If the spouse of a vegan is omnivorous and the omnivorous spouse buys meat and cooks it at home, can the vegan eat that meat? After all, the vegan's main reason for being vegan is to reduce the demand balance by not buying that animal products from the market.

  Recovery process was way more boring than I thought.

  “It's good to see you better, my lord,” Nazir said, as I looked out the window of the carriage.

  We were in the city, on a wide street, we were not in the Ocean. Nazir said that the place we were going to was a very big building. That's where the monster trainers kept the beasts of all sizes that they captured and trained. I had no intention of taking a t rex or anything like that with me, but I would have liked to see what they had. And as you can imagine, this place we went to was actually used as a zoo at the same time. Imagine if you could go to a zoo and get a capybara, wouldn't that be great? Maybe not.

  “Do you get annoyed when I don't answer you?” I stopped looking out the window and turned to Nazir and he smiled.

  “No, my lord, although I can feel bad sometimes, I realize that you have a lot of thoughts running through your mind at the same time.

  I don't want to imagine what it must be like for you when I can be uncomfortable with even the slightest thought in my mind.”

  “You make it sound like I have a disease, I just think too much.”

  “Exactly, my lord, you think too much.”

  I looked out the window again, a strange smile on my face, and our carriage stopped.

  “Looks like we've arrived,” Nazir grabbed his sword from the seat across from us and got out of the vehicle and I followed him.

  The building in front of me was smaller than I expected, or rather not as big as I expected. The size in my mind was vertical, but this place was horizontally big. Like a museum.

  The entrance to the place was lined with pillars, like most public buildings, temples or rich businesses here, and a large brown door stood in front of us. As we walked up to the door, a half-elf man with fluffy brown hair and a pink and red scar in the shape of a line across his cheek walked quickly up to us and asked, “How can I help you?”

  “My father said I can buy a pet here.”

  At my words, the man tilted his head slightly and looked at me with a condescending expression.

  “A pet?”

  “Yes, a pet.”

  He sighed.

  “Beasts are not pets, boy, they are creatures trained to accompany adventurers into battle and help them on their journeys, from navigating to spotting traps.”

  “Can I pat their heads and rub under their chins?”

  “Some of them... Some of them may allow it, yes...”

  “So they're pets.”

  “Whose son are you? I can tell by your clothes that you're wealthy, but we can't give a beast to every person that comes here."

  "You are speaking to Altevia Aulus Cornetia. Eliar Vibius-” Nazir suddenly entered the conversation and the man cut him off as soon as he heard my father's name.

  “You are Lord Eliar's son! Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning!?

  Please, follow me!

  Mankind domesticated unimaginable things before, I'm sure we can find something suitable for you."

  I took a deep breath and looked around, and I saw a few people walking in, each of them either wearing armor or carrying a high quality weapon.

  I asked, “What's your name?” and the man answered instantly, “My apologies, I am Marco, a licensed beast trainer and the person who will be assisting you today.”

  “Licensed?”

  “Yes, you need a license to sell beasts in the city, we train monsters here, not dogs.”

  “Do you have dogs?”

  “We have hounds.”

  As soon as I walked in, we were in a large lobby with a huge drawing of what looked like a tiger and a bear on the floor, cages with different colored birds, ravens and parrots to the left and right chirping, and a long corridor in front of us. The interior was cream, white and gold, bright and spacious. The ceiling also had glass windows to let in plenty of light.

  As we made our way down the corridor Marco greeted a few people, many of whom were wearing green jackets and gray pants, just like him. On the left breast of their jackets was a small symbol resembling a wolf.

  “Is that a bear?” To the left and right of where we were now moving there were many cages, each cage with a different beast in it. The bear's cage imitated its natural habitat, there were a few small trees around, an artificial lake and a ton of fish that the bear was feeding on were at the furthest point from us.

  “Yes, from the demon lands.” Marco said looking at the bear, it was brown in color with a lot of small spikes on its hands, chest and face, and it looked very gentle.

