Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 25: Adaptability

Chapter 25: Adaptability

Arthur broke into real laughter, wiping at his eyes as he caught her sleeve and tugged her down again.

Jin, stuck in the holding area below, couldn’t hear anything they were saying.

He didn’t need to. He could picture the exchange with such sharp, miserable accuracy that warmth spread through a part of his chest he had no intention of investigating.

Good. They’re happy.

He scratched beneath Glitch’s chin and kept that thought to himself. Jin would have secretly ground levels inside a monster’s mouth before admitting it aloud.

The candidate holding area was an enormous pressurized hall. Phase One had cut down their numbers, leaving the survivors gathered in scattered groups while the final runs finished.

Jin claimed a stretch of wall and leaned against it. Walls were useful. Nothing could come at him from behind, which reduced the number of directions people might bother him from.

Then habit took over, and he began studying the room.

He wasn’t looking for danger. He was sorting character types.

His gamer brain built party rosters automatically, whether he asked it to or not.

Close by, a short, twitchy boy kept checking the armed guards as though one might suddenly decide to bite him. A round gray rabbit-beast hid behind his ankles, its thorny quills pressed flat. It trembled whenever anyone passed, squeezing farther between the boy’s legs while he whispered apologies to it.

Pure defense type. Utility build. Terrified of aggro.

Across from the frightened pair, a broad boy wearing an oversized secondhand chestplate announced to anyone within range that he was going to "crush Phase Two" with his Bronze Boar. The beast beside him looked bored and faintly ashamed on his behalf.

The boy waved around a training spear he obviously didn’t know how to use.

Overconfident melee. High damage, zero map awareness. First to die, loudest after respawn.

Nearby, two identical boys were having an intense argument in whispers. Same faces, same scowls, both hissing about "left flank" and "hold position" while whatever beast belonged to them remained hidden from Jin’s view.

Coordinated duo. Assuming they ever agree long enough to coordinate.

One candidate sat by himself in the corner, untouched by everyone else’s restless noise. He worked through a thick, worn bestiary one page at a time and never once looked up.

Quiet knowledge build. Easy to underestimate. Definitely reads the patch notes.

Jin liked that one immediately.

He didn’t approach any of them. He simply stored the details away, the same way he used to mark potential party members before knowing whether he would ever need them, then settled back against the wall.

Glitch had no interest in staying there.

The little beast wandered off.

Jin allowed him a few steps of freedom. The hall was secure, and Glitch clearly wanted to investigate. He drifted toward the nervous boy and the quilled rabbit hiding behind him.

That was when a child dropped a piece of bread.

The kid was probably a younger sibling of one of the candidates. He stood near the wall with both arms wrapped around a parent’s leg until a heel of ration bread slipped from his hand. It bounced once, skidded over the floor, and stopped directly in front of Glitch.

Several nearby candidates watched, expecting the Iron-tier hatchling to swallow it immediately.

Hungry young beasts didn’t usually ask questions.

Glitch lowered his nose and sniffed.

Then he turned his head and looked all the way back toward Jin.

He stayed there.

Free food sat less than an inch from his mouth. He was three days old, permanently hungry, and still he waited with his golden eyes fixed on his Tamer.

Jin held his gaze and gave the smallest nod.

Glitch ate only after receiving permission. He finished the bread neatly, then hurried back as though nothing worth noticing had happened.

An examiner had been making a slow circuit around the hall. A few feet away, he stopped and watched the entire exchange.

He didn’t address Jin. He only murmured under his breath while writing something on his slate.

"Remarkable discipline."

Jin heard him and gave no outward reaction.

Inside, he paused.

That hadn’t been intentional.

He had never taught Glitch manners around food. He had spent two in the morning drilling evasive movements inside a stone ring.

Apparently, the Training Instance had done more than force combat motions into the little beast.

It had built behavior.

The instinct to wait for Jin’s command hadn’t remained inside a fight. It had spread into the way Glitch moved, the way he paused, and the way he checked back before acting. Their bond wasn’t staying inside the limits of a combat stat.

It was shaping who Glitch became.

Huh.

Glitch climbed Jin’s leg and returned to his usual place on his shoulder.

