One night, we were gathered in the girls’ room, leisurely enjoying some fresh fruit. These moments we spent together after a full day of adventuring were very precious to me. We talked about this and that—going over the day’s fights, planning our next day, and toying with the idea of taking a day off soon.
“Oh,” I blurted, suddenly remembering the Salamander Egg we’d received as a quest reward. We sold most dropped items to the Guild and split the profit, but with an item like this, I thought it prudent to talk over what we wanted to do with it.
“What’s the matter, Meowster?”
“That egg had completely slipped my mind...” I quickly took the Salamander Egg from my Bag.
“Let’s eat it,” L’lyeh immediately suggested.
“No.” I knew L’lyeh’s obsession with food and cooking had only grown since becoming a Chef, but I had to shut down the idea of frying up a rare Salamander Egg. “There are a few things we can do with it. Cooking it is one of them,” I prefaced, “but it can also be used by a Blacksmith to craft a weapon or armor, or even by an Alchemist to brew some potions.”
“Too bad,” L’lyeh relented. Seeing Tarte excited by her new cape must have shown her how important weapons and armor were to adventurers. She also seemed to have weighed the happiness of the party against her culinary curiosity...and graciously put the cooking of the Salamander Egg on indefinite hold.
“I’m sure it has plenty of uses. Are we really going to find someone who could craft this thing into weapons or armor, though?” Kent asked astutely. Back in the game, we players had been the only ones who could craft rare items like this one.
Considering how low the overall levels were in this world, I doubted anyone could handle a piece like our Salamander Egg. A few years—or decades—from now, I was sure Blacksmiths would become adept enough to handle this sort of material. That future was still too distant for my liking, however. It’d be faster to recruit a Blacksmith to our party.
While I contemplated, I noticed Tarte staring intently at the egg. There hadn’t been a chance for her to really inspect it at the Guild because I’d rushed to put it away. Now, she was blinking and taking in the egg from all angles. Something about cats and curiosity... Perhaps she was just assessing it as a potential material for her Formulation. Since we didn’t have a Blacksmith in our party, Tarte’s alchemy might have been the next best option.
Tarte finally turned to me, her expression unreadable. “Meowster, there’s a quiet heartbeat coming from this egg.”
“What?!” My own heart skipped a beat. A heartbeat—that meant there was a little life growing in that egg. Because I’d read in a book that a Salamander Egg only hatched in inhospitably hot climates, I’d never thought that the egg would hatch. In fact, I’d assumed that whatever life had started to form in it had long been lost. I took the egg in my hands and placed my ear against it. I heard nothing. Kent and Cocoa tried too, but they clearly didn’t hear a heartbeat either.
“Hmm...” I grunted.
“Cait Sith have great hearing. It’s very faint, but I hear a heartbeat!” Tarte promised.
“Okay... Then it’s still alive,” I said. If the unhatched Salamander had a shot at life, I certainly wasn’t going to use the egg as a material for anything. That would feel the same as killing the little Salamander just for a piece of gear or an item. “I’d love to help it hatch, but this isn’t a good environment to do that in.”
“How does a Salamander hatch, anyway? Do we have to take it deep into the dungeon?” Kent asked.
That was a great question. I just knew it had to be hot, but I didn’t know the specifics. We didn’t have enough information about this.
Tarte yowled in frustration. “What should we do? It’s too cold to keep the egg here. Could we take it into the dungeon, Meowster?”
“That might be our best option right now,” I agreed. “It’s hotter than here, so it’s probably a better environment for a Salamander Egg at the very least.” There was no guarantee, but I just didn’t think the egg would hatch in any place humans were comfortable in.
We decided to take the egg into the dungeon first thing in the morning and see if we noticed any changes.
When I woke up the next morning, Tarte was already up and harvesting Fire Shrooms from her Lava Rock. Anywhere from one to three Fire Shrooms sprouted from it each day. That wasn’t much on its own, but having multiple Lava Rocks would have increased our yield of daily free Fire Shrooms. Back in the game, players who’d hoarded Lava Rocks had been called Shroom Kings.
“How many did you get today, Tarte?” I asked.
“Two. It’s not a lot, but I’m purrleased to get some every day. A shroom grown is a shroom saved!” Tarte finished gathering her Fire Shrooms and stowed the Lava Rock in her Bag again. Then, she looked at the basket beside her bed. Inside the basket, Ifrit slept in a translucent red glass egg, cushioned by a layer of soft fabric. The Fire Spirit showed no sign of awakening anytime soon. There was no way we were going to just abandon her in a dungeon, so Tarte—who’d grown the most attached—had been looking after her. Since Ifrit couldn’t be stored like an item, Tarte kept her in a nonmagical bag and carefully carried her with us everywhere.
Maybe Ifrit knows how to hatch a Salamander. I should have asked Ifrit beforehand—I’d known that was what our reward would be.
We finished our breakfast and made for Underground Volcano to see how the Salamander Egg would react.
✦ ✦ ✦
We’re back at Underground Volcano! Because of the Salamander spawns and the Scorching Salamander boss, we’d figured this dungeon had a better chance of hatching the egg than Ifrit’s Oasis did.
Once we’d made it through the Guild’s underground passage and into the dungeon, we were greeted by a waft of hot air that clung to our skin—I was never getting used to this heat.
“So, Tarte...how’s the egg?” I asked.
Tarte also carried the egg with her because she was the only one of us who could hear its heartbeat. She carefully took out the egg and twitched her ears toward it. “The heartbeat’s a little stronger than it was at the inn! The Salamander does like the heat!”
Although I was relieved that we’d apparently chosen the correct dungeon, I still didn’t know how long it would take for the egg to hatch—or if it was going to hatch at all. Without proper protection from the heat, we couldn’t stay in this dungeon for long.
“We can’t exactly leave the egg and bail...” I muttered.
“What if another monster eats it, Meowster?!” Tarte protested.
Then, I had a light bulb moment. “Oh! What about the end of the hidden passage where we took Ifrit last time? There aren’t any monsters there to attack the egg.”
“That’s a great idea!” Tarte cheered.
“Love it,” Kent agreed.
Cocoa and L’lyeh were nodding too.
“Then let’s do it!” I said.
With Kent leading the way, we mowed down monsters in our path and soon made it to the end of the hidden passage, where we descended the stairs. The lake of lava made the air here scorching. Tarte set the egg down very close to the lava and whispered to it like she was its mama bird. “Don’t worry. It’s very warm for you here.”
Then, a thought crossed my mind. “This will probably hatch the Salamander Egg, but is it going to be like the Salamanders that spawn here or like...a special Salamander that only hatches from this egg?”
“Oh, I don’t know...” Kent said. “I don’t want a monster to hatch and attack us.”
“Yeah. Raising it and hatching it just to defeat it...?” Cocoa muttered.
They shared a concerned look. If we were just going to be taking out another Salamander, we might as well have not received any reward for our quest at all. I couldn’t think of a more wasteful way to use a Salamander Egg. If it was going to imprint on us, though, it’d be a different story... There was only one way to find out. It’s possible that it may be a mount like our Dragons, allowing us to ride on its back through scorching terrain.
“Let’s keep an eye on it for a while,” I suggested. “Maybe we’ll see some changes in a few days.”
“Yeah. Let’s call it a day for now,” Kent said.
“I’d love to...except I have a favor to ask.” I grinned wide.
Kent’s, Cocoa’s, and Tarte’s expressions froze, while L’lyeh just looked at me curiously.