Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 14: First Public Step

Chapter 14: First Public Step

During the final hour of Elena’s shift, three messages had arrived on Jin’s phone.

MOM: HE IS BEAUTIFUL.

MOM: WHY IS HIS NAME GLITCH?

MOM: Never mind. The eyes make it work. I couldn’t get coverage, but I’ll meet him after my rotation. I’m proud of you.

Jin lingered on that last message for a second before locking the screen. Compared to the warm claws currently pressing into his forehead, it was the easier thing to process.

The first thing he became aware of after waking was that something heavy was resting on his face.

The second was that it was breathing.

He forced one eye open.

A pair of upside-down golden eyes stared back from only a few inches away. Glitch stood directly across his nose with endless patience, apparently convinced that waiting hadn’t worked and that becoming part of Jin’s face would.

"...Off," Jin rasped.

Glitch chirped.

He stayed exactly where he was.

Crash.

The noise came from the living room.

Elsa squealed with delight.

Arthur’s voice followed a heartbeat later, climbing into a pitch Jin had never expected to hear.

"The cup, not the— Glitch, no—"

Jin lay still for another moment, carefully considering whether consciousness was really worth the effort.

Glitch, taking the hesitation as encouragement, licked his eyebrow.

"...Fine. I’m up."

The apartment had lost.

The battlefield simply hadn’t realised the war was over.

In the four hours since sunrise, Glitch had apparently carried out a complete quality inspection of every fragile possession the Astors owned. A tin cup rested in a spreading puddle on the floor. Fresh rows of tiny punctures decorated one corner of the sofa cushion. Beneath the table, wedged tightly between the wall and a chair leg, two little black hind legs kicked helplessly.

Glitch had trapped himself again.

"That’s number three," Elsa announced happily. She crouched beside the table with the focused seriousness of an emergency medic. "He keeps crawling underneath things without checking if he can get back out."

"Nature’s perfect apex predator," Jin said as he dropped into a chair. Every blink felt like rubbing sandpaper over his eyes. "The bottom of the food chain must be terrified."

Arthur was trying very hard to sound strict.

The attempt wasn’t surviving.

"This couch has to last us," he lectured while kneeling to free the hatchling with both weathered hands. "Do you understand? We can’t replace it. We can’t replace any of this."

He lifted Glitch to eye level and summoned his sternest expression.

"No more biting."

Glitch dangled there with all four legs sticking outward, staring at Arthur with huge, adoring golden eyes.

Then he leaned forward and tried to lick Arthur’s nose.

The stern look lasted perhaps half a second before collapsing completely. Arthur sighed, gathered the little lizard against his chest, and surrendered.

"...Just the one couch," he muttered. "He can keep the one couch."

Jin watched his father, exhausted, crippled, and smiling more than he had in years, cuddle a black lizard like an infant.

He decided not to remind him that he’d declared war on the couch less than ten seconds ago.

Before he could have anyway, the apartment door hissed open.

Elena Astor stepped inside wearing the dark green coveralls of Hydroponics Sector Six. Her hair was still damp and tied back, her eyes red from a twelve-hour night shift. She carried the familiar smell of nutrient solution, damp soil substitute, and the sharp mineral scent that clung to everyone responsible for keeping the shelter fed.

Glitch twisted around in Arthur’s arms.

His golden eyes found her immediately.

A moment later he wriggled free, waddled across the floor, and climbed onto one mud-stained work boot.

Elena stopped moving.

For one quiet moment, every trace of exhaustion disappeared.

"So you’re Glitch," she whispered.

She crouched, scooped the hatchling up with both hands, and laughed when he instantly licked her thumb.

The laugh cracked before it finished.

Holding him gently against her chest, she looked over his head at Jin.

"You did well," she said softly. "Both of you."

Jin was the first to look somewhere else.

She needed sleep before another evening rotation, but she still spent ten minutes sitting on the floor while Glitch thoroughly investigated the sleeves of her coveralls. Eventually Arthur all but shooed her toward the bedroom.

Jin was too tired to tease either of them.

He’d stayed awake until three.

Half that time had disappeared because Glitch insisted on waking every forty minutes to verify that reality still existed.

The rest had gone into repeatedly running the tutorial dungeon and watching the real hatchling twitch in its sleep every single time the avatar moved.

Two windows.

One soul.

Glitch happily chewed on Arthur’s thumb.

Nobody else in the shelter would ever understand what they were seeing.

That was exactly how Jin intended to keep it.

"He needs to be registered."

Arthur said it over breakfast.

