NOVEL NEXT B1: Chapter 29 - "A Job That Needs Doing."
The next few hours blurred into a bizarre, tentacled crash course in cephalopod etiquette.
It began with waving.
Endless waving.
Billy demanded precision — curl angles, shifts between rigid and flexible, the exact tempo of the gesture. Every time Jeremiah thought he had it, the tiny kraken would puff up indignantly, cross his limbs, and float upside down in protest like a sulking art critic.
From there, the lessons escalated. Billy demonstrated increasingly intricate motions, twisting around pebbles, looping into spirals, and mimicking rudimentary gestures with seamless fluidity. Jeremiah followed as best he could, his morphed hand twitching and flailing as he struggled to shape the unfamiliar appendages into something resembling grace.
His first attempts were clumsy. Awkward. More than once, a tentacle wrapped around his own wrist or flicked into his eye with a painful thwap.
Mero, of course, offered absolutely no help. The annoying fairy lounged in the air nearby and heckled like it was the best comedy he'd seen in years.
"You call that a spiral? I've seen dead eels move with more grace!"
Jeremiah seriously considered testing his new grip strength with a well-aimed rock.
But slowly, steadily, he improved.
The more he stopped thinking like a human, the more natural it became. The tentacles stopped obeying rigid commands and began to flow with his intent. He wasn't just moving them, he was guiding them.
At the same time, he began to understand the System's warning about 'strain.'
One tentacle? Simple. Like flexing a finger. Two? Manageable. But three? Four? By the time he tried to use all five, it felt like juggling knives while solving a Rubik's Cube on a rollercoaster made of bees. Using both hands at once split his focus so violently that a spike of white-hot pain shot through his skull, leaving him gasping for breath and clutching his temples for several minutes before he could continue.
He could 'group' tentacles together to further reduce the strain, but that offered little benefit over just using each individually.
Jeremiah's brain simply wasn't built to control so many limbs at once. Over the course of the lessons, his speed and precision improved, but he doubted he would ever be able to fully adapt. Not as he was.
"I think [Nerve Net] needs to be my next purchase," he muttered during a break. The price was steep, yet something told him it wouldn't just help with [Kraken's Grasp], but every skill that came after.
At one point, Billy placed a small stone on the rim of the bowl and gestured meaningfully.
Jeremiah blinked. "You want me to... grab it?"
Billy wiggled in what could only be described as an enthusiastic yes.
Taking a breath, Jeremiah reached — not with brute effort, but with the controlled precision Billy had been drilling into him all day.
His palm flexed. Tentacles curled and extended.
The stone lifted. Balanced. Held steady.
Billy spun in triumphant circles, radiating uncontainable joy.
Jeremiah's grin widened.
By the end of it, he sat cross-legged beside the bowl, both mentally and physically drained. His hand — still morphed — rested on his lap, tentacles coiling and uncoiling in a quiet rhythm like it had thoughts of its own.
Their training had paid off in more than just better control, as well.
—✦—
《ACTIVE Contracts》 [1/1]
Billy Bridge
(Polaris Kraken)
[Status]
Bond State:
Active {Primary} -
Sleeping - Exhausted - Content
[✚]
Bond Level:
[Tier I] -
☆
Bond Points:
26/50
Beast Skills - <1/1>:
N/A
[✚]
—✦—
After only a few short hours, Billy's bond points had already passed the halfway mark. Jeremiah wasn't sure if it was because the bond level was still so low, or because their training had been both a bonding moment and a moment of growth from them both. Either way, seeing the tangible results of their efforts was… satisfying. As an added bonus, he had even gained two quantum marks! Not much, but money was money.
Jeremiah glanced at Billy, now curled up at the base of his plastic castle, snoozing like a proud little teacher.
"Thanks, little guy," Jeremiah said softly. "Guess I've still got a lot to learn."
The tentacles twitched, as if agreeing.
Polite clapping broke the moment, making Jeremiah flinch. He looked up to see Mero floating with a smug grin.
"Not bad, kid. Given how much you've been whining lately, I half-expected ya to throw in the towel hours ago. But you stuck it out. I'm actually proud of ya."
Jeremiah rolled his eyes, but a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Not like I've got much choice. It's sink or swim at this point."
Mero tilted his head. "There's always a choice." Then, with a sharp clap and a spark in his eyes, he added, "Well then! How 'bout it? Feelin' confident? Ready to get this show on the road?"
