This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Three weeks ago…

After confirming that the behind-the-scenes backer of the Golden Brew Syndicate, who was responsible for making the majority of the low-quality knockoff spiritual beers in the eastern region, was the much larger Black Vine Consortium, Darius and his team were determined to tackle not only the Golden Brew Syndicate but the Black Vine Consortium.

First things first, Miya—under the cover name Mary—got jobs for Jax, Garret and Lira. They posed as skilled labourers to help with their move to the south. And since they had no spiritual power, and Reginald was a 2-star beast-tamer, he had no guard against them…Especially not after having a ‘one-on-one chat’ with both men and confirming neither of the two had any ideas about ‘Mary’—she was his! Although he readily welcomed the addition of the female Lira.

“Blegh! Like either of us would be interested in her—ouch!” Jax let out a screech of pain as the sharp point of a heel came stabbing down onto his foot.

“I told you to stop running your mouth,” Miya said sweetly, not looking up from where she was writing something down on her clipboard.

Then Miya kicked Garret in the shin, where he was sneaking sips of the beer. She couldn’t help grimacing in disgust knowing that the hygiene of this facility was less than ideal.

“Get to work. The sooner we get to the south the sooner we can put this whole mission behind us.”

——–

The Golden Brew Syndicate’s new Southern Region facility was, in a word, disgusting.

The Golden Brew Syndicate had packed up and shifted to the outskirts of a smaller trade town nestled just outside of Black Vine territory—close enough to coordinate shipments, far enough from the most populated areas to avoid getting scrutinized too closely. The perfect setup… for now.

Jax wrinkled his nose as he stepped inside, the stench of mildew, stale beer, and something suspiciously rotten hitting him like a brick. “You know, I’ve been in sewers that smelled better than this.”

Miya, still in her Mary persona, batted her eyelashes at Reginald. “Oh, Mr. Reginald, I just know someone as brilliant as you will turn this place into something wonderful!”

Reginald puffed out his chest, oblivious to her sarcasm. “Of course, my dear! With my expertise and your charm, we’ll dominate the Southern market in no time!”

Garret leaned over to Jax and muttered, “I give it a month before this place collapses on itself.”

Jax snorted. “Generous.”

They continued undercover for a couple more days before it was finally time to make a move. In a dusty storage room filled with barrels and at least three kinds of rodents, Miya started the meeting.

“Alright,” Miya began one night, unfolding a rough map on a crate between them, “I found out that Reginald has a secret meeting in the next town over tomorrow.”

“We’re tailing him,” Darius, the leader who was snuck into the facility by them, said firmly. “Tomorrow. We will take the usual formation, except this time Garret, you’ll take the rear.”

Garret blinked. “Wait. Why am I in the rear?”

“Because the last time we put you in front,” Lira answered instead with a smirk, “you sneezed on the lookout and blew our whole cover.”

“It was allergy season!”

Unfortunately, the tailing group was disappointed to discover that this ‘secret meeting’ was simply a collapse into depravity.

The establishment, if one could even call it that, was an underground den bathed in lurid red light and thick with the stench of sweat, alcohol, and an unidentifiable sweetness.

Reginald stormed in like a conquering hero, throwing bills by the handful at scantily clad female attendants who squealed and scrambled to catch them. On a sagging velvet couch, he lounged like a king of rot, his belly exposed and glistening with spilled alcohol as he beckoned women with slurred promises of being with a man who would be the future owner of a spiritual beer empire.

More disturbing than the groping or the incoherent toasts was the sickly yellow substance he kept chugging and passing around from a sealed, rune-marked flask—something that shimmered unnaturally and caused the veins under his skin to briefly darken to an off-putting black after drinking it.

At one point, he dunked a woman’s head into a bowl filled with the same glowing fluid while screaming that it would “bless her to become one of the chosen ones.”

‘He’s insane…’

From their hidden perch behind a broken partition, the group watched in a unified stunned silence.

Miya couldn’t help but lower her head in embarrassment that the urgent information she’d brought back to the group had only amounted to this.

——–

After a couple more days of tailing Reginald amounting to nothing, Darius chose to take a drastic measure that would hopefully expedite the process of obtaining information.

It all began one day when Darius, as the only one not undercover under Reginald, was tailing the rotund owner.

He followed him to an isolated area of the town that was filled with the horrible smell of sewage—likely close to a sewage treatment plant.

‘That explains why nobody is around…ugh’ Darius couldn’t resist gagging as he covered his nose but then the thick scent in the air seemed to stick to the roof of his mouth and leave a slight indescribable…flavour.

He gagged again.

Composing himself, he managed to pick up snippets of conversation between Reginald and some of his most trusted staff members that moved with him and also spotted an unfamiliar man from, Darius assumed, the Black Vine Consortium.

“Enough time has passed for you to settle down. The Consortium wants you to begin the next stage of operation and begin adding the…extra ingredients.” Said one of the men from the Black Vine Consortium.

Reginald and the other men then began to converse in a lower voice that Darrius couldn’t quite hear. Darius, fed up with his vantage point being too far away, decided to take a rather reckless action…he jumped in and entered the conversation himself.

Darius had advanced to the equivalent of a 2-star beast-tamer, his spiritual power now a bright crimson. Moreover, his contract, an extremely talented jellyfish, had already reached orange-grade—one level higher than himself and should be enough to handle the crew with nobody stronger than 2-stars, poor talent and weak contracts. Thankfully, all of the other individuals present were limited to being unawakened or 1 and 2-star beast-tamers, so he wasn’t too worried about his safety.

Not to mention there were 3 unique skills of his contract that he’d always wanted to test…