Might as Well

Instantly, hands went up in the air. Surprisingly, most were from the male parts of the group, with Adam hesitantly raising his own hand after taking an awkward look around.

Katie, naturally, looked super excited at the prospect of spider-related shenanigans.

Sam grinned, reached into his inventory, and handed Tim the still-fresh (or ancient) spider egg, who fortunately didn’t raise his hand.

“Here, one freshly picked spider egg.”

Tim took the egg and began to observe it in his hands, turning it every which way, only to conclude that it was indeed a perfectly spherical beige spider egg.

“Thanks?”

“You’re most welcome!”

Sam, still grinning, looked around and saw while Katie and Isabella were excited about the prospect of a new pet joining them, Lara and Adam were looking on a little jealously. Well, mostly Lara, Adam seemed to be confused about his feelings.

“But don’t worry! I didn’t forget you two!” He mostly wanted to see if they were genuine and not run with the first piece of the success. Seeing them work together and handle the entire raid, he was somewhat reassured. Mostly in Adam. The guy wore his heart on his sleeves. Lara was another kettle of fish.

Her family was still a question mark. With Katie, it was clear that her father wouldn’t do anything to his daughter, no matter what she did. Isabella’s family were morons of the highest order.

Still, somebody had to take the first step and Sam decided he would be the one who did it.

He fished out the two wyvern eggs he got so long ago and handed them to Lara and Adam one by one. Now he only needed to find something for Liz and Claire.

Adam blinked owlishly at the egg in his hand while Lara was almost pushing it into Dan’s face, bragging about it.

“Look! It’s a wyvern! Much better than a chicken that grills itself!”

“Hawky is perfect, thank you very much!”

While they were enjoying their newfound pets, he sent a message to Lucy to ask for a report, which he received within seconds. She knew him well…

‘Let’s see… Losses compensated, the mood is great in the guild, forums are melting down, other guilds are threatening us if we don’t hand over the loot, and so on…’ he read over the summary. ‘Basically, the same as every time. Cool…’

Turning back to the group, he cleared his throat, gaining everybody’s attention.

“How about we hatch those eggs?”

It took some finagling, as both Adam and Lara were central to the cleanup efforts after the raid, but after some careful delegation and some white lies, they were in a forest clearing, ready to hatch the eggs.

Katie and Isabella were standing on the edge with Clarissa (and their own pets), ostensibly to keep an eye on anything that could interrupt the occasion, but as they were sharing a small bowl of snacks, Sam didn’t have much hope of them spotting anything but the sugary delights in front of them. Clarissa was just playing with Melody and watching the proceedings.

Puffball was leisurely resting at Katie’s legs while Isabella’s forest spirit was transformed into a dog and was wagging its tail and staring playfully at the disinterested chaos cat.

Dan’s Hawky was sitting on a branch watching the happenings with interest. Lucky was chasing its tail around the entire clearing. The zoomies were strong with him…

“Alright, who goes first?” Sam asked, clapping his hands together.

Adam, Lara, and Tim glanced at each other, then as one, Adam and Lara took a step back next to Dan while Tim remained in the middle of the clearing.

He looked around silently before sighing and nodding his head.

“Alright, Tim! You know what to do!” Sam told the guy, as he also took a big step back, not wanting to taint the mana around his assassin-slash-security guy. On the way here, Sam went through the basic steps with all three future pet owners, emphasizing the importance of injecting their own mana.

Tim took another look around before refocusing on the spider egg in his hands.

Sam stared both with his eyes and Mana Sense.

For a moment, the mana in the air stalled, before Tim’s mana slipped into the beige spiderweb-covered egg, and then the mana in the air seemed to be rushing into the egg. To Sam’s senses, it looked as if a black hole had opened in the middle of the clearing.

Then almost a minute later, Tim visibly sweating at the mana expenditure, the egg began to glow.

Sam expected shadowy tendrils, maybe some deep gray light, to happen, but instead, they were all surprised by the frankly holy light that started to illuminate the clearing.

They all watched with bated breath as the light enveloped the egg, then Tim’s hands before it flashed with a bright light, causing everyone to close their eyes for a moment.

When they looked back, Tim was still standing at the exact same spot, only his hands weren’t holding a spider egg, rather a very white, very soft-looking tarantula-esque spider the size of three hand spans. It looked adorable, with eight dewy eyes and soft fur-like hair covering its body.

Upon seeing the entire group looking at it, it raised one of its legs and gave them a wave.

“Aaaawwww!” came in a chorus from Katie and Isabella, while Puffball was sleeping and Isabella’s pet was trying stealthily to approach the sleeping eldritch cat.

Instantly, Tim was surrounded by everyone who wanted to feel the soft fur of the newly born spider.

Sam called out softly to Tim to not scare the spider that was doing its best to shake everyone’s hand. “What is it?”

“She. Apparently an Enlightened Tarantula.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“It seems me denying the influence of a demon has left a mark on me. Thus, the spider…”

“It’s pretty visible…” Sam stated as he looked over the blindingly white arachnid. Tim just chuckled and spent a few seconds reading his system screens before calling out to his new familiar. “Refraction!”

