnolls and they managed to find a small pouch on one of them with a handful of small and crude looking coins. Their weapons seemed to be crudely made spears of wood and stone and not worth anything, but the coins were made of some type of metal.

"What kind of metal are these coins made of?" Andrews asked Scott.

"Our original tests show it to be something similar to titanium" Scott said. "There seems to be new elements deep in the abyss and the fact that they are able and willing to use a titanium like substance as currency means they have a fair amount of it. Something is able to mold it or they have the technology to press it too. Neither option is good news for us. We have seen them show up on four different species so far as well. Seems like there is quite the army down there."

Andrews looked at the bag of coins and then passed them to Lance. "You deserve these."

Lance took the bag before throwing them over to Candy. "Can you make them into a weapon? I need a good knife."

Candy said "Sure! But I want to keep one of the coins."

"Deal." Lance said as he looked back towards the Hell Hound.

Spinning his whirlpool of energy, he communicated with the beast again, "Did you enjoy a good meal? As long as you help us track down some more Gnolls you can enjoy even more food."

The beast looked pleased at that and communicated that it knew where some were but that it couldn't sense any more within the walled area.

They finished their talk with Corporal Scott and parted ways as they headed over the next hill and towards the watch tower in the North. When they arrived, the rest of their squad joined up and they quickly proceeded towards the main base of humans in this abyssal zone.

Because of the small size of the weapon, Candy was able to start forming the blade on their march towards the main base. She would occasionally ask Lance to help her replenish her energy so she could keep working on it, and had quickly formed the relative shape of a 48 cm curved knife. She was now focusing on compressing the blades edge to the maximum so that it could cut through anything. She formed it with a guard to protect his hand and suggested he find some leather to wrap the handle when he had the time.

Lance spent the march communicating and building repoire with Sub. He still wasn't sure if he could fall asleep around the animal without it being restrained, but he believed with enough time that he could be a close partner and could work well as a mount for high speed movement.

As the hours in the day waned, they approached the main base. As they walked closer they could make out that the base consisted of an outer wall surrounding the town that was over 15m tall with watch towers in the four corners allowing for a larger view of the surrounding area. They marched up to the main gate where they were all logged and briefed on the rules they had to obey within. Lance was told that Sub had to remain outside so he asked for some chain and asked Candy to help him build a small shelter to house him and keep him out of the elements.

Lance spun his whirlpool and communicated with Sub asking if he would be comfortable in the shelter and told him that he would bring him more meat tomorrow. Getting a lazy affirmative grunt from Sub satisfied Lance's curiosity to the situation and he bid the beast a good night.

After that, Lance went with Candy to catch up with the rest of their squad and drop their equipment in their barracks. Overhearing some of the conversations in the base, Lance asked Dan how everything would work out from here on in.

"For the basics, we will be given standard scout and guard missions depending on our skills. This will be the cost of our food and housing. Given that these missions only happen twice a week, we have the rest of the week to rest or take up other missions which will be rewarded with points. There is still a lot of research going on so they want materials from different beasts in the area as well as info regarding the beasts habits, weak points, etc. and these missions will be posted on the mission board in the central area. These points can be exchanged for higher quality food, grenades, guns, swords or even to encourage other people with unique skills to join you on your mission."

Lance was a little shocked hearing the info, "That's a pretty loose requirement. Why are they going about it that way instead of standard army protocols?"

Dan replied, "I overheard Corporal Andrews say it had something to do with our young age and keeping morale and motivation up. But I don't really care, I'm gonna make a lot of money while I'm here. I even heard that with enough points you can buy out your service and retire from the army early, though it's not cheap."

Lance smiled, "That will work out quite nicely then. I've got my own reasons for being here and the loose structure will help me towards those goals."