Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 38: Party Leader

Chapter 38: Party Leader

"Okay," he said, voice dropping into something flat and certain. "Nobody’s a hero. We’re not killing these things fast. We’re controlling space until they decide we’re not worth it."

He pointed.

"You two — spined beasts, front. You’re the wall. Don’t chase, don’t lunge, just hold the line and keep them off the rest of us. Milo, rabbit stays center, low, ready to warn if a third one shows. You—" the fastest kid, "—your beast harasses. In, nip, out. Never commit. Make them turn, make them waste energy."

"What about—" one started.

"Glitch and I control the middle. If either wolf breaks the line, we plug the gap." He glanced down. "Glitch, short movements only. In and out. Don’t push the leg."

The wolves lunged.

The wall held — the two spined beasts planting shoulder to shoulder, absorbing the first rush instead of scattering. The fast kid’s beast darted in exactly on cue, drawing one wolf’s head around, breaking its focus. Milo’s rabbit thumped a warning that let them all pivot as the second wolf circled.

It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t pretty. One kid’s beast took a glancing hit and yelped; Jin had them fall back a step and let the wall re-form in front of it.

No flashy skills. No hidden power.

Just five scared teenagers doing exactly what one unbothered boy told them, in exactly the order he told them, until the two wolves — winded, frustrated, finding no easy meal and no panicking prey — broke off and slunk back into the gully to look for something softer.

The whole thing lasted ninety seconds.

Nobody died. Nobody even bled badly.

Jin let out a slow breath. "...Okay. Good. Everybody still attached to all their limbs?"

Shaky nods.

"Great. Ten-second breather, then we keep moving. Slow."

In the observation room, the veteran examiner had stopped watching the kill-count leaderboard entirely.

"Candidate 417 has the highest elimination score in the exam," a younger examiner offered, almost hopefully.

"His beast can barely stand," the veteran said. "He’s got three injuries, no supplies, and he’s alone. If a second pack finds him tonight, he dies."

He tapped a different feed. Jin’s group, re-forming after the wolf fight, moving out in a tight, disciplined cluster with the hurt beasts sheltered in the center.

"Look at this one instead," the veteran said. "Five candidates. Six beasts. Zero casualties. Minimal injuries. Every one of them still has stamina, still has supplies, and still has a working formation."

He leaned back.

"They came in as strangers. He’s turned them into a unit that’s kept every single member alive through an event we didn’t plan for and can’t fully control."

The younger examiner was quiet.

"You keep asking me who the strongest candidate is," the veteran said. "Wrong question."

He watched the small figure in the oversized jacket wave his little group forward, limping black lizard tucked close at his side.

"If I had to send one first-year outside the walls tomorrow," he said quietly, "one kid, real mission, real Danger Zone, and I needed them to come back—"

He didn’t look away from the screen.

"—I’d send him."

Nobody in the room argued.

Nobody could.

After the wolves left, nobody cheered.

That was how Jin knew they were finally learning.

The five of them just... sank down where they stood, in the shelter of a rock overhang, breathing hard, hands trembling with the adrenaline dump. No whooping. No high-fives. No talk of points.

Just the bone-deep quiet of people who’d been genuinely scared and were only now realizing they’d made it through.

Glitch limped over and folded himself against Jin’s side with a soft, tired grunt.

Jin scratched behind his horn buds, slow and careful, mindful of the bound leg.

"You did good," he murmured. "Short movements, just like I said. You listen better than any of these guys."

One of the rescued kids — the one from the pillar — hesitated, then reached out and, very gently, laid a hand on Glitch’s uninjured shoulder.

Glitch didn’t pull away.

The kid’s face did something complicated and grateful.

Then Milo did it too. Then the fast kid. One by one, the little group reached out and touched the black lizard who’d broken formation to guard a stranger, who’d bled so their leader wouldn’t, who limped now and rested against Jin’s side like he’d earned it.

He had.

Somewhere in the last hour, Glitch had stopped being Jin’s beast.

He’d become theirs. The unit’s. The one they’d all quietly agreed to keep safe.

Jin watched it happen and didn’t say anything.

He just kept scratching behind Glitch’s ears, and let the moment be what it was.

The breather ended with no command from Jin. Milo checked the Thorn Rabbit’s paws. The fastest candidate counted the remaining water and divided it evenly. One of the rescued kids took rear watch while the other tightened a loose strap on a defender’s harness. They had started copying the habits that kept them alive instead of waiting for Jin to remember everything for them.

That, more than obedience, made them a party. A formation that collapsed without its leader was only a queue. Jin wanted people who could carry the plan when he was looking somewhere else—or when he was the one who needed help.

The rescue drone came in from the south.

Standard extraction unit — a squat, humming thing with the Association crest on its underside, sweeping low over the tree line, scanning for candidates to guide toward the safe points.

Jin lifted a hand, half-expecting it to mark them and move on.

It slowed.

Then it turned — sharply, wrong, away from them entirely — and accelerated north.

Jin frowned.

A second drone crossed overhead a moment later. It banked the same direction. North.

Then a third, from the west, curving to follow.

Then more. Every drone in the sector, all at once, breaking off their sweeps and converging — fast, silent, purposeful — toward the same point on the horizon.

The northern ruins.

Jin lowered his hand slowly.

That’s not extraction behavior. That’s a swarm. Something just pulled every rescue unit in the zone to one spot.

Beside him, Glitch went very still, gold eyes fixed on the northern sky.

In the observation room, every screen showing a drone feed had begun drifting the same direction, and the low hum of examiner chatter died all at once.

The veteran leaned forward, watching a dozen extraction units abandon their routes and race north in perfect, unsettling unison.

"Who redirected the drones?" he asked.

Nobody answered.

"I said who redirected them?" His voice sharpened. "That’s a manual override. Someone gave that order."

A tech at the far console had gone white, staring at his screen. "Sir... nobody did."

The room went cold.

"Then why," an examiner whispered, watching every drone in the zone converge on the northern ruins, "are they all going there?"