A single grey protein block had been divided into three portions for Arthur, Jin, and Elsa while Elena slept through the day after her hydroponics shift. One small corner of Arthur’s ration had quietly been mashed into paste and was currently disappearing into Glitch’s eager mouth.

Jin looked up.

"It’s required for every beast after it hatches," Arthur continued, all traces of amusement gone. "Before the entrance exam. Registration Office records the species, quality, combat rank, and officially links it to you. Without registration, you can’t even become a candidate."

He paused.

"You’d be drafted as unaffiliated labor."

The word settled over the room with uncomfortable weight.

Drafted.

The future Jin had spent both lives trying to avoid.

"So we go today," Jin said.

Arthur nodded.

"Today."

He turned the empty ration wrapper over in his scarred hands without really seeing it.

"The scan worries me." His voice dropped. "If the mutation goes deeper than appearance, their equipment will catch it. Anything abnormal gets sent to the Association for assessment."

He finally met Jin’s eyes.

"I don’t want them taking him away for testing. Not after we only just got him."

For a brief second, the fear on Arthur’s face almost made Jin tell him everything.

Almost.

He wanted to say there was no need to worry because what hid beneath Glitch’s scales was far beyond anything Arthur feared.

That it was still concealed.

That Jin already possessed the means to keep it concealed.

Instead he simply said,

"It’ll be okay."

Outside, he looked completely calm.

Inside, he was already calculating how dangerous a full registration scan could really be.

So he played the role.

Glitch was placed on the table.

Jin took out his phone.

He frowned with professional concentration, slowly passed the screen across the hatchling’s body, and even added the thoughtful little hum that the original Jin Astor’s supposed C-Rank appraisal talent was expected to produce.

Arthur and Elsa watched without breathing.

The harmless puzzle game remained visible on the display.

Hidden beneath it, where only Jin could see, the Engine responded.

[External Scan Risk: Low]

[Dormant Bloodline Concealment: Stable]

He had no clue how it knew.

The Engine never bothered explaining anything.

It simply stated that the disguise would hold.

So far, it had never lied.

"Cosmetic mutation," Jin said as he lowered the phone. "The black scales come from unusual pigmentation. Shell absorption completed normally, body temperature’s stable, and I couldn’t find any disease markers." He gave a casual shrug. "He’s just an odd colour. Registration will probably classify him as a normal Iron variant."

The relief on Arthur’s face hurt to watch.

"You really mean that?"

"I’m a certified diet-and-density specialist, Dad."

Jin lifted Glitch off the table.

"Being useful exactly once is kind of my whole career."

The Outer Ring was crowded, noisy, and wrapped in grey from every direction.

Most walkways barely had enough room for two people to squeeze past each other. The ceilings stayed low enough that Arthur had to duck beneath recycled-air vents every few metres while cold metallic air hissed down from above. The smell never really changed either. Machine oil. Damp protein paste. Too many people packed into too little space.

They spent most of the trip walking in single file.

They passed a ration queue stretching the length of the block, filled with workers wearing the same grey uniforms and the same empty expressions born from endless waiting.

They passed a propaganda display bolted to one of the support pillars, endlessly replaying silent footage of a gleaming Tamer dressed in white armour, fist raised toward a sunset nobody living inside the Ring had ever actually witnessed.

LIVING GODS WALK SO YOU MAY SLEEP.

A young boy waiting in the ration line stared at the screen with shining, hopeful eyes.

Then he noticed the black lizard resting in Jin’s arms.

The longing on his face shifted into pure fascination.

Three more children drifted over after him, whispering among themselves as they trailed behind.

"It’s completely black."

"Do you think it’s sick?"

"My cousin says black beasts bring bad luck."

Glitch ignored every rumour.

As far as he was concerned, this was the greatest outing imaginable.

His head snapped toward every unfamiliar sound.

When a squat cleaning drone hummed past across the floor, he launched himself at it with enough enthusiasm that Jin nearly dropped him.

The startled machine emitted a frantic beep and sped away.

Jin pulled Glitch back against his chest.

"Congratulations," he muttered. "You’ve discovered technology. Please stop trying to eat it."

Glitch chirped without the slightest trace of guilt.

Then immediately spotted another drone.

Far ahead, at the end of the shelter’s widest corridor, stood the blast doors.

They were enormous.

Scarred.

Wrapped in reinforced steel bands and painted with hazard chevrons, with a seam between them as thick as a man’s body.

Beyond those doors lay the wasteland.

The place where the creature that had killed six scouts the previous night still waited, without needing a Tide to do it.

Elsa slowed, just as she always did, to look at them.

Jin didn’t spare them a glance.

One lifetime outside those doors had already been more than enough.