We Lease The Kraken! - A LitRPG Pet Shop System Story.

"Huh…"

Jeremiah frowned at the glowing screen suspended before him.

"Not what you were expecting?" Mero asked, hovering lazily nearby.

"No… not really. It's a lot more technical than I thought. I guess I was expecting something more…"

"Magical?" Mero offered, a knowing smirk curling on his lips.

Jeremiah chuckled and shook his head. "Maybe? In the stories, these things always had more flair. Enchanted scrolls, glowing runes, dramatic declarations…"

Mero grinned. "Naturally. Nobody wants to watch the Fae Lord slog through contract clauses and fine print after every soul-shaking bargain."

Jeremiah pressed his lips into a thin line.

"But something's bugging me," he said.

"Oh?" Mero prompted, arching a brow.

Jeremiah turned back to the floating contract. The elegant yet clinical text hovered, pulsing faintly with a dull light.

"Didn't the System say contracts like these had to be balanced? Equal?"

Mero's smirk deepened. "It did."

Jeremiah's brow furrowed. "If 'Tempered By The Waves' is anything to go by, then I don't get how this is balanced. I mean, I gain near-Gifted abilities… in exchange for doing what I've already been doing? What I would've kept doing anyway?"

Mero barked a laugh. "Kid, I think you're underestimatin' just what raisin' a kraken actually means. Even a young one ain't your average beast. As Billy grows, so will the cost of caring for him — in time, in energy, and in danger. Entire kingdoms have collapsed trying to raise one of his kind."

The fairy turned to Jeremiah with a shrug. "Now, under normal circumstances, you'd be a gray and bent old man by the time Billy even hit his stride, but don't let that fool you. If the System says this deal's balanced, then believe me, you're giving just as much as you're getting."

Mero's grin faded, his tone sharpening. "If this were any other contract, I'd let you stumble through it and learn the hard way. But this one's different. I want you to think this through. If you're not sure you've got it in you to follow through… dissolve the contract. Let someone else carry the weight."

Jeremiah didn't answer right away. He looked down at Billy's bowl. The tiny kraken floated near the surface, tentacles gently bobbing, a soft glimmer in his eye like he was just happy to be part of the moment.

"What happens to Billy if I don't sign? Or if I fail?" Jeremiah asked quietly.

"In terms of the System? Nothing," Mero replied with a shrug. "It's only refined the contract into a form you can understand. No penalties other than what's stated."

He glanced at the bowl. "But beyond that? Who knows? Maybe whoever put him in your care takes him back, thinks you're not up to the task. Not likely, though. I doubt they expected Billy to do what he did. He's still a baby, after all. He wasn't supposed to be choosing a Chosen yet. More likely they were expecting' ya to just watch over him for a couple of decades. Teach um what he needed to know to be on his own. That kinda thing. He should've been nowhere near ready to offer a choice like this."

Mero's expression grew serious. "But you do have to choose. No dragging your feet. No waiting to see how things shake out. Not for your sake — for his. An incomplete contract lingering over a young soul like that? No telling what kind of consequences that could have."

He fluttered closer, landing lightly on the rim of Billy's bowl. The fairy leaned over, peering into the water. Billy blinked up at him, tilting his head with a curious squiggle of tentacles.

"So the question is," Mero said softly, "do you leave things as they are? Walk into the forest, find some other common beast, and do your best by Billy from the sidelines?"

He looked up, meeting Jeremiah's gaze with sharp, clear eyes.

"Or do you reach for something more? Something greater than ya have any right to, right now?"

Jeremiah met the look without flinching, his brow furrowed, lips pressed tight.

He knew what Mero was doing. The fairy had been nudging him this way from the start, no matter how much he pretended otherwise. Maybe even from the first moment that the fairy had laid eyes on the baby kraken. Jeremiah hated being manipulated. Hated it more when he knew he was being manipulated.

At the same time, Jeremiah had to ask himself, what did he really want?

He'd told Mero he was tired of being led around by the nose. Well, now here was a real choice. A meaningful one.

So what did he want?

Answers, Jeremiah thought.

Not just from the System, or from Mero's cagey half-truths.

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But answers to why Mr. Roger had given him Billy in the first place.

Why Sarah had entrusted him with the System.

Why she had left him alone.

And if no one was going to give him those answers…

Then he'd need the strength to find them himself — or the power to take them.

Everything he'd seen of the System so far told him it could offer that.

But would it be enough?

Or did he need something… more?

…

He took a deep breath and stretched out his hand.

For the briefest moment, his fingers hovered over the screen, hesitating.

Then, with slow certainty, he pressed his choice.

As soon as his finger touched the screen, it rolled up like a scroll and vanished with a soft pop.

"You might wanna put Billy down for this next part, kid," Mero said, his lips curled in a knowing smirk.

Jeremiah shot him a suspicious look but complied. The fairy was being cryptic again, but something deep in his gut told him now wasn't the time to question it.

His instincts were right.

The moment Billy's bowl touched the ground, the world around Jeremiah buzzed with sudden energy.

His vision crackled like static, colors bleeding at the edges of his sight. He staggered, knees buckling, and he collapsed onto the grass. A dull burning flared across his chest, but his thoughts turned sluggish, dreamlike. He blinked down to see the black, star-shaped tattoo pulsing with light. Slow and steady, like a heartbeat.

Lifting his gaze, he found Billy clinging to the rim of his bowl, the tiny kraken no longer splashing with excitement. Instead, he stared at Jeremiah — motionless, intense, eyes fixed and solemn.

