Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 31: The Wasteland Remembers

Chapter 31: The Wasteland Remembers

The tag sat in Jin’s palm, cold and heavier than it had any right to be.

He turned it over one more time under the pale not-sunlight. Corroded edges. A serial number worn down to fragments. The Association crest half-eaten by seven years of weather that shouldn’t have existed inside a sealed arena, but apparently did.

Might as well try.

He pulled up his public C-Rank talent — the useless one, the one everyone assumed made him fit for a desk job counting beast calories — and let the Data Appraisal crawl across the metal.

It stuttered. Choked. Coughed up scraps.

[Scanning legacy registration marker...]

[Data corrupted. Partial recovery only.]

[Owner: Unknown]

[Status: Deceased / Missing]

[Last Sync: 7 years ago]

[Classification: Lost Beast]

Jin went quiet.

Not the lazy kind of quiet he usually wore like a hoodie. The other kind.

Seven years.

The beast he’d put down in that pass had been surviving alone for seven years. Longer than Jin had owned this body. Its Tamer had synced with it, once — bonded, named it, filled out the exact same registration form Arthur used to fill out — and then, at some point, simply stopped existing.

And the beast had kept going anyway. Wild again. Feral. Running on nothing but the muscle memory of something that used to love it.

Jin had spent his whole first life thinking of beasts as drops. Things you caught, leveled, discarded.

He looked down at the tag and, for the first time, didn’t think of it as loot at all.

The observation room had gone quiet in a different way.

"Why is a lost beast still inside a certified exam zone?" a younger examiner asked, staring at the recovered feed. "This area passed clearance. It’s supposed to be swept."

"It was swept," a veteran said, without looking up.

"Then how—"

"You don’t clear a Danger Zone, kid. You secure one." The veteran finally turned, and his expression was the tired one, the one the younger ones hadn’t earned yet. "There’s a difference. One’s a lie you tell recruits. The other’s the truth you learn about six months into fieldwork."

The younger examiner didn’t answer.

"That beast burrowed under the barrier’s foundation years before we ever built this staging arena on top of the old ground," the veteran continued. "Sat there. Waited. Survived. We can wall off a piece of the wasteland. We can pressurize it and light it and call it an exam field."

He tapped the screen where the corroded tag still glinted.

"We can’t make it forget what it used to be."

The word secured, not safe passed silently between every examiner in the room who’d ever set foot outside a wall.

Jin’s hand tightened around the tag.

For half a second, old instinct won. Keep it. Serial number’s partially intact. Might sell. Might matter later. Never leave a rare item on the ground.

He looked at Glitch, who was watching him with those unreadable gold eyes, waiting.

Then Jin crouched, and set the tag down beside a flat stone at the mouth of the pass, propped upright where anyone sweeping the zone later would spot it.

Not buried. Not hidden. Placed.

"Someone probably waited for them, too," he said.

That was all.

No speech. No dramatic salute. He didn’t know the dead Tamer’s name, would never know it, and wasn’t going to pretend a stranger’s grief belonged to him.

But he knew what it was to have someone at home counting the hours until the blast doors opened.

He’d looked into Arthur’s face and seen exactly that.

Glitch made a small, low sound — not a growl, something softer — and pressed briefly against Jin’s ankle.

"Yeah," Jin said. "C’mon. We’re not done."

Milo Ren caught up to him near the river bend, wheezing like a man who’d sprinted the whole way and immediately regretted it.

"You— hey— wait up—"

Jin did not wait up, but he did slow down enough that it stopped being cruel.

Milo skidded to a halt beside him, a plump gray rabbit-beast bouncing anxiously at his heels — thorny quills laid flat along its spine, twitching at every sound.

Bronze Thorn Rabbit, Jin clocked automatically. Defensive build. Curls up, spikes out, tanks a hit. Decent starter. Zero offense. Whoever picked this beast wanted to feel safe.

"I wanted to thank you," Milo blurted. "Properly. Back there, with the wolves, I—" His face went red. "I froze. I’ve trained for two years. Two years. And I just... froze."

"Happens."

"It’s not supposed to happen. My family paid for a Bronze beast. I aced every written test. I was supposed to—" He deflated. "I was supposed to pass easy."

Jin looked at him for a moment. The kid wasn’t weak. He wasn’t even dumb. He’d just spent his whole life being told the exam was a checkbox, and nobody had warned him the checkbox had teeth.

"You want advice, or you want to keep feeling sorry for yourself?" Jin asked. "I’m fine with either, but pick one, it’s a long walk."

Milo blinked. "...Advice. Please."

"Stop chasing points. There’s no scoreboard out here you can see, and every fight you pick to look good costs you stamina you’ll want later." Jin ticked it off flatly, not slowing his pace. "Watch your beast’s breathing, not its health. Tired beasts get sloppy before they get hurt. And don’t fight anywhere near water unless you already know what’s living in it."

Milo stared at him. "That’s... really specific."

"Water hides things. Ambush predators love it. Free lesson." Jin shrugged. "Take it or don’t."

Milo was quiet a second. Then, slowly: "You’re not really a C-Rank, are you."

"I am, actually." Which was even technically true. "I just read the patch notes."

Milo had no idea what that meant, and Jin didn’t explain.

"Can I stick with you?" Milo asked, a few minutes later. "Just — for a while. I’m not asking you to carry me. I just—" He gestured helplessly at the endless hostile terrain. "I don’t want to freeze again with nobody around."

Jin’s first instinct was no.

Baggage. Liability. Another mouth watching the same monsters. In a game, an escort mission was the fastest way to fail a run you were otherwise clearing clean.

Then his eyes dropped to the Thorn Rabbit, still snuffling at the ground, quills twitching at a patch of soil Jin’s own senses said nothing about.

Wait.

"Your rabbit," Jin said. "It’s reacting to the dirt. Why?"

Milo glanced down. "Oh — that’s just what they do. Thorn Rabbits root for safe forage. They can smell edible roots underground, and they won’t step on unstable ground. Breeders use them to—"

"Detects safe footing and food," Jin said, cutting him off, already recalculating. "Passively. All the time."

"...Yeah?"

Party member acquired. Questionable combat build. Genuinely useful utility skill.

"Fine," Jin said. "You can tag along."

Milo lit up like Jin had handed him a medal.

"Not out of kindness," Jin added, because he refused to be misunderstood on this point. "Your rabbit’s a walking hazard detector. That’s worth a slot. Keep up and don’t do anything heroic."

Milo nodded so fast his neck probably hurt. He was too relieved to be insulted.