Chapter 729: Hives And Shared Senses

Moon studied the two new skills as the briefing wound down.

[Hive]

[Order: Second]

[Rank: Rare]

[Proficiency: 0%]

[Details: Establishes a mental link between all of the Beastmaster’s active beasts, allowing them to share instincts and coordinate their movements. Each additional beast in the hive grants the others increased attack speed, reaction speed, and resistance to status effects. The bonuses stack up to five beasts. +5% Attack Speed, +5% Reaction Speed, +5% Damage Reduction]

Moon was genuinely surprised by how useful it was. Any beastmaster would kill for a skill like this. It wasn’t just a flat buff. It was a teamwork multiplier.

With Honeybun, Mirage, and whatever else he brought to a fight, Hive would knit them into a coordinated unit rather than a collection of individuals, each one making the others faster, sharper, and tougher. Five beasts stacked meant higher buffs across the board, and better instinctive coordination on top of it.

Very pleased with the first skill, Moon checked the second.

[Shared Senses]

[Order: Second]

[Rank: Rare]

[Proficiency: 0%]

[Details: Links the Beastmaster’s vision with one companion for 30 seconds. The beastmaster can see through the beast’s eyes and detect creatures within its perception range. +10% Perception]

This is incredible if I pair it with a scout-type beast.

His mind went immediately to the Cragbrute colony. That hunt with Rowan, where he’d had to rely on a Cragbrute’s crude communication just to guess at the colony’s numbers, breaking the problem down into single mental pulses because the beast couldn’t convey anything more complex. And even then he’d underestimated the count, and Rowan had died once because of it.

With Shared Senses, that entire problem vanished. He could simply see through a scout beast’s eyes directly, count threats himself, map terrain, spot ambushes, all with his own perception rather than a beast’s fragmented impressions. Paired with the Underground Bat and its parasite-boosted intelligence, or a fast aerial scout, it would make him nearly impossible to catch off guard.

Both skills were excellent. His beast-taming toolkit had just expanded meaningfully, and he had twenty-four hours plus a full gate to bring them to proficiency.

Karl’s beastmaster skill was the same as his own, already maxed out.

Moon rolled his shoulders, Honeybun and Mirage waiting in his taming space for their field debut.

He stepped through the gate with his team, the crimson light swallowing them as they crossed into the C-Rank interior.

The light faded, and the team found themselves standing in a forest drowned in a twilight.

The sky overhead held a deep wash of purple blending into burnt orange at its edges.

No sun or moon were visible in the sky.

Glowing flora radiated light softly across the forest floor, a mixture of blues and greens. Clusters of luminous fungi climbing the trunks, casting the whole landscape in a dim, otherworldly light.

And it was quiet, so much so that it was uncomfortable to be in its presence.

No wind stirring the leaves, birds singing on the trees, or insects buzzing in the undergrowth.

Moon swept his gaze across the twilight forest, immediately scanning the terrain in order to get an understanding.

There was plenty of cover in every direction, given the dense trees around. Very limited sight lines with deep shadows pooling between the trees where the glow of the flora didn’t quite reach.

It was, he noted with a small smile, a hunter’s paradise. The perfect ambush location.

Which meant whatever lived here would likely built for exactly that. Otherwise, it simply wouldn’t be there in the first place.

"Everyone stay close," Moon said quietly, keeping his own voice low to match the silence. "This is an ambush terrain. Stealth predators are around, most likely. They’ll come from the shadows, from angles you won’t see. Nobody wanders off alone."

Karl nodded, his beasts already alert, the hawk shifting restlessly on his shoulder while the hound’s hackles rose. "My companions feel it too. This place is really strange, the silence is unnerving."

Cian gripped her staff a little tighter, and Bran unslung his shield, planting himself at the group’s front next to Moon.

Moon considered the situation, and it occurred to him that this was the ideal environment to break in his new skills.

Ambush terrain, limited visibility, hidden predators. This is exactly what Shared Senses is built for. And Honeybun needs the experience anyway.

He reached into his beast taming space and summoned Honeybun and Mirage. The little golden turtle materialized beside him, its eyes immediately narrowing as it took in the unfamiliar surroundings, and Mirage appeared too, his ears swiveling for any sound.

The team glanced at the beasts, Karl’s eyes lingering on Honeybun with a beastmaster’s curiosity, clearly sensing something unusual about the small turtle’s aura but unable to place it.

"These are not...beast souls. You are a beast master?!" Cian asked in shock, "I thought you were a mage."

Moon simply smiled, not answering her question.

"That’s an interesting companion you have there, I’ve never seen a beast quite like it. What species it?" Karl said, eyeing out Honeybun.

"A rare breed," Moon answered smoothly, offering nothing more. He didn’t need to answer any of their questions, and they knew that.

Karl gave Mirage a glance, and he also felt like the steed was not simple either.

’These two beasts are...really powerful.’

Moon knelt beside Honeybun and spoke through their connection.

This is a training ground for you. Stay near me, watch, learn, and when I give the word, you fight. Understood?

<Okay,> Honeybun replied calmly.

Rather than dwelling on Moon and his beasts, Karl immediately activated his Shared Senses skill on his hawk that he ordered to fly high.

Karl’s vision doubled, then changed. For a disorienting instant he saw through his own eyes and the hawk’s at once, and then settled into the bird’s perspective, seeing through the forest more clearly from a higher vantage. Through the hawk’s eyes, the twilight forest revealed itself differently, and there, at the edges of the bird’s perception, he caught several dark shapes.