Instantly, the spider froze, a small light covered it and it turned invisible. They could still see it, as the light refracted a little on the spider’s translucent form, but Sam expected that with leveling, that small tell would be gone in short order.

The group spent a few minutes playing ‘Hide the Spider’ and ‘Dear god, where is the spider’ which culminated in ‘Get it off me! Get it off me!’ before they decided it was time for Lara and Adam to join the prestigious familiar owning group.

With a quick rock-paper-scissors, it was decided that Lara would go first.

Instead of holding the egg in her hand, somewhat suspecting that a newly-born wyvern would be bigger than a spider (and heavier), she placed it on a small plinth created by Sam’s earth magic.

She held out both of her hands and used the techniques Sam taught everyone in his inner circle, to channel her mana into the egg sitting calmly on the ground.

Once again the mana in the area, refilled during the brief pause where everyone was marveling at the new spider familiar, began to rush into the egg. Sam sensed a lot of earth mana moving toward it, even from far away. Sneakily, he even added his own earth mana to the torrent that was being sucked in by the egg.

Then once again, the egg began to shine completely enveloping the physical egg before the light began to grow and grow and grow…

The light ended up almost a head taller than Lara before it began to transform into the unmistakable form of a wyvern.

Its skin was rugged, more craggy than scaley, and looked like it ate gravel for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, without milk. It was brown with splotches of gray and off-white. As it stood still, Sam could compare it to a small boulder. That had teeth big enough to cut through a moose in one bite.

The reaction to the new familiar was the complete opposite it was to the soft spider. Everybody just stared at the menacing monster as Lara simply reached over to pet the wyvern. The wyvern simply glanced over and let out one very rumbly growl.

“Look! It looks just like Dan!”

Instantly, every eye swiveled to her boyfriend, who stood there, looking awkward. Sam compared the two and decided that Lara was somewhat right. As in, both were tall and muscled.

Then the wyvern looked over to Dan and flexed every stone-like muscle in their body. Dan, reflexively flexed his own muscles. The wyvern eyed him a little, then bowed his head in submission.

That was enough to get everyone to relax and approach the new familiar.

Adam was less apprehensive than Lara, but he was clearly throwing conflicting gazes at the new earth-type wyvern that was currently (contently) functioning as a chair for Lara as she chatted with the others.

The egg was placed in the middle of the clearing on the recreated plinth, as the previous wyvern had flattened the first one with its bulk.

Adam didn’t waste any time and simply took his sword, functioning as his focus, and began channeling his mana, with a few spells interwoven. Sam watched through his Mana Sense and had to admit, it was an inspired choice.

‘That looks like some kind of rally skill and maybe a… group heal? Or buff?’ he mused as he tried to decipher the mana construct that Adam was channeling.

For the third time, the egg began to glow and grow. To the relief of everybody, but mostly Adam, the growing phase didn’t last long. It reached around Adam’s knees – which was admittedly not a low height on account of Adam being a giant of a man – and the light began to transform.

Instead of hundreds of pounds of pure muscle, grit, and savage aura, the wyvern that was revealed was sleek, colored like ash, with almost feathery scales and a long neck with small horns on the head, hinting that it would grow well when the wyvern got older.

It opened its eyes, looked around the clearing, and let out a sound. “Preeee!” then with super quick movement it basically slithered up on Adam’s body and settled in around his neck like a very weird scarf.

Adam smiled softly and began petting the appreciative monster while said live-scarf began to have an intense staring contest with Lara’s wyvern. He was also visibly reading system screens.

“Huh… Alloy Guide Wyvern…” he read out loud. “Some defensive skills, and a lot of utility. Solo and group buffs. Can also act as a scout…”

Lara also spoke up. “Mine is a Gravel-gnawing Boulder Wyvern.” Nobody was surprised. “Can shatter rock. Eat it and-or fire it at other people. Has some very good ground manipulation skills.”

As if knowing that they were talking about him, the big wyvern let out a proud growl. However, upon a second look, Sam saw it let out that sound because it won the staring contest with the wyvern around Adam’s neck.

They spent the next hour just letting the familiars run wild, having fun with them, grooming them, getting to know them, and just all around relaxing and having fun.

They were sitting on some chairs that somebody had taken out from their inventory and were sipping some refreshing juice when Sam’s message dinged. Looking over to Adam, who was sitting next to him, watching as his wyvern was doing its best to play tag with Lucky (who was too fast) and Puffball who just simply didn’t care about the space-time continuum. Very inconsiderate of him…

“It seems the crystal from the corpse is extremely useful for Liz and even the government wants it. What is…”

“Lightning-attributed mana crystals are basically crystallized mana. Very useful for any crafting profession.”

“How useful exactly?”

Sam waved his hand. “Can be useful but there are other lightning-attributed items that people can use for the same effect. Its use is in uniformity and quantity.” Sam explained, downplaying its importance. ‘At least it’s not unattributed…’ he thought, slightly shuddering at the memory that resurfaced in his mind.

“Guilds are going to murder us…” Adam sighed.

“Not if we sell most of it to the government.”

“Will the NPCs protect it?”

“If the proper people are informed, then yes.”

“And you know the proper people?”

Sam just nodded, playing with a small medallion in his hand. He was pretty sure his hidden friends would be very thankful for the information about what the demons were up to.