Jeremiah looked back at Billy, curled up and dreaming.
He nodded. "Yeah… I think I am."
Mero's grin widened, and he snapped his fingers.
——————————————————
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Saturday, September 24th, 2253.
Tell Tales Apartments - 8:43 pm
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The return to his apartment was far less jarring this time.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
One moment, everything went black. The next, Jeremiah was back on his couch, Billy's bowl balanced in his lap.
He blinked, taking a slow glance around the room.
After hours spent in the forest — training, straining, learning — the familiar space felt… comforting. Like slipping into a warm jacket after a storm. Like coming home after a long day's work.
Which, he figured, was exactly what it was.
He gently set Billy's bowl on the side table and stood, stretching out the tension in his limbs. The apartment was exactly as he'd left it — shoes by the door, dishes in the sink, and a forgotten lunch still sitting cold on the table. Outside, the sun hovered low on the horizon, painting his window with amber light.
With a breath, Jeremiah opened the mission overview.
——————✴——————
Tutorial Mission #1 - Find a suitable location for your Menagerie.
Rank - G
Description - What is a Gardener without his Garden? An Artist without his Studio? A Keeper without his Menagerie? Find a suitable location for your Menagerie and establish yourself there. Expand this Mission description for details about building requirements.
Reward - Prima City Business License x 1.
Failure - System Shutdown.
Time Limit - 33 hours - 43 minutes remain.
——————✴——————
Before, it was the threat of System shutdown that had kept him moving. That and Mero's vague but ominous warnings about what that might mean for him.
But now…
Jeremiah's gaze drifted to the bowl, where Billy floated in a peaceful doze.
It had only been a few hours. Yet somehow, those hours had stretched into something much longer — emotionally and mentally. He wasn't just moving forward for answers anymore. It wasn't just about Sarah, or the questions that weighed on him like anchors.
It was about the bond he had formed — tentative, strange, but real.
The System might still be the key to finding the truth. To uncovering why Sarah had chosen him. What this power even was for, or what the System even wanted from him. But those questions lived in the distant future. Right now, what mattered most was what might happen to Billy if he failed.
That thought settled like a stone in his chest.
With renewed purpose, Jeremiah grabbed his gear and headed for the door.
A long night waited for him, and he didn't intend to waste a minute of it.
——————————————————
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Sunday, September 25th, 2253.
Outskirt Residential District 4 - 3:25 am
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A shadowed figure walked down the abandoned street, head bowed, hands buried deep in their pockets. Between the obscuring hood draped low over their face and the dim twilight just before dawn, little could be made out. Not that there was anyone left to see him.
District 4 had been one of the hardest hit after Big Red's fall. Once praised as one of the safest places to live near the Crossroads, it was now little more than a ghost town — crumbling apartments, sagging roofs, and streets that echoed with silence.
Even the homeless didn't linger here long. The decaying ward-lines meant that dangerous creatures occasionally slipped through, prowling the edges of the ruins. The only ones who remained were the forgotten: the undesirables, the desperate, the ones with nowhere else to go.
Ironically, that inevitably meant the place had become a haven for orphans and street rats as well. After all, no one was left to gouge them for rent.
It was here that Jonny 'Whiplash' Johnson and his crew had made their base.
Jeremiah paused across the road, cloaked in shadow beneath a dead streetlamp, and studied the building, careful to keep his hood from slipping.
According to the dossier Ulrick had provided, the structure had once been a hotel catering to travelers passing through the Crossroad Market. Over the years, it had morphed into a low-rent apartment block. During and after the reign of Big Red, it had passed from hand to hand until eventually becoming the base of Jonny and his crew.
Jonny's crew might have been mostly young street rats, barely out of their teens, but they were raised on the Outskirt streets — and it showed. Even to Jeremiah's untrained eye, the building looked more like a makeshift fortress than a home, with years of scavenged upgrades and DIY defenses layered onto its bones.
The first two stories were completely sealed off, every window and doorway barricaded with rusted metal sheeting. Some even bore large, jagged claw marks — ominous reminders of why such reinforcements were needed. Jeremiah didn't care to imagine what traps or surprises might be waiting for anything — or anyone — that managed to break through.
Above the reinforced lower levels, ramshackle walkways crisscrossed the building's facade. Manual lifts rattled along tracks, ferrying people between the ground and upper floors. A few sentries patrolled the platforms, their silhouettes lit in, passing by the flicker of half-dead floodlights. Several of them looked no older than the Grim kids, but each held a club studded with rusty nails, and none of them looked unprepared to use them.
