Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 22: The Examination Begins

Chapter 22: The Examination Begins

Jin woke with something planted on his chest.

Whatever it was, it seemed deeply disappointed in him.

His eyes opened.

Glitch sat in the middle of his sternum, staring down with bright gold eyes. The hatchling had apparently been awake for hours and could not understand why his human had failed to do the same.

"...So this is every morning now," Jin croaked. "You’re not being charming. You’re checking whether I’m alive."

Glitch chirped.

Sleep had barely happened.

It was not nerves. Jin had already decided it was not nerves. He had only spent most of the night in the dark, replaying every possible version of the exam like someone preparing for a level without access to the map.

Going in blind was awful.

Going in at all was worse, but that choice had disappeared the second his family spent everything they had on an egg.

The burner was already running in the main room. A moment later came the quiet clink of Arthur attempting to make breakfast without waking anyone and failing at it.

Jin’s phone held a recorded message from Elena.

The timestamp read 4:12 AM, sent during one of her maintenance pauses. Hydroponics management had refused every request for leave after the Tide warning placed the district under food-security protocol. A recording was as close as she could get to the examination grounds.

"I’m sorry I won’t be there," Elena said. Fatigue had left her voice rough. "Your father and Elsa will be loud enough to cover all three of us. Forget about the rankings. Keep Glitch safe, keep yourself safe, and come home. I’d like more than ten rushed minutes with that ridiculous little lizard. I love you."

Jin watched the message through once.

Then he checked that no one was nearby and played it again.

Breakfast was still a gray protein brick.

Arthur had improved it, though. He had added extra broth and used a pinch of the seasoning ration he had been saving.

It was better than normal.

Better food for the morning before an exam none of them wanted to call dangerous. Better food before the possibility that there might not be another meal at home afterward.

Elsa had too much nervous energy to stay seated.

Glitch’s carrier had already been packed twice. She kept looking at the exam bracelet around Jin’s wrist, checking that it had not somehow vanished since the last time.

By a wide margin, she was the most anxious person at the table.

Glitch was the beast.

"You brought the chit," she said. "Tell me you brought it."

"I brought it."

"Show me and say it."

Jin held up the chit. "I brought the chit."

Arthur placed the food on the table but ate very little himself. When Jin looked across at him, his father did not give him a long speech.

He repeated the same words as before, low and steady, like he needed them said one final time.

"Come home. That’s enough."

Jin lifted Glitch onto his shoulder.

The hatchling immediately bit his ear.

"Dad, it’s an entrance test," Jin said lightly. "Worst case, I fail, return home, and continue my career of lying on this exact cot. Honestly, that might be the best outcome."

Arthur made a sound that nearly became a laugh.

The words followed Jin out anyway.

They stayed beneath his ribs for the whole walk.

The registration centre had looked impressive before.

Beside the examination grounds, it might as well have been a corner shop.

The complex stood above the East District like a fortress, mostly because it was one. Gray permacrete walls enclosed the vast grounds, with layered mana barriers shimmering around them in the dull morning light. Association Tamers guarded each entrance in full armour. Their beasts waited at heel while they watched the stream of candidates with flat, professional attention.

Jin stopped thinking about the building once he saw the crowd.

There were thousands of them.

Thousands of candidates moved through queues that stretched for thousands of feet. Carriers and cages filled every open space. Beasts snarled, chirped, screeched, and rattled as their owners pushed, carried, or led them forward. Huge screens hung over the courtyard, rotating between candidate numbers, the exam countdown, and repeated footage of licensed Tamers in polished gear.

Later, the Association would split everyone between dozens of sectors and separate time blocks. Only eighty candidates would enter Jin’s Phase Two cohort.

Standing in that courtyard, it felt like the entire shelter had sent one child and one beast on the same morning.

Off to the side, medical crews waited inside cordoned bays.

Rows of empty stretchers stood behind them.

That told Jin more about the "school test" than any official briefing had.

Beyond the outer barrier, hundreds of parents remained behind a marked line. Some were crying. Others stood rigid and silent. None of them left.

They stayed so that if their child turned around for one last look, they would still be there.

The exam was part school entrance test and part military draft. Both wore the same uniform, and nobody bothered hiding it.

Arthur and Elsa joined the waiting families.

Arthur gripped Jin’s shoulder once, hard enough that Jin felt it through his jacket. He did not say anything.

Then Jin passed through the gate.

His family stayed behind.

Inside the grounds, class difference was no longer an idea.

It was a line you could stand in.

The Outer Ring queue stretched so far Jin could not see the end. Candidates wore patched clothing and held mostly Iron or Bronze beasts. Some families could not afford carriers, so the children cradled their hatchlings in both arms.

The queue barely moved.

The air smelled like cheap beast feed and people trying not to panic.

