Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 27: Predator

Chapter 27: Predator

The plants by the river were easy to overlook. Their pale, wax-coated leaves hugged the damp stone, plain little patches of green that nobody focused on while searching for monsters.

Jin lowered himself beside them anyway.

He had no idea what species they were, but their growth pattern was familiar enough. They stayed close to the water, spread low across the ground, and showed no signs of grazing.

Back in the Outer Ring, where cramped apartment blocks depended on hydroponics, Arthur had pointed out plants like these during the few walks they’d taken near the old agricultural vents.

"If something grows wild and the animals haven’t touched it," his father used to tell him, "then it’s food or poison. Learn the difference before you’re hungry enough to stop caring."

Whether gathering plants would affect his exam score, Jin couldn’t say.

He collected a handful and folded them carefully into a spare piece of cloth from his pack.

The objective hadn’t told him to do it.

Twelve years of watching his mother divide synthetic rations between four people had taught him better than any game tutorial could. When you didn’t know how long you might go hungry, you didn’t stroll past possible food.

In the observation room, an examiner entered a short note on her tablet. She didn’t explain it to the others. Not yet.

Glitch went rigid.

This wasn’t the lazy pause Jin saw when he got sleepy. His entire body stopped, tail held stiff, gold eyes locked on the trees behind them.

Then he shifted.

Without hesitation, Glitch moved directly in front of Jin and faced the treeline. The little beast stood unnaturally still, every part of his posture deliberate.

He wasn’t preparing to attack.

He was protecting Jin.

Jin halted halfway through a step.

"Okay," he breathed. "Noted."

He left his hands where they were and didn’t move again. Every gamer instinct he possessed repeated the same lesson that had saved his previous character from countless ambushes: if your tank suddenly plants his feet, you don’t keep walking. You stop and see what scared him.

The direction of the wind changed.

A long breath came from somewhere among the trees. It was too low to hear clearly, but Jin felt it, as though the air had gained weight.

His Engine had done nothing since the exam began.

Now it pulsed once at the edge of his awareness.

No popup followed.

There was no stat screen, notification, or useful bracketed message telling him what had just noticed them. Only a faint ripple from somewhere deep inside the system, like one eye had opened before closing again.

Leaves and branches shifted along the treeline.

Beneath them, two spots of light appeared in the shadows. They stayed low to the ground, patient and motionless.

Watching.

For the first time that day, Jin’s heartbeat sped up.

He didn’t reach for his phone.

A screen wasn’t necessary to know he wasn’t facing a Stone Rat.

"...First contact," he whispered.

The eyes remained open.

Jin kept his own fixed on them.

His heart was making enough noise to be useless, but the rest of his body had gone completely still.

Glitch copied him without an order. His legs bent, his weight dropped, and his tail lowered until it nearly touched the ground. Before Jin had drilled him so relentlessly, the movement might have been accidental. Now it seemed like his training had finally connected with an instinct older than either of them.

Neither took a breath for four counts.

The forest reacted next.

The insects had chirped constantly since Jin sat on the hill. They all stopped in the middle of a note, as if the sound had been switched off. Leaves went still despite the continuing breeze. The river was forty feet away and hadn’t slowed, yet even its running water seemed quieter.

Now everything’s listening. Great. Nice and cozy. Absolutely not terrifying.

Jin remained where he was.

Games had taught him to gather information before making a decision. Eleven years of dying to enemies he hadn’t properly scouted had driven that lesson deep.

Instead of acting, he studied the scene.

He looked beyond the glowing eyes.

A large shape breathed behind the brush, its body rising and falling at a slow, even pace. It wasn’t exhausted or worked up. Whatever hid there hadn’t been chased, and it hadn’t just finished fighting.

It had simply been waiting, with the same unpleasant certainty as a landlord showing up when the rent was late.

A moment later, Jin spotted tracks pressed halfway into the mud beside the river. Four toes. The front marks sank deeper, and the claws had dug into the soil instead of scraping across it.

Ambush predator. It pounces. Probably won’t chase very far.

The wind travelled from the trees toward Jin and Glitch.

That meant their scent had likely been drifting straight to the creature for several minutes.

Wonderful. Putting that under lesson learned before it turns into lesson learning.

He picked out two retreat paths. The first led toward the river, across exposed ground with nowhere to hide. Terrible. The second followed the ridge they had used earlier, where broken terrain offered plenty of cover.

Combat didn’t even make his list.

It never came first. Having a list was pointless otherwise.

The creature stepped from the brush as though it owned the forest.

As far as every living thing in that section of the arena was concerned, it probably did.

It resembled a wolf stretched into something that should not have been able to move comfortably on four legs. Its body was too long and its shoulders were too broad. Mottled gray-brown hide blended with the undergrowth so well that parts of its outline nearly vanished when it stopped.

Ridges of bone rose along its spine. They weren’t decoration. Jin could see old scratches cut across them, scars left by something that had bitten down and learned not to do it again.

Hunger showed only in its eyes.

The rest of the beast looked calm and patient.

It didn’t roar or bare its teeth. It merely tipped its head and examined them with the careful interest of someone reading a menu.

Iron-quality.

Jin immediately marked that assessment as incomplete.

Iron-quality, and obviously experienced at killing stronger prey. Quality doesn’t make it safe. It measures potential and skill capacity, not how much experience it already has. This thing’s been grinding.

There was nothing cruel or evil about the creature.

It was hungry, and Jin and Glitch happened to be the first worthwhile meal to come close enough.

That somehow made the situation worse.

Stories occasionally allowed you to reason with evil. Hunger had no interest in conversation.

Glitch growled.

For a dragon-lizard, the sound was quiet. Jin stood beside him and could barely hear the low vibration.

The predator heard it.

Its head whipped toward them so precisely that Jin’s stomach dropped. Ears he hadn’t noticed before lifted and angled forward, focused directly on their position.

Its relaxed curiosity disappeared. The new posture felt like the beginning of a countdown.

Jin shut his eyes for exactly one second.

"...Lesson one," he whispered.

Glitch’s tail flicked. The small flaps near his horns, assuming those counted as ears, flattened slightly. He already seemed aware that he’d made a mistake.

"Don’t tell them where you are."

Jin spoke without anger. His tone held only the tired patience of someone correcting a mistake he had always known would happen eventually, then storing it away for later.

New players always exposed their position in the first fight. It wasn’t worth punishing.

It was simply an expensive lesson.

The predator moved one step closer.

Sixteen years of Terra-Nova instinct and one incredibly stupid death on Earth shouted several conflicting commands through Jin’s head.

Fight. Prove yourself. Don’t retreat. Tamers don’t run.

Jin ignored every one of them.

He slowly stepped backward and turned just enough to place the nearest boulder between himself and the creature’s direct approach.

Then he took another step.