  “Are you interested?” He asked and when I nodded, he opened the cage door. The bear stopped as he approached us, “He's a loyal and tough beast, he'll be a great companion, especially in defense.” He held out his hand to the bear. I approached the bear and rubbed its chest, it felt wonderful, if only the bears in my old world had been so docile.

  “Would you like to take him?”

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  “My father said something about that I could use the powers of these beasts,” I looked at Marco out of the corner of my eye and he nodded.

  "Some beasts can have special magical abilities, for example this is a valley bear.

  It has a great affinity for the earth element, even if you don't have mana you can use its mana to cast earth elemental spells.

  Of course, this requires a strong bond between you, but with time, I am sure you’ll get along."

  Earth element... I patted the bear on the chest twice gently and moved away from it.

  “I suppose you want to look at the other ones too?”

  “Yes.”

  After we got out of the bear's cage, we walked for a long time, there were all kinds of beasts, from wolves and fox-like creatures to snakes. And after all that walking I realized that Marco and Nazir were getting tired, both psychologically and physically. Even Nazir finally said “My lord, I think you should make a choice already.”

  Getting a pet was not an easy thing, after all I was going to be responsible for the care of this animal and there was also the fact that this animal was going to be with me all the time, so I had to make my choice carefully. After walking in a circle we came back to the lobby, I was getting to the point of losing hope and started to look at the birds.

  I was holding a big red hawk-like bird in my arm and started to scratch its head when 3 beast tamers came in. The man in the middle was holding a bird cage, and inside was a white animal, very much like a squirrel, scurrying around, and every time it hit the walls of the cage, the cage shook with purple waves.

  “What's that?” I asked Marco and he was about to say something when the trio rushed up to us.

  The man holding the cage handed it to Marco and said, “I'm glad you're here, take it.” When Marco took the cage, he continued to talk.

  “He is untrainable, uncontrollable and very aggressive.

  The worst thing is that he is too intelligent, he can use not only telekinesis but also telepathy, and we just learned that he has a mastery of the wind element.

  He got into the mind of a passing group of guards, introduced himself as a little boy and lied that we were harassing him and filled the entire training ground with soldiers, almost starting a small fight as he knocked over two of the cabinets on top of the guards.

  The only reason no one is hurt right now is because today's patrol leader turned out to be my childhood friend.

  I'm done, I don't know why you insist on training this little asshole, but you can keep trying on your own if you really want to."

  After the man made his angry speech, Marco called out to him but he didn't even look back and walked away. Then Marco turned to us and said, “I'm sorry about this, you keep looking and I'll take this to a safe place.” He was walking away with his head down and I looked at the squirrel again.

  “Did you say telepathic, telekinetic and wind mastery? What is this thing?”

  “It's a-”

  “’Thing’ was a bit rude.”

  “You can talk.”

  “I can do a lot of other things, I can show you if you open this cage.”

  "He's not for sale,” Marco said as me and the squirrel looked into each other's eyes and we both looked at him.

  I approached Marco and looked him in the eye, “Your man just said he's untrainable, uncontrollable and very aggressive, but he added that he's very intelligent.

  If you can't train him, you can't sell him, so either you have to release him into the wild or kill him.”

  “He don’t have to kill him… Me? No.” The squirrel put his head between the cage bars and Marco spoke up.

  “What are you offering?”

  I was about to speak when Nazir grabbed me by the shoulder, “My lord, this is an immigrel, everything the man just now said is true. I think you should look for a different animal."

  I said nothing to Nazir and looked at the squirrel again.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Arthur the Nutbreaker.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  I turned to Nazir, “You call me Alt, you can call him Art,” and Art held out his hand, “I said no.”

  Marco held the cage tight.

  "I can understand your interest in this monster but you don't realize one thing, even if I give him to you, he will run away as soon as you open his cage and when he is free he will do a lot of damage to someone's property, they don't hide nuts like other squirrels, they quickly consume them, vegetables and fruits in their area and then move to another area and repeat the same thing. The biggest problem is that they see all other creatures that consume fruits and vegetables as enemies.”

