Peter claps his hands and sits down at the table. “Sooooo, tomorrow will be interesting. If you’ve gotten sick of swarm cats, I have some good news for you! There aren’t any between here and the city.”

Jason raises an eyebrow, “So what is between here and the city?”

Peter grimaces, “Well, whenever there is an excess of one type of monster, a predator tends to show up. For the most part, that isn’t a problem around here because we keep the various swarms balanced against one another. Sometimes things don’t work out how a kingdom might want. So yeah, there is a herd of yubjubs between us and the city and it’s now our problem.”

Courtney squints at him, “They aren’t native to the area.”

Peter shrugs, “To be fair, they aren’t exactly native to NeoRealm. yubjubs are outsiders, coming quite literally from outside of our dimension.”

Courtney shakes her head at him, “You know what I mean. Like you said, your kingdom has done a good job of keeping things steady. yubjubs only show up in areas that are overrun with swarms. From what I read, even before the kingdom’s founder cleared out the area, it wouldn’t be enough for them to show up.”

Peter shrugs again, “At least they aren’t high level threats?”

Courtney stops him from saying anything else, “Of course it isn’t, NeoRealm doesn’t have high-level swarms. We went over this already. But since you want to pussyfoot around the subject, let me explain it to the others.”

Courtney turns to Jason and Rosha, “So yubjubs are bad news. They only partly exist in this dimension with the bulk of their body hiding in any of the countless temporary dimensions that overlap NeoRealm. The basic shape of that hidden body is that of an eyeless elephant, though three times the usual size. Though the freaky part about it is the yubjub’s feet and trunk. Or rather trunks, as they have a large number of them. As for the feet? They look like a star-nosed mole’s nose.”

“Now not much is known about them, and what I know is only the overview. Sort of just came when I was researching this area and swarms in specific. Partly because there was a mention that this kingdom did a stellar job of making sure not even a single one of them would come here.”

“Anyway, what I described above is something we won’t be seeing. After all, it exists outside of our dimension. No, what we will see is a bunch of meatballs with three legs and a way too large mouth. The mouth opens directly into one of the yubjub’s many trunks. Of course, because of dimensional shenanigans, you can’t cut them off without doing enough damage to have already destroyed them. But yeah, that is how these things go.”

“If we are going to end up fighting a yubjub, those meatballs are what we will fight. Just a pure dps slugfest. Peter over there will be the one who does the actual killing, mind you. We can’t exactly reach into alternate dimensions yet to finish the job. Now killing the meatballs, or yubs as they are more properly called, isn’t a make task. You can think of the yubs like seeds. If Peter was to just kill the main body, all of those yubs would disconnect from the trunks and burrow into as many sub-dimensions as possible. Even Peter would not be able to find them all, and no one wants more yubjubs. Though that is true for any invasive outsider.”

Jason rolls his eyes, “Not that us killing them isn’t make work. Mr. ranger there could kill all the yubs with a single shot and then another shot to kill the main body.”

Peter laughs, “True that! The most annoying part about the yubjub is it has a tendency to hide a couple yubs. So while I could do that and not because the System is forcing me. Instead, I will get you guys to kill the yubs so I can be on the lookout for any hidden yubs. Make work? Yes, but it makes my job easier.”

Courtney sighs, “Fair enough, so how many do we have to fight and how many yubs?”

Peter rubs the back of his neck, “I ah, I’m uncertain? I didn’t ask for specifics because my friend was under a bit of stress from paperwork. Partly because of the yubjubs that showed up. Don’t worry though, we just need to kill them. All the paperwork and digging into why they showed up is someone else’s job. We don’t even have a quarter of the skills to deal with it.”

Courtney glares at him, “You will ask tomorrow before we leave, right? Because it would be stupid to go out without an idea of what we will be facing, right? You can’t be planning to wing it despite having set everything else up until now?”

Peter nervously laughs, “Sure, I’ll be asking what's up. After all, it is important to know how many yubs the yubjubs have. Not only will that let me know if any are hiding, but it is about the only reasonable way to tell how strong they are without seeing them in person.”

Courtney nods, “Good, now you were going to go over our progress in defense?”

Peter rolls his eyes, “You didn’t need my help, anyway. Don’t try to say otherwise. A person doesn’t just learn how to turn an active bloodline ability into a passive one. I know you travellers get to choose your body when you come here, so I bet you had this planned out even before you came to NeoRealm.”

Courtney shrugs, “Not specifically, though once I was here I searched out that kind of thing. Honestly, I chose to be a pantherkin because it felt right. If I had been trying to optimize it, I would have ended up with a race specialized in healing.”

Peter shrugs back, “Well I guess we can go over your defense quickly and I will go into depth on Rosha’s defense strategy.”

Akhier

Thank you for reading! Next two chapters are free on my Patreon ( 232 and 233 ), five chapters beyond that for only a dollar, and many more for five dollars (two chapters release a week at this tier).