Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 26: First Contact

Chapter 26: First Contact

The blast doors opened nothing like normal doors.

One seal released, then another, each layer pulling back with a long hiss, as though the building had been holding its breath. The glare on the other side faded. A moment later, the "wilderness" beyond swallowed every sound from eighty anxious candidates.

Jin had pictured a gymnasium. A large indoor space, maybe, with fake boulders stuck around the floor.

Not this.

Jagged ridges stretched across the distance beneath a coating that looked far too much like actual dust. Water slipped through a bed of split stone, reflecting the pale glow overhead. The sky wasn’t real. It was a curved ceiling, but it rose so high that the difference hardly mattered. Crooked trees gathered beside the river. Beyond a fallen overpass, an old transport truck lay half-covered by sand, its open door suggesting the driver had abandoned it fast and never returned.

There were caves, hills, and the remains of dead buildings.

A mana barrier enclosed everything. Its quiet hum sat at the edge of Jin’s hearing, and the dome was large enough that its curve vanished from view.

They had built an entire fake apocalypse to examine children.

To Jin’s left, a girl carrying a spear murmured, "It looks exactly like a real Danger Zone."

"It’s copied from one," another candidate said, forcing steadiness into their voice. "Probably Danger Zone 2, maybe 3. Nothing fatal is supposed to appear."

"Supposed to."

No one found that funny.

The Head Examiner spoke, her voice projected across the arena from every direction at once.

"Phase One examined obedience," she said. "Phase Two examines judgment."

Uneasy whispers passed through the group.

"Candidates are forbidden from fighting one another. Any attempt to sabotage another candidate will result in immediate disqualification and referral to the Tamer Association’s disciplinary board."

Good. That was one less system Jin needed to deal with.

"Each candidate will receive a separate starting location within the arena. Your objective will not be provided."

That broke the crowd’s composure.

Actual panic spread through the eighty teenagers. Several blurted some version of "wait, what?" They had spent their lives preparing for tests where someone always told them what answer to give.

The Examiner continued as though nothing had happened. "Your judgment, command ability, resourcefulness, awareness, and cooperation with your beast will all be assessed. Combat strength will be considered, but it is only one factor. It will not determine the result by itself."

Lucian’s calm voice rose from somewhere behind Jin. "So they aren’t testing what we’ve learned. They’re testing what we choose to do."

"Correct," the Examiner replied, almost as if Lucian had spoken directly to her.

Maybe she really had heard him.

"You will receive a single instruction. Nothing more."

She let the silence stretch until all eighty candidates were waiting.

"Survive."

The word settled over the group, then spread through it. Backs stiffened. Fingers tightened around beast leashes. Near the front, one boy looked ready to tip over.

Jin rubbed the area behind Glitch’s budding horns.

"Fair enough," he muttered. "That’s pretty much my usual daily quest."

This wasn’t an RPG.

That became obvious somewhere between the hidden objective and the rule against fighting other candidates. Once Jin saw it, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

RPGs gave players an answer. There was always a marker, a quest prompt, or a glowing symbol over the NPC who needed help. The game told you where to go and what creature needed punching.

This was a sandbox instead.

There would be no marker, no perfect build, and no walkthrough to follow.

The exam wasn’t asking for the correct answer. It wanted good choices. The sort made without guidance, when the only proof that a decision worked was reaching the end alive.

For four years, Jin had farmed a game built around that exact idea. He had searched for loot routes before anyone posted them, faced bosses nobody had beaten, and learned systems that punished anyone who charged ahead without reading the situation. Patience usually earned more than recklessness.

His mouth slowly curved upward.

Oh, I know this genre.

"Good decisions," he said under his breath, "are much easier to fake than good answers."

From his shoulder, Glitch gave a doubtful little sound.

Jin counted it as agreement.

Teleportation brought no sensation with it. Jin stood in line beside seventy-nine candidates, and then he didn’t.

He was alone on a short ridge made of fractured stone. Wind tugged at his sleeves. The silence pressed down so suddenly that it almost had weight.

Arthur wasn’t there to warn him to be careful.

Elsa wasn’t standing three feet away, prepared to correct his posture.

There were no examiners, no audience, and no rival watching him with that irritatingly interested expression.

Only Jin, Glitch, and a fake wasteland that no longer felt very fake.

Glitch adjusted his balance on Jin’s shoulder. His gold eyes moved across the landscape with a calm that didn’t belong to a creature only a few days old.

Jin breathed out.

"Alright," he told the empty air. "New game, no tutorial. Let’s figure out what we’ve got."

Since waking in this body, nearly everything had felt like survival.

This didn’t.

This felt like an adventure.

He almost resented how much that pleased him.

Every instinct he had told him to do what the other candidates were probably already doing. Sixteen years of Terra-Nova experience and a lifetime of gaming habits agreed on the obvious move.

Find a monster. Fight it. Show what he could do.

Beyond a cluster of dead trees, something roared in the distance. A scream followed from much closer, then ended far too quickly.

Someone had already rushed ahead.

Jin faced the opposite direction and climbed a hill.

It wasn’t especially high. It only gave him enough elevation to see beyond the trees and river, toward the broken overpass and the hills past it. At the top, he crouched and surveyed the area.

It felt suspiciously similar to opening a minimap.

The water lay southeast. Northwest, a partially collapsed cave opened in the rock. It might offer shelter, or it might belong to something. That went into the investigate later category, definitely not first. The abandoned transport truck stood in exposed ground without cover on either side. Terrible place to gather, but possibly worth scavenging if no creature had claimed it. Two long ridges narrowed into a pass between stone walls. A chokepoint. Useful or deadly, depending on who reached it first.

Jin stored each detail in his head. He had once memorized unfamiliar dungeons before moving beyond the entrance. This wasn’t much different.

"The one who charges in first," he murmured, watching dust rise in the direction of the scream, "usually turns into loot."

Glitch made a quiet noise. It could have meant agreement.

It could also have been a yawn.

Jin remained on the hill for another ten minutes regardless.

The observation room held its own kind of pressure.

Eighty displays showed eighty candidates. A line of examiners watched them, most experienced enough that entrance exams rarely made them react anymore.

They still reacted now and then.

"Candidate Nine attacked a Bronze-quality Sand Hound," one examiner said as a boy’s beast flew twenty feet and struck a rock wall. "By himself. He didn’t scout first."

"He’ll live," said another examiner, showing little concern. "Just barely."

"Candidate Thirty-one has already used half her water rations," a third said, pressing fingers to her temple. "It’s only been two hours."

Farther along the row, one examiner had been silent for some time.

His attention stayed on a single screen. It showed a boy sitting motionless on a hill and accomplishing nothing that appeared remotely impressive.

"This candidate hasn’t moved for ten minutes," he said at last.

The examiner beside him leaned closer. "Which one?"

"Astor. Jin Astor."

Neither spoke for a moment.

"He hasn’t entered a single fight."

"No," the first examiner replied.

On the screen, Jin slowly turned atop the hill, following something the cameras had apparently missed.

"He’s scouting."

The second examiner kept frowning, though not because he disapproved. He was reconsidering.

"Most candidates are too afraid of failing to remember that this isn’t a combat test," he said. "It’s a decision tree. So far, he’s the only one who understands that."

Jin reached up and scratched beneath Glitch’s chin. He said something too quiet for the microphones, then rose and began walking.

He didn’t head toward the noise.

He didn’t head toward the fight.

He went toward the water.