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Gwendolyn suddenly smiled maliciously as she saw the squirrel fall off the tree, she moved swiftly, asking Frank's help to heal it, she used the special collar capable of adjusting to the size of a monster's neck, and wrapped it around the squirrel.
FLASH!
A bright light encompassed it as the same time as Ginseng healed it, the squirrel had woken up and seemed to now recognize Gwendolyn as his master.
"Chuuu…"
The squirrel seemed to want to apologize for being so rude before, and it offered Gwendolyn a lot of the acorns it had stored on his cheek pouch, which were all covered in saliva.
"Hahah, don't worry…" said Gwendolyn, as she rejected her new pet's gifts and petted his soft hair.
"Well, I guess we are done with this for today in terms of catching monsters… We should grind a bit of EXP here for the little ones now that we got what we wanted." Said Frank.
"Okay, but you don't want a new pet?" wondered Gwendolyn.
"Hm… Actually, I am okay with the many I got already… I would actually love to catch a bunch of new one and play around with them, leveling them up and all but I don't have the time for that- Oh, don't I? The Monster Pet Nursery provides passive EXP and Skill Proficiency over time… I had forgotten about it…" said Frank.
"Yeah! But I guess its understandable that you don't want more monster pets, you got a bunch- Well, I couldn't really call them all monster pets to be honest… Little Ruby here looks like a girl of her own race rather than having used to be a little, red-scaled lizard back then…" said Gwendolyn.
"Papa, I want to tame monster pets too…" said Ruby.
"Eh? But you're a monster pet… Wait, is that even possible? I mean… sure, why not? You want an egg or you want to catch it?" wondered Frank.
"Catch! I'll catch them myself!" said Ruby.
"Sure thing then." Said Frank, petting Ruby's head.
The party quickly continued exploring the beautiful forest, as they came across different types of bug-type and rodent-type monster pets, but Ruby didn't liked any of them yet, and they ended becoming EXP for the other monster pets, mostly because Ruby herself was too strong to get any EXP from these small low-level critters.
Meanwhile, as they explored around, a group of five monster trainers that always wandered around this forest were glaring down at them from afar, using a monster pet's special ability.
It was a beautiful, brown-colored eagle with sharp emerald eyes, its eyes connected to its master's eyes, as he looked into the people while the eagle camouflaged as just another wild animal.
The owner of the eagle seemed surprised at what he was seeing.
His pig-like face seemed quite shocked, as he looked at Frank and company easily defeating any monster with their own monster pets.
"T-Those monster pets that rookie party got are pretty strong… And is that girl just punching the monster pets?! Well, she's a demi-human…" sighed the man.
His forehead was sweating a bit because he was putting some effort into watching what was happening, his Mana was running low by now so he quickly pulled out his vision sharing from his eagle pet.
"Hahh…" he sighed in relief.
"So they got some strong monster pets, pig-face?" asked another of the thugs.
"Don't call me pig-face! And yes, I saw them, they got pretty expensive ones… I think they might be from some rich family, that guy had some expensive-looking clothes…" said the leader, given the nickname of Pig-face.
The other members of the group of five were excited, if they could manage to assault this group and steal their monster pets, it would be possible for them to make a nice profit by selling them off in the black market.
Like they have always done with rookie Trainers that don't come in big groups or accompanied by a strong mentor, whenever they had the opportunity, they would beat the trainer and their monster pets by ganging on them, and then they would steal everything from them and leave them half-naked in the middle of a dangerous monster-infested forest…
It was rather obvious that many rookies had died indirectly by their hands, although they had never attempted to murder someone directly, they didn't cared what were to happen to anyone here after they stole all their belongings.
"This is nice! Let's go ambush them right now, we can't miss on this golden opportunity to get some nice money out of that rich guy!"
"Yeah, let's do it! I want to buy some expensive food for once…"
"Wait! But aren't they too strong? There's that girl punching monster pets too! Ugh, those demi-humans are really troublesome…"
"It's rare to see one that had grown this strong… demi-humans are like us but got beast cores, so they can grow stronger by battling, that girl might had battled a lot… but demi-humans are part monster, so we can catch them and tame them too! Maybe we can just sell her off in the black market too, I've seen beast folk, and more being sold!"
"Yeah, and that woman and the kid are also beast folk… is he married with them? So his kid is half human?"
"Hmm… is that legal?"
"Why do you care if its legal or not? We sell stuff in a black market!"
"Right…!"
Pig-face smiled as he quickly commanded his lackeys to move, they began wandering around the forest while looking over the group through his Eagle's eyes, over time, they got closer and closer without Frank's party noticing, as they readied their monster-boosting items to make them even stronger so they could easily overpower their foes and gang over them.
It didn't mattered if they had quality monster pets, they were still low leveled, while all of these in this group were way higher level, and also ganged over them, it was more than possible for all of them to beat them easily and get themselves some nice things to sell off…
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