  “Food chain dear. Mama told me it is either me or them,” said Art, leaning against the cage with his little fluffly elbow.

  I looked at the squirrel for a while, I noticed that he was examining his surroundings. He was a really intelligent animal, he was making fun of us because he could see that he would never be let out of the cage under any circumstances, so he had to run away, he was paying attention to every single spot around him.

  “You are an intelligent animal and you like freedom.

  If I promise you food and freedom, will you hang out with me?”

  “Food and freedom?”

  I had managed to get the squirrel's attention, so I continued without waiting.

  "After I open the cage, you can run away if you want, you can go back to your normal life, you can live in the top of a tree until you've eaten everything around you, then you can move on to the next area and the next tree.

  Maybe that's what you like, I don't know, maybe that's what's best for you, but if you come with me, I give you a top quality house, unlimited food, whatever animal you want to breed with, and the chance to leave at any time and continue your normal life.

  Either way, you are free, you can talk as you like, you can act as you like and again, you can leave whenever you like.”

  I saw the squirrel take two steps back, he scratched his fluffy white tail and took two steps to the left, “There must be something you want in return, it can't be that simple.”

  I replied instantly, “It is that simple, you'll just be my pet, but you won't have any restrictions.”

  “Pet?”

  “Pet.”

  “Pet?”

  I got as close to the cage as I could and looked into the squirrel's eyes, “Yes, pet.

  Do you have friends that make fun of you?"

  The squirrel was silent, we looked at each other for a while and then I turned to Marco.

  “Open the cage.”

  “I can't-”

  “He knows he can't escape, he's been looking around all this time and he hasn't seen any place where he can succeed.

  Probably one of your men has something that's slowing him down or weakening him, otherwise I'm guessing he would have been able to escape in that incident.

  Am I wrong?”

  Marco frowned hard and looked at me, “ He has a mark on him that suppresses a lot of his mana.

  Almost all the other beasts can't even think properly with that mark on them, it's too dangerous to open the cage.”

  I replied, “You can remove the mark, he's inside my mind since the moment I presented the deal, he knows I'm not lying,” and Marco frowned “You are being ridiculous!”

  Nazir took a step towards Marco and Marco backed away in fear.

  “I suggest you to be more careful about your tone.”

  "I've been in your head since you presented the deal because inside is very interesting…

  Okay, open the cage.” Art looked at my eyes.

  “You heard him,” I glared at Marco and his eyes widened.

  “This is…”

  “This is what ?”

  Marco looked at the cage in his hand and saw the squirrel looking at him with a smile.

  “What are you going to do, kill him?

  Let him come with me, it'll save you a lot of trouble.”

  Marco stared at the cage in silence for a while longer, then said, “Come with me,” and started walking forward.

  After a short walk we came to his office, inside there was a small wooden desk, on the wall on the left there were countless keys and on the wall on the right there was a cupboard full of scrolls with turquoise seals on them. Marco handed me the cage, reached for one of the keys on the wall and after a moment of waiting, he took it and handed it to me. Then he took another scroll from the cabinet and gave it to me.

  "I want you to open the cage when you're well away from here.

  I don't know how much you trust this monster, but I don't think he likes us very much."

  I lifted the cage and looked at Arthur, “If I let you out now, are you going to attack them?” And Art smiled.

  “What would you do if someone kidnapped you and put you in a cage?”

  I hesitated, I was about to speak, when I saw Arthur approaching me with a sneer.

  “You don't need to answer, I can see it...”

  “My lord, are you all right?” I nodded slightly when I heard Nazir and put the key and scroll in my pocket.

  “How much do you want for the payment?”

  When I asked, Marco chuckled, “Nothing, just don't tell anyone you took him from us.

  I will not take responsibility for what he might do in the future.”