novelraw Chapter 212: Three-Star Hunting Pet
Chapter 212: Three-Star Hunting Pet
George didn't swing the Heavy Wooden Sword. He grabbed the wild, uncontrolled crow with his bare hand — he wanted to study it. The crow immediately punched a deep gash in his palm, and even that brief contact made it clear: its strength and attack power had jumped by several times.
That, actually, made him more interested rather than alarmed. This could help him trace the origin of how Magic Zombies were created — or at the very least, might reveal a method for producing Blood Crows in volume. He only had one Blood Crow right now, and aerial opponents could potentially take it down.
His Two-Star Blood Crow, truth be told, was genuinely useful.
He ignored the crow's fighting, and ran his first experiment: he summoned his own Two-Star Blood Crow to see if the two birds would share any resonance.
Nothing happened. His Blood Crow stayed calm. The berserk crow stayed berserk — actively chaotic, brain seemingly scrambled.
He moved to the second experiment: Tracker Title activated. Perception +2.
And in that state, he could clearly perceive what was happening inside the berserk crow — inside its skull specifically. A dense crimson knot of life-energy was thrashing violently, hammering left and right, as if trying to liquidize whatever was left of the bird's cognition.
He checked his own Blood Crow by comparison: similar crimson concentration in the skull, but arranged — smoothed, optimized, settled into an ordered pattern by some governing force.
That was the key.
George understood immediately. He focused his Perception and attempted to intervene — to calm the crow. There was no time to hesitate. The crow's mind was either going to detonate or cross some threshold and convert into a small Magic Zombie.He had no real idea what he was doing, just — reached out, tried to soothe, tried to smooth what was turbulent. And it worked: ten seconds in, the crow stopped thrashing.
George began spinning.
He switched off the Tracker Title instantly, swapped to Rat Exterminator — and the world tilted entirely. He sat down hard, and sat there for several minutes in a full vertigo blackout, completely out.
When awareness came back, the large crow was standing on his chest. Solid and weighty.
It had recovered.
George noticed that notifications had already loaded while he was unconscious:
【You have acquired a new, strong, and more agile hunting pet crow.】
【Your Pet Card was already bound to a Blood Crow formed from a magical tool. A contest occurred between them. Your hunting pet crow defeated and absorbed the magical-tool Blood Crow. Binding has been released.】
【Bind this new hunting pet crow?】
Wait — what?
That's possible?
George was genuinely stunned — and confirmed the binding immediately. Shame about the Two-Star Blood Crow. And the Parabolic Positioning technique.
Without Parabolic Positioning, what was he as a marksman? Just average.
【Binding successful. You have acquired a Three-Star Blood Crow hunting pet.】
【Note: This is a properly formed hunting pet. It can remain present at all times without any upkeep cost — it will find its own food and avoid danger independently.】
【You may share vision with it within a straight-line range of five kilometers, and receive auxiliary firing assistance. Ballistic accuracy +50%.】
【You may still use the Parabolic Positioning skill, but only once per day. When used, it may be subject to magical interference from similar opponents — do not over-rely on any single tactic.】
【When wearing the Tracker Title, you can understand simple messages conveyed by this hunting pet.】
【This hunting pet can be carried out of this world.】
【Hunter Destiny Grid +1. Current value: 50.】
【Warning: Both your Hunter Destiny Grid and Woodcutter Destiny Grid have reached 50. You may now voluntarily trigger the new special attribute Perception. Ensure you are at peak physical condition, that your surroundings are secure, and that you have at least ten units of One-Star food available for energy replenishment. Otherwise, this is not recommended.】
—
Oh. Really?
And that can be triggered manually?
George felt something stir. The three profession cards at his brow surfaced naturally, and he watched the Destiny Grid light from the Hunter Card and Woodcutter Card beginning to converge — but they didn't move without him, because the switch was his to flip.
Not now, obviously. He didn't have ten units of One-Star food. The mutant rat jerky only counted as ordinary meat.
Would he have to wait until the wheat harvest?
"Stupid — move."
George stood up. Still dizzy. Nosebleed too — which confirmed that the Tracker Title's consumption wasn't something his body could absorb casually at this stage. He needed to get back to the Scavenger Camp, settle in, and wait for the month-end summary. As for the basement — the contents weren't hard to guess. Some fragment of magical radiation, probably, at a low enough concentration that the Four-Star Rat King hadn't become significantly more dangerous because of it. Now absorbed by Stupid, which was honestly a fine outcome.
No further surprises. George returned to the building and stayed flat on his back for two full days before he felt right again.
—
Late afternoon. Long shadows.
On George's shoulder sat a large crow with nothing to say, occasionally ruffling its wings and looking around in a vague, thoroughly unengaged way.
The name fit. Even as a Three-Star hunting pet, it spent most of its time doing absolutely nothing. Didn't go hunting. Didn't do anything active. Just stole his dried rat in complete silence, ate it without comment, and proceeded to be lazier than before.
Within a few days it had consumed at least fifteen kilograms of his jerky stockpile. No visible weight gain. Just more pronounced lethargy.
Its current favorite activity was standing on George's shoulder, facing into the breeze, apparently reminiscing about when it used to actually fly. This activity sometimes resulted in it falling asleep mid-reminiscence and tumbling off the shoulder onto the floor — where it would lie completely still for a few seconds in what could only be described as performance art pretending to be sudden death, to cover the embarrassment.
"Get out, Stupid."
George shooed it off without ceremony. He was trying to watch the sunset. You're blocking the view.
Today was the last day of the month. The Month-End Summary was coming — but the correct approach, as established, was to make a decent meal first.
It had become a tradition of sorts.