Didn’t budget for that.

After a moment, Jin decided he was fine with it.

Phase One took up the remainder of the day. Rather than escort the successful candidates through the family cordon and repeat the entire security process the next morning, the Association housed them overnight in secured dormitories.

Jin slept terribly.

Glitch slept like sleep was a competitive event he intended to win.

Morning came beneath the same harsh white lights.

A tone rang through the hall.

Every conversation stopped.

The Head Examiner stepped onto the raised platform. He wasn’t the woman who had overseen Phase One. This man outranked her. He was older, harder, and carried himself like someone who had sent thousands of children into the wilderness, then personally checked the list of those who returned.

"Phase One measured whether your beast obeys you," he said. He wasted no time on an introduction. "Those of you still present have my congratulations. Most of your friends are already on their way home."

He paused and allowed the words to settle over them.

"Phase Two will not involve combat."

Surprise moved through the hall. Some candidates looked relieved. The boy with the spear looked openly disappointed.

"Not yet," the Head Examiner added. "Phase Two will test Adaptability."

The display screens changed.

A hostile landscape appeared across them, gray and twisted beneath a veil of mist. It was wild, uneven, and nothing like the clean, measured layout of the obstacle course.

"You and your beast will each be placed inside a simulated wilderness environment," the Head Examiner continued. "It was modeled after the real thing. It has no concern for your safety or comfort."

He folded his hands behind his back.

"We will not provide your objectives. The rules you receive will be incomplete at best. No one will tell you what action to take, when you should take it, or how success will be judged."

His expressionless gaze traveled over the candidates.

"Beyond the blast doors, the world does not give instructions. The wasteland does not display its rules for you. We will offer no more assistance than it does."

The hall had fallen silent.

"Today is not a measure of your beast’s power. It is a measure of yours. We are testing your judgment, your courage, and whether you can reach a decision without someone placing the correct answer in front of you."

A brief pause followed, completely without humor.

"Most of you have never been required to think independently. Today, we learn which of you can."

Against the wall, Jin stopped moving.

Really stopped.

No fixed objective. Missing rules. An open area where the candidates had to discover what mattered. It rewarded people who understood systems instead of blindly carrying out a script.

Most of the whales in the hall had trained for predictable tests. Their families had purchased instruction, drilled them on known solutions, and prepared them to perform under conditions someone else had already explained.

Take away the answer key, and half of them would fall apart.

Jin had spent two lifetimes doing the opposite.

He had entered unfamiliar game worlds, picked through vague mechanics, figured out how everything worked, and then cracked the systems open until the rewards fell out.

A laugh nearly escaped him.

For the second time in the same examination, the Association had accidentally designed the ideal test for him.

The candidates were divided into staging groups and ordered to prepare for entry.

Jin left the wall with Glitch perched on his shoulder. Out of reflex, he pulled out his phone for one final look at the Engine before whatever came next.

He disabled the filter with his thumb.

The phone vibrated once.

There was no popup.

No unlocked feature, reward, quest, or any of the usual decoration the Engine used when it wanted him to notice something.

One plain line had appeared at the bottom of the screen, in a place where there had never been text before.

[External Environment Detected.]

Nothing followed.

Jin waited, staring at the display, but no explanation appeared. There wasn’t even a second line.

His thumb remained above the screen.

The Engine had recognized a lone Rift signal once before. That had been a specific anomaly, a marked target on a map that could be downloaded.

This wasn’t the same.

Since the egg had hatched, every response from the Engine had centered on Jin himself. It reacted to the avatar, Glitch, their synchronization, the Training Instance, and the beasts under his ownership.

Now it had classified an entire environment in the real world.

External environment.

It had noticed the examination.

The Engine was looking at the simulated wilderness ahead of them, something created by the Tamer Association and completely unrelated to Jin’s game. It had turned its attention toward that place, acknowledged what it saw, and fallen silent.

Almost as if it were waiting to learn what happened next.

The staging doors began sliding open.

Cold artificial fog spilled through the widening gap.

Jin read the line one last time before slowly putting the phone away.

"...That’s probably bad," he muttered.

Glitch chirped beside his ear.

Together, they headed into the fog.