Damon stared at the wolves when he caught a movent from the corner of his eyes. The kitten in his hands, his adorable little fluffball of destruction, gave a single regal nod.
A tiny nod.
The Shadow Wolves visibly relaxed, as if the very Queen of the Abyss herself had granted them pardon from execution. Several even wagged their tails in cautious hope.
Damon stared at her.
"...Baby," he whispered, "did you just... negotiate on my behalf?"
The kitten blinked, puffed her chest out, and let out another adorable "ow".
Damon dragged a hand down his face. "Right. Okay. So affinity had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t ." He sighed, lips twitching. "All hail the Queen, huh."
The kitten placed one paw on his thumb as if she said, ’Yes, mortal, you finally understand. ’
Damon could only smile bitterly. "Well," he murmured, "Papa appreciates the help."
The wolves lifted their heads again, awaiting orders, obedient, disciplined, and absolutely terrified of the kitten perched in Damon’s hands. Umbra’s nightmare realm, full of monsters that respected no one and nothing, had just gotten a new ruler.
And she weighed three pounds.
Damon chuckled. "Figures. I raise one kitten for five minutes, and she already has a cult following." He rubbed her ears. She purred happily.
"Alright then," Damon said, turning back to the pack. "Since you all belong to Her Royal Fluffiness, I guess you’re mine too."
Twenty pairs of glowing athyst eyes snapped up with laser-like attention.
"Good. I need scouts." Damon pointed toward the sprawling darkness of the mountain range and, in general, the world around them.
"Find Shadow-infused Mythril. Pure. Uncorrupted. High-tier. Bring it to without getting yourselves killed. Find anything else that might be valuable and bring it back to . If you cannot bring it, then rember the location and tell where you saw it. I need you guys to comb through this world. Don’t leave a single rock unturned. Understood?"
The alpha wolf stepped forward, chest puffing out in determination. Then it turned to its pack and growled a string of low, rumbling commands.
The wolves dispersed like dissolving smoke, spreading through the mountains in streaks of shifting shadow. Damon watched them disappear, impressed despite himself. "Huh. They’re actually well-trained."
The kitten owed proudly again. "You’re taking credit for that too? Of course you are." Damon chuckled and tucked her against his chest. But these many beasts still felt too less. He looked around and found so more packs.
[Ding! Level 210 Shadow Stalker has submitted to you.]
[Ding! Level 180 Shadow Fang has submitted to you.]
[Ding! Level 220 Shadow Direwolf (Alpha) has submitted to you.]
...
...
...
Damon stared blankly at the endless notifications. Taming the others was just as easy as the first one. In the blink of an eye, he ended up taming about a hundred shadow beasts in total.
Damon inhaled slowly, trying and failing to process the sheer absurdity of what had just happened. One nod. One tiny, imperious nod from a palm-sized kitten.
And an entire ecosystem of murderous shadow predators had collectively agreed to beco his personal workforce. Shadow wolves. Shadow hounds. Shadow stalkers. Several alphas that practically crawled on their bellies to avoid upsetting the kitten.
Damon crossed his arms, surveying his new army. "...Okay," he said, deadpan. "This is getting ridiculous. I have a damn army now?" The kitten hopped onto his shoulder and flicked her tail across his cheek, clearly telling him, Accept your destiny, Papa.
Damon sighed. He stared at the kitten, who stared back with all the smugness of a creature that had just conquered a continent before finishing her first day alive.
"Just who are you?" Damon shook his head helplessly. He tried inspecting her again, but all he could see was her level, which was currently 5.
Damon could only silently wonder who or what this tiny furball actually was. No matter how he looked at her, nothing about this kitten made sense. She was adorable, soft, purry, bite-sized... and yet every creature in this realm feared her like she was an apocalypse wrapped in fluff.
Could she really be dangerous like the First ntioned? He stared at those loving, innocent eyes and then decisively put that thought away. "Nah. Impossible. You are the sweetest, cutest, yummy nummy baby alive!"
After dispatching his miniature beast army in every direction, Damon finally sank down onto a chunk of shattered ridge to think things through.
His beasts were scouring the realm, the kitten was perched on his knee, grooming her paw like a queen, and for the first ti since entering Umbra’s legacy, he had a mont to breathe.
This place was supposed to be hell on earth or hell in shadows, but he was currently sitting like a man having a picnic with a baby calamity and a hundred shadow monsters acting as door-to-door delivery wolves.
"Right," Damon muttered. "I’m either the luckiest bastard alive or the world’s biggest idiot. Possibly both."
The kitten paused grooming, looked up, and owed as if assuring him it was definitely both. Damon snorted, about to pet her, when the darkness around him rippled.
The first scouts returned.
Three wolves erged from the shadows at high speed. They skidded to a stop in front of him like trained soldiers reporting back to a commander.
One wolf lowered its head and gently placed a pile of herbs at Damon’s feet. The plants shimred faintly with shadow essence, rare reagents that alchemists would kill for.
Another wolf spat out two glittering stones, each pulsing with concentrated mana. Shadow cores. High grade.
The third wolf dragged sothing particularly large behind it, so kind of... lump? No. Not a lump. An unconscious beast. A Shadow Panther, Elite, level 210, clearly captured but left alive.
Damon raised a brow. "...You brought a prisoner?"
The wolves wagged their tails proudly.
The kitten leaped off Damon’s lap, marched right up to the panther, and smacked its nose with a tiny paw. Bop.
***
Chapter 4 Mass Release Sponsored by Rhi Bran
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