From his hiding spot, Jeremiah counted every time someone exited the building and took a lift down. Just like Ulrick's dossier had promised, most of the crew filtered out in the early morning, off to hustle however they could — begging, pickpocketing, or scraping together what odd jobs they could find in the Crossroads. Most wouldn't return until nightfall, leaving the place guarded by a skeleton crew.
It was the perfect time to slip in and search for the focus.
Ulrick had suggested it would either be with Jonny himself or his second-in-command, a woman named Nicole. If Jeremiah was lucky, it might be stashed in one of their rooms — both of which were marked on the building's blueprints.
For not the first time, Jeremiah found himself wondering how Ulrick had managed to get all this information in the first place. Or wonder if this was even a good idea. Jeremiah wasn't some phantom thief, or even someone with experience in this kind of things. But between his enhanced Physical grade, Ulrick's dossier, and [Kraken's Grasp] — sprinkled with a bit of luck — he believed he had a shot. If he got caught, he could always book it. Only Jonny would be fast enough to catch him.
As the shadows crept along the cracked pavement, Jeremiah moved with them — fluid and silent — until he crossed the street and slipped into the narrow alley beside Jonny's base.
The alley was tight, hemmed in by two weather-beaten buildings, but surprisingly clean. No garbage, no graffiti, just concrete and rust. Likely because no one came through here unless they were part of Jonny's crew. The only thing keeping it from feeling completely abandoned was a hulking metal dumpster tucked against the far wall. Whatever grime it had once held had long since been scoured away by time and weather.
Roughly two meters above the dumpster, on the building opposite the base, was Jeremiah's goal. A small, grimy window, barely large enough for him to squeeze through.
Jeremiah crouched beside the dumpster, shrugging off his backpack. From it, he pulled out a modest collection of tools.
Two rolls of duct tape. A coil of zip ties.
A small, scratched pocket mirror.
A ball-peen hammer, a flathead screwdriver, and a handful of long nails.
Black cloth strips. A ski mask.
And a utility knife with a clean, sharp blade.
Jeremiah had never broken into a place before. Thankfully, Sarah had always insisted he knew how to navigate the deep net. In his youth, he'd always wondered why. Some of the stuff you could accidentally stumble onto in that place was terrifying. But it was a skill he was glad she left him, if only for today. A few hours of crawling through sketchy forums and backwater sites had provided a crash course in low-budget B&E tactics.
Most of the professional gear was out of his price range, but clever improvisation was cheap.
Apparently, a nail hammered into a doorframe could buy you more time than any store-bought door wedge. He hadn't even considered that before. A desperate measure for a quick escape — or a last-ditch weapon if things went bad. He hoped it wouldn't come to that.
The hand mirror, meanwhile, was a quiet little genius trick. Perfect for peeking around corners or under doors without giving himself away.
He packed the smaller tools into a side pouch on his belt and stashed the backpack behind the dumpster. It still held a few essentials, a clean set of clothes and a first-aid kit, and so on, but he couldn't count on having the chance to retrieve it later.
Quiet as falling dust, Jeremiah climbed onto the dumpster and looked up at the window. From here, it was clearly out of reach for an average person. Which was probably why no one had bothered reinforcing it.
But Jeremiah wasn't average anymore.
With a breath, he activated [Kraken's Grasp]. His hands rippled and split, morphing into slick, writhing tentacles.
He reached upward, aiming for the window's lip.
Ten coiling limbs splayed out, suctioning to the worn stone façade as they stretched nearly a meter in length. Even then, they fell short, but Jeremiah wasn't dissuaded. He braced a foot against the wall and pushed off with a grunt.
Pain lanced through his shoulders as his weight yanked at the tentacles. But they held firm. Anchored. Tense and flexed. [Kraken's Grasp] absorbed the stress, the subdermal mana weave stiffening under pressure like synthetic muscle. It felt like trying to tear through reinforced rubber — resilient and unyielding.
One by one, he peeled back tentacles, moved them higher, then re-anchored them. A methodical climb. Occasionally, he took another step up the wall, muscles coiled tight, breath controlled.
Slowly, steadily, he rose.
Finally, the tips of his limbs crested the edge of the window.
Jeremiah exhaled and heaved himself upward with practiced precision, closing in on his goal.
He braced himself for a final pull but froze as something caught his ear.
The sound of footsteps.