On the opposite side of the courtyard, another gate opened.

The Inner Core candidates entered without waiting.

Their uniforms were clean. Their gear had been tailored to fit. Professional handlers walked beside them with equipment cases, feeding supplies, and spare pieces of armour. Their beasts were rare, well-fed, and sleek with proper conditioning.

They carried themselves like the result was already settled.

For many of them, most of it probably was.

A handler adjusted the custom armour fitted around a Silver beast.

Jin watched without feeling even slightly jealous.

His mind had already begun sorting what he saw.

Whales.

The Inner Core gate kept feeding them into the courtyard.

Maxed accounts. Premium gear. Every advantage bought before the game starts.

He glanced at Glitch.

The hatchling rode on his shoulder, leaning forward with intense hope as a beetle crawled past below.

And then there’s us. Free players. Underleveled. No access to the cash shop.

Jin had played on servers built like this.

Whales always looked invincible at the beginning.

They also tended to believe free players had no exploits.

The queues slowly moved towards the beast verification stations. Every candidate received one final scan there before being sorted into an examination group.

Jin watched around a dozen results appear before his turn.

Nothing unusual showed up.

Bronze.

Silver.

Rank 1, two-star.

Eligible.

Standard results for standard candidates.

Then Jin stepped forward.

He placed Glitch on the scanning plate.

The hatchling sat down and immediately started sniffing the unfamiliar surface.

A ring of light rose around his body. Information filled the station screen and projected high enough for everyone in the nearby queues to read.

[Candidate: Jin Astor]

[Talent: C-Rank — Data Appraisal & Device Link]

[Beast: Grey Rock Lizard Variant]

[Quality: Iron]

[Combat Rank: Rank 1, 1-Star]

[Registry ID: 4471-G]

[Local Examination Number: 314]

The first code belonged to Jin’s permanent Association record.

The second was only for this examination centre. Inside the facility, the examiners would call him by that shorter number.

Jin memorised both.

The laughter started before the final line had fully loaded.

"C-Rank with an Iron beast?"

"That thing’s black. Someone left their lizard cooking too long."

"They wasted a candidate slot on a paperweight."

Jin did not look back.

He had heard the same insults all week. People only changed a few words.

As though he understood the timing, Glitch sneezed on the scanning plate.

A soft ksht escaped him. Warm air shimmered for a fraction of a second, then vanished before anyone except Jin noticed.

Jin picked him up and patted his head.

"Good," he murmured, keeping his voice low. "They still haven’t checked the patch notes."

The station showed Iron, exactly as it was supposed to.

Only Jin could see the Engine’s second overlay. It confirmed that everything else remained hidden where he had left it.

He carried Glitch towards the sorting yard.

Jin noticed Lucian Vale before he actually saw him.

Lucian was not making noise.

The people around him had simply stopped.

One whole section of the yard had gone quiet in the same way it had for the Gold-tier candidate.

Jin followed that silence.

Lucian Vale stood near the centre.

The promotional reels had captured him accurately, which turned out to be the problem.

He wore a pressed charcoal uniform. His silver hair sat neatly in place. He looked calm without trying to look calm, composed in a way that did not need an audience.

There was no sneer on his face. He was not showing off.

He was merely there, and attention gathered around him anyway.

The Thunder Falcon rested on his arm.

Silver quality. Storm-gray feathers. Small blue arcs snapped between those feathers before grounding through the reinforced sleeve beneath its claws.

It held itself with the same quiet readiness as Lucian.

Two predators waiting without impatience.

Garrick and his Bronze wolf had been children trying to look dangerous.

This was different.

This was real.

Jin’s instincts told him to take a wide path and disappear into the crowd.

He did not go wide enough.

Lucian’s gray eyes moved across the sorting yard.

They were assessing the room, calm and methodical, almost the same way Jin did. His attention passed over the Outer Ring candidates without slowing.

Then it stopped on Glitch.

Only for a second.

Jin still saw the tiny change in Lucian’s face.

It was not disgust.

It was not contempt.

Lucian had noticed something.

At the same moment, the Thunder Falcon tilted its head, as though it had caught the same detail.

"Unusual discipline," Lucian said quietly, almost speaking to himself. "For an Iron beast."

That was everything.

No insult followed. No threat. Lucian had simply looked once and correctly identified the one thing Jin most needed everyone to miss.

Then he turned away and continued preparing as though the observation did not matter.

Jin felt his stomach go cold.

Bullies were manageable.

A bully looked at a briquette, laughed, then forgot about it.

Lucian Vale had looked at a certified paperweight and found the detail that should not have existed.

Avoid him.

The decision came immediately.

Jin filed Lucian under the same warning category as the Gold-tier candidate.

Possibly higher.

Whatever the exam involved, Jin needed to stay out of Lucian Vale’s line of sight.