Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 17: Evasive Step

Chapter 17: Evasive Step

Jin had heard Elsa rise, so he wasn’t caught off guard by the movement behind him. He was caught by his own bad timing.

He kept his eyes on the phone a moment too long.

Elsa stepped around the cot to reach her water cup and stopped in place.

Glitch lay asleep across Jin’s lap. Right as the avatar on-screen slipped away from a practice dummy’s swing, the hatchling rolled lazily to one side in the exact same motion.

Elsa looked down at Glitch, checked the phone, then looked at Glitch again.

"He moved at the same time as the screen," she said, drawing out the words.

Jin already had an answer prepared.

"Sleep-response conditioning," he said. The lie came smoothly. "It connects through Device Link. The app takes his biometric readings, builds a low-stimulus reflex routine, and gives him gentle conditioning signals while he sleeps. It lets basic movements sink in without putting his body under real strain."

He gave a casual shrug.

"That’s what I meant when I said low-impact. This is the actual training. He works on reflexes asleep instead of risking damage to his joints while he’s awake."

Support talents had access to cheap conditioning software already. Most versions only monitored breathing or played the same simple command tones over and over, but they were common enough. Jin’s explanation sounded like he had found a smart use for ordinary technology.

It didn’t sound like he had gained a power no one else should possess.

Elsa’s lips parted, but nothing came out.

"That’s..."

As if helping Jin’s story, Glitch twitched away from another dummy strike with his eyes still firmly shut.

Elsa stared.

"That’s actually really smart."

"Mm."

"I thought your talent only worked out diets." She lowered herself onto the cot and kept watching Glitch, clearly reconsidering things. "But you’re basically teaching him without even touching him. Maybe everyone was wrong about your C-Rank being useless. Maybe it’s just..." Her hand moved in a small, helpless gesture. "Quiet. Useful, but quiet."

Jin turned toward the wall.

"Awful," he said. "Now people might expect something from me."

Elsa laughed.

She was looking at her little brother in a way she hadn’t that morning, though.

Jin made a serious effort not to notice.

Glitch woke an hour later full of energy, starving, and eager to chew the table leg.

Jin grabbed him before he got his teeth around it.

"Okay," he said under his breath.

He placed the hatchling on the floor and crouched down in front of him.

"Let’s see whether any of that stayed with you."

A sock rested on top of the laundry pile. Jin picked it up, rolled it into a loose ball, and raised it where Glitch could see.

The hatchling’s gold eyes fixed on it immediately.

"Dodge."

Jin gave the command once, quietly.

Then he tossed the sock straight at Glitch with a slow underhand throw.

Glitch blinked.

For half a second, he did nothing.

Jin’s stomach dropped.

Too soon. The imprint didn’t stick. I needed more reps—

Glitch shifted aside.

It was a quick, neat sidestep. His tail snapped outward for balance, his weight moved cleanly, and his whole body turned by just enough. The sock passed through the space where he had been standing and dropped harmlessly against the wall.

Glitch landed evenly on all four feet.

He looked at the fallen sock, then chirped with deep satisfaction.

Elsa had been watching from the cot. She went completely still.

"What happened?" Arthur called from the kitchen, reacting to the sudden quiet.

Elsa kept staring at the hatchling.

"Your rock," she said, "just moved like it has bones."

Jin reached down and scratched Glitch under the chin, acting as though this result had been obvious from the beginning and barely worth mentioning.

Inside, he was buzzing.

The Training Instance worked.

It really worked.

A movement practiced inside a digital ring while Glitch slept had transferred into the real world. The hatchling, only one day out of his shell, had just performed a clean, trained dodge.

"Good dodge," Jin murmured.

Glitch chirped and went to finish murdering the sock.

Arthur stood in the kitchen doorway, a rag in his hands. He had watched the whole thing.

For a while, he remained there without speaking. His attention stayed on Jin and the lizard: Jin’s comfortable crouch, his patient voice, the soft commands.

That patience was something Jin rarely showed anywhere else in his life.

Arthur finally crossed the room and lowered himself heavily into the chair.

"You know," he said quietly, "when they told us your talent was C-Rank Appraisal, I was scared. I won’t lie to you about that, Jin."

He turned the rag over between his scarred hands.

"A talent that only reads numbers. Nothing for combat. No future except working at a desk." His grip tightened slightly. "I thought I’d failed you twice. First with the egg. Then with the blood."