Then the lights began.

The pale white specks dotting Billy's obsidian skin began to shimmer, mirroring the glow of Jeremiah's tattoo. One by one, they lit up, a constellation brought to life. Even Billy's eyes pulsed with that same rhythm, glowing like twin moons.

With each pulse, the world seemed to narrow, compressing into a tunnel of starlight. Billy didn't move, but somehow, he loomed larger, closer, until all Jeremiah could see was him and the deep, thrumming glow.

Jeremiah blinked.

And the forest was gone.

He now floated in darkness. Not a black empty void, but a literal abyss.

Pressure crushed against his skin, an entire ocean pressing down on him from all sides. He felt the cold bite of deep sea currents, the briny taste of salt on his tongue. All around him, shadowed pillars of stone belched plumes of boiling smoke and bubbles. Vast kelp forests swayed in the currents, thick with creatures that swam, darted, or crawled along the ocean floor. In the far-off gloom, titanic shapes drifted past, too large and slow to be fully seen.

He didn't know where he was or how he had arrived, but he knew this:

This was a place of extremes. Raw. Elemental. Unforgiving. The kind of place only the greatest of the Gifted could ever dream of seeing with their own eyes.

Yet Jeremiah found himself oddly calm. As if this place was familiar in some way. Despite the pressure, the cold, the heat, and even the darkness, somehow it all felt… homely. He didn't even feel the urge or need to breathe.

And then he saw Billy.

Floating just ahead, returned to his tiny, palm-sized form, still glowing with soft, starlit light.

They held each other's gaze. For a time, neither moved, with only the solemn moment passing between them.

Then, behind Billy, the abyss bloomed with light.

First one, then another, and another. Soon, dozens of bright lights were flickering into existence in the dark, turning the inky depths into a galaxy's worth of swirling stars, complete with what looked like novas, nebulas, and starlit storms painting the dark in cosmic majesty.

Then, two new lights ignited above Billy.

Twin stars — searing, massive — opened in the depths like suns breaching the sea.

Jeremiah froze. His breath caught, even as his pulse surged.

Because those weren't stars.

They were eyes.

A presence so vast, so ancient, that it nearly crushed him by simply looking, bore down on him, mind, body, and soul.

Jeremiah's mind went blank as something else seized control, peeling back his existence like the pages of a well-worn book. Memories surged forth, unbidden and relentless. The treasured and the tragic. The ones he clung to with all his heart, and the ones he'd buried so deep he'd forgotten they ever happened.

From birth to this very moment, his life unfurled before him — raw, intimate, unavoidable. It left Jeremiah in awe… and more than a little irritated.

All the while, the eyes watched.

Not with judgment or cruelty. Not even with curiosity. Just watching. Vast, detached, eternal. Nothing seemed to be able to hide from that gaze, and yet it felt as if nothing could surprise it either. As if it had seen a hundred thousand such lives, each lived in minutely different ways, but in the end, all the same.

As the memories crept closer to the present, the focus narrowed, and those with Billy took center stage. The being's gaze lingered a heartbeat longer whenever the tiny kraken appeared. Each playful splash and happy game. Each gentle scolding when Jeremiah found him somewhere he shouldn't be. Every secret midnight snack Jeremiah sneaked, as if there was anyone else to catch them. All played out again in vivid detail.

The more Billy appeared, the less Jeremiah noticed the observer. Instead, he slipped into the memories, not as recollections but as true moments, alive with sensation, emotion, and thought. He felt the tiredness in his limbs, the tension in his chest, the strange comfort in Billy's antics after a long day.

And to his surprise… he realized just how much he'd grown to rely on the little guy.

There were times — dark, heavy times — when Jeremiah had nearly slipped. When everything had pressed in too close, too hard, too fast. And somehow, it had always been Billy who pulled him back. The excited gurgle whenever he stepped through the door. The eager tentacles tapping at the glass. Cleaning Billy's tank to distract himself. Playing silly games instead of losing himself in dark thoughts. Just being there — Billy had given Jeremiah something to hold on to.

Maybe some would call it a distraction. Avoidance. But to Jeremiah, it had been salvation.

He hadn't just cared for Billy. Billy had taken care of him, too.

Warmth bloomed in his chest, a quiet tide that spread through his limbs, and before he knew it, a smile curled on his lips, unbidden.

Then the memories stopped. The stream reached the present and simply ceased.

Jeremiah blinked and shook his head, returning to himself. Awareness settled back over his senses like a cloak.

Slowly, he looked up.

The twin celestial eyes still hovered above Billy. They were unchanged in form — still ancient, impossibly vast, like stars torn from the firmament. Yet… somehow they felt gentler, softer.

Warmer.

From the surrounding dark, a trail of light emerged — like a tentacle woven from starlight. It drifted through the abyss, rising with silent grace until it hovered just above Jeremiah's chest.

He didn't move.

He knew, on some instinctual, bone-deep level, that this limb could obliterate him with less effort than a thought. Yet he felt no fear. Only peace. The waters held him like a cradle, and even the creatures in the distant kelp forests paused in reverent stillness. The massive, far-off shapes turned their unseen gazes toward him, waiting.

For what, he couldn't say. But they waited.

He watched the starlit limb shimmer, each light within it like a tiny, pulsing heart.

Then, from everywhere and nowhere, a voice echoed through the abyss.

Melodic. Ageless.

Protect him.

The starlight touched Jeremiah's chest.

And the abyss turned white.