George wasn't good at cooking, so he took the direct approach: laid wooden boards out on the rooftop as a table, let the blazing sunset serve as backdrop, used the evening wind as his accompaniment. Stars for wine, moonlight for food — that metaphor stopped working somewhere early, but the mood was right.
He ate with full composure and genuine solemnity. Ceremony mattered.
The notifications came in unhurried:
【This was a sorrowful month, and a month of repeated disasters. Your family came very close to total collapse. Only you survived — and you did well enough.】
【You killed the Four-Star Mutant Rat King that had haunted the camp's vicinity and terrorized the surrounding area for years. This is proof of your ability. It will add meaningfully to your reputation. And it will provide your family's development with a remarkably stable foundation — for a long time ahead, within twenty li in all directions, you can consider yourselves safe.】
【You cultivated four valuable farmplots without missing the planting window. You dug a well — inconveniently placed, but functional. Through your effort, you and your family have firmly established yourselves here.】
【You have been formally appointed Head of Household. You earned 58 Pioneering Points this month. Current rank: 6th. You may now view the Pioneering Scoreboard at each Month-End Summary.】
【Your second auntie Liang Yuzhi and your younger sister Li Yue became lost while foraging outside previously — but they will certainly find their way back to the family within twenty-four hours.】
【Your childhood classmate, City Builder Thomas, has heard that you've been doing well here and is coming to join you.】
【Zhao Xuanxuan, the college campus beauty you once quietly admired, recently escaped from another survivor camp and hopes you'll take her in.】
【Your distant relative — specifically, the son of your third aunt on your father's side's fourth uncle's son — also known as your elder cousin, the Executioner Leon, is coming to join you.】
【Note: All of them are coming to you as a last resort. Under current plot logic, they cannot donate pre-existing property unless they acquire new private assets within the mission. However, they may trade or gift items freely.】
【Note: Donation is a virtue. However, if donated external materials exceed a certain threshold, it may trigger early dangerous events. Such excess donations will typically be treated as void. Specific thresholds must be determined through your own judgment.】
—
Leon.
Executioner Leon — from the Rookie Mission. And Thomas?
Ha! Finally, friendly forces.
George let out a genuine breath of relief. He wasn't certain about all of them, but Executioner Leon was Internal Affairs through and through — a dependable allied placement. Thomas was also Internal Affairs.
Very good.
The camp's development could now actually begin in earnest.
Plans surfaced in a rush. Building a territory from nothing — genuinely exciting.
'That said — I think exploration is still the priority. Scavenge-strike-withdraw might be where the real returns are.'
If he could find a warehouse somewhere with a few hundred tonnes of concrete in usable condition, everything would become exponentially simpler. Concrete walls directly. Reinforced concrete for the building. Hardened road surfaces.
Best not to dream about finding something like a functional electric Gatling cannon — magical radiation would have rendered any electronics nonfunctional long ago.
After considerable deliberation, George assigned himself a set of Monthly Main Tasks:
One: logging. Two: clear ruins from the town and open the building basement. Three: explore the estate north of town. Four: search for larger cities — scavenge and scout.
Their camp was called the Scavenger Camp, after all. Salvaging was clearly the correct thematic approach.
Farming remained important, but he'd used up all his seeds, and a donation threshold had been established, so further agricultural planning would have to wait.
【You have spent 50 Contribution to issue next month's Monthly Main Tasks. Completing them will reward no fewer than 300 Family Contribution points.】
Ha!
He couldn't handle that task list alone, obviously — but next month he'd have five people to share the load.
This time, there wouldn't be players deliberately lying flat and sabotaging the mission. Probably.
George mentally requested to view the Pioneering Scoreboard. No obvious response. He stood, half-expecting some elaborate ritual to be required — when a gust of wind deposited an entirely unremarkable A4 sheet of paper directly in front of him.
The paper had a large boot print on it. Greasy handprints at the edges. A torn corner. It looked like it had been passed around a room full of people before arriving here.
Fifteen names on it. His own was sixth.
First place: Zhao Kewu. (Tactics Department.) Pioneering Points: 78.
Second: Socrates. (Resource Department.) Pioneering Points: 74.
Third: Hathaway the Witch. (Internal Affairs Department.) Pioneering Points: 71.
Fourth: Knight Ron. (Logistics Department.) Pioneering Points: 70.
Fifth: Scar Glenn. (Commerce Department.) Pioneering Points: 65.
Those five were clearly this cycle's genuine flagships — one from each department. Just considering Hathaway and Ron's known capabilities, and they were third and fourth. The gap was real. All five names were almost certainly aliases.
And those five had probably each killed a Four-Star mutant near their starting position within the first few days of the mission.
George had spent an entire month killing one Four-Star Rat King using everything he had — and came away with 58 Pioneering Points. The gap was considerable.
Seventh: unrecognized name. Pioneering Points: 52.
Eighth: Little John. Pioneering Points: 50.
Wait — no Clyde.
He got eliminated in the first month?
George was briefly surprised, then not. His own situation had been extreme enough — other teams must have gone through their own versions of chaos. Five eliminated teams, with one from each department in the lowest tier. Everyone tearing into each other equally.
Was this the setup for a team phase later?
As he was thinking, he noticed a dark smudge on the A4 paper that hadn't been there before — a charcoal fingerprint from where he'd touched it. Then a gust caught the paper and carried it off.
Almost simultaneously, something registered in his chest. A feeling. Then a grey mist bloomed across the rooftop surface — and within seconds, a familiar figure materialized out of it.
Leon. Executioner Leon, from the Rookie Mission.
Now — in the context of everything — his elder cousin.