"Dad—"

"Let me finish."

Arthur raised his eyes to Jin. Exhaustion sat plainly on his face, but his gaze didn’t waver.

"I was wrong. I watch you with him, and it makes me wonder if every useful talent really needs to look impressive. Maybe the world has been measuring the wrong thing all along."

He nodded toward Glitch, who was currently losing a wrestling match against the sock.

"That little one moves like that because of you. You did that with your quiet, useless, clever talent."

Arthur reached across and closed one rough hand around Jin’s shoulder.

The grip was brief and firm.

"I’m proud of you, son."

Jin didn’t move.

The truth surged up through his chest.

It isn’t the talent, Dad. It isn’t Appraisal. It’s something no chart has ever recorded, and I’ve been lying to you since the night the egg cracked.

The words crowded behind his teeth.

For one long second, he nearly said them.

Then Jin looked at his father’s face.

After ten broken years, Arthur was finally looking at him with pride.

Jin swallowed everything else.

"...Thanks, Dad," he said.

It was the most honest answer he could afford.

Arthur squeezed his shoulder once more, then stood to rescue the sock.

That night, alone in the dark, Jin went beyond his limit.

He knew when he reached it. At twenty minutes, the same dull pressure formed behind his eyes.

The repetitions kept working, though. Synchronization rose in clean, steady steps, and Jin kept promising himself he would stop after one more.

Just one more.

The same promise he had made a thousand times in his previous life before taking one extra drop, right up until a delivery truck put an end to it.

At forty minutes, his hands began to tremble.

By fifty, his stomach twisted painfully. It wasn’t nerves. It was hunger. His body was burning through energy the single protein brick hadn’t replaced.

The pale stone ring blurred around its edges.

The image didn’t clear.

[User Focus Overdrawn] [Training Instance Stability Falling]

The avatar jerked through its movements. Each response came late.

Beside Jin, Glitch made a sound he had never heard from him before.

A whimper.

Small and frightened.

The little black body drew tighter in his sleep. His legs twitched at the wrong times, completely out of rhythm. He wasn’t practicing a dodge anymore.

He was in pain.

Jin’s overdrawn strain was passing through the bond and reaching Glitch.

His thumb struck Cancel before the decision became a full thought.

The ring vanished.

The screen fell silent.

Glitch shuddered once in Jin’s lap, then relaxed. His whimper faded, and his breathing gradually returned to a slow, even rhythm.

Jin sat in the darkness with his heart hammering. His own breaths shook, and the ache behind his eyes had sharpened.

Okay.

It took another moment before he could think clearly.

Lesson learned.

He could grind inside the dungeon forever. That didn’t affect him, and it didn’t touch Glitch.

The Training Instance was different. It consumed Jin’s focus. Once he emptied himself, the strain didn’t remain inside his own body.

It crossed the bond and caught the creature he had just promised to protect.

He would never do that again.

When the display finally stabilized, the results were waiting.

[Training Instance Results]

Command Response: +11%

Dodge Reflex: +7%

Bond Synchronization: +2%

Jin slowly let out his breath.

Even the overdrawn session had stored real progress. The gains were clear and measurable, clean numbers unlike anything the Mossy Hollow ever gave him.

Then an unfamiliar line began writing itself onto the screen.

[Skill Seed Detected]

Potential Skill: Evasive Step

Formation Progress: 3%

Jin stopped moving.

He read it again.

Skill Seed.

Formation progress.

A real named skill was beginning to form. It was growing one percentage point at a time from nothing except the dodges Jin had drilled into a sleeping lizard.

Beasts gained skills in three known ways.

Some were born with them, decided by bloodline and quality.

Others developed them through years of brutal combat in the real world, though most beasts died before they survived long enough to succeed.

The rich used the third method. They bought skill-imprint tomes that cost more than the Astors could earn in a decade, the sort of thing Lucian Vale’s family handed out like candy.

No one grew a skill from scratch.

No one safely farmed one into existence inside an apartment while the beast slept.

No one except Jin.

He looked down at Glitch.

The hatchling slept peacefully now, holding the sock between his front legs. His gold eyes remained closed.

Somewhere inside his soul, three percent of Evasive Step had already begun taking root.

A slow, genuine smile appeared on Jin’s face.

"...So that’s how we’re going to cheat," he whispered.