I used my Ranger survival knowledge and put together a filtration device. A filter like that normally takes forever to give you any water.
This one was past quality level 30, so it cleaned the mud almost as fast as a spring. I filled a cup and let the young animals drink.
They all tried to shove their faces in at once, so I stopped them with my voice and my hands.
"Wait. Small ones first. There's plenty of mud here. I can make as much water as you need, so don't rush."
They started taking turns. I patted their heads and told them they were doing well.
Once I could get water the usual way again, I would hunt these animals for food or put them to work as tools for pioneering. It felt strange to keep them alive with water when I might kill them later.
I still thought it was the right call. I did not want animals that the principal and vice principal had dragged in for fun to die for nothing.
If they were going to die anyway, it was better to be hunted and become someone's flesh and blood than collapse unused in the dirt. Killing is still killing. It might be hypocrisy. That is how I see it.
Before I noticed, the animals had lined up and were waiting their turn.
I had not tamed them, and my Charm was still sitting at 1.
"Good grief. I went looking for water and they got attached."
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆
Leopin watering the animals made a perfect target for mockery.
"He's dying of thirst and he's giving precious water to animals that are no use at all!"
"That is past stupid. That is peak stupid! A smart man like me would hog the water. Water tastes best when you drink it while you watch the animals dry up!"
"See? That trash belongs in the Special Training Class!"
"Right! Water is precious out here and he's wasting it on animals!"
Most of the people there sneered. Some of the girls were crying.
"Leo-kun… he's so kind…"
"He puts the forest animals ahead of himself…"
Until now, the people who accepted Leopin could be counted on both hands. That started to change.
"Look. Leopin-kun is giving water to the animals."
"He has to be thirsty too, and he's putting them first."
"Now I get why our animals and Weiss's black panther took to him."
The ones hit hardest by it were the Tamer trainees. They praised him one after another.
"Leopin-kun is what a Tamer should be."
"I had him all wrong."
"I said awful things to him in class. Next time I see him I have to apologize."
"Think he'll forgive me?"
It was only a needle-thin hole in their hearts, but once it opened it would not close again.
That was the moment Leopin's actions took root in his classmates.
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆
After I finished handing out water, my clothes were caked in mud. I slapped it off and followed the dry riverbed.
A little farther on, a wide ravine cut across the land. The cliff soil was damp, and cold air blew up from the bottom.
I knew what I was looking at.
"This is it. This is the main stream. The dam has to be ahead. Everyone, we're going down!"
I slid down the steep face with the animals. The bottom was slop, same as everywhere else, and we overshot and rolled.
By the time we stopped, we were covered in mud. That was the easy part.
Mud dripping off us, we started upstream. The ravine floor climbed toward a distant peak, and the slope was brutal.
The mud grabbed our feet. I could keep going. The animals were at their limit.
None of them had lost the light in their eyes. They put everything they had left into the mud, believing the water was ahead.
Small animals rode the big ones. When a big one sank in, the small ones dropped off and dug. Meat-eaters and plant-eaters stopped caring about species and pulled each other forward.
Then a voice I did not want cut through, like they were laughing at us.
"Fools! They don't even know they're in the trap and they keep walking right in! This was my real plan!"
"The last moment is here, zamasu! The professional Trappers waiting ahead will trigger the biggest, strongest trap, zamasu!"
The ground started to shake. The rumble grew until standing was hard.
"That—!?"
When I understood the vibration I barely got the words out. I turned and forced them through a throat gone dry.
"Boulders! Run! Everyone run!"
A boulder big enough to fill the ravine was rolling down from the mountain, with floodwater coming behind it. That rock had been holding the river.
Someone had launched it, and it was coming so fast the flood could not keep up.
"The second you reached the main stream I had them pull the stopper! In a ravine this deep, at that speed, you cannot outrun it! I already did the math!"
"After the rock flattens you like dried squid, then I'll give you water, zamasu! All the water you were dying for, after you're dead! A fitting, pitiful end for trash, zamasu!"
The voices made me move faster.
If I switched to Ninja and dumped everything into Agility I could get clear, but the animals that followed me would all die.
"How do I keep both of us alive?"
I could switch to a combat job, dump everything into Strength, and smash the rock. There was no guarantee it would work, and if I missed the timing we would all die.
That left two choices: a sure escape, or a coin-flip attack.
"Run! Please run, Leo-kun!"
"You can't mean to face that rock! That's suicide!"
Clean voices mixed with the usual noise.
"Serves him right! He's going to die covered in mud!"
"He dragged us through the mud. This is what he gets!"
"Fly like Nickbacca did, crying the whole way!"
I bet on a stupid long shot. Not the sure escape, and not the coin-flip attack.
I put my life on a hole no one would pick.
The rock was right in front of me. It should have crushed me like an ant.
It did not.
The boulder shattered, and the shock blew the mud off my clothes. Dust tore past like a blizzard, and fragments hit me like hail.
The ravine looked like a storm had just left, but I was still standing there without moving an inch.
The hall cried out in shock.