Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 41: A Rival Worth Watching

Chapter 41: A Rival Worth Watching

He looked at Jin a moment longer. Jin looked back, unbothered, giving him absolutely nothing.

"Good luck in the final phase," Lucian said finally.

"You too."

And that was it. Under two minutes, start to finish.

Lucian turned and walked back toward the medical line, falcon on his shoulder.

Neither of them had raised their voice. Neither had made a threat, a boast, or a challenge.

Both of them walked away thinking about the other.

Lucian sat on a supply crate and let the medic finally look at his jaw, and his mind ran the same way it always did — cold, methodical, sorting.

That lizard.

He’d watched the feed twice. An Iron-quality beast with objectively unremarkable current stats, executing command responses tighter than half the Bronze and Silver beasts in the exam. No hesitation. No lag between order and action. And today — reading terrain, breaking formation to guard its tamer, crossing a collapsed bridge first without panic.

The beast isn’t talented, Lucian concluded. I’ve seen its registration tier. Iron. Bottom of the barrel.

He glanced across the hollow at the lazy-looking boy in the oversized jacket, currently arguing with his own lizard about whether it was allowed to stand up.

But the training is. That’s not a gifted beast. That’s a gifted handler. Someone drilled that animal until obedience became instinct. That takes hundreds of hours. That takes someone who understands beasts on a level most tamers never reach.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

And he’s hiding it behind a C-Rank data profile and a bored expression. Why?

What else is he hiding?

The medic dabbed at his jaw. Lucian didn’t feel it.

Across the checkpoint, Jin was running the exact same process in reverse.

That falcon.

He’d clocked it the second Lucian walked in. Not the scratches — the behavior. The way the Thunder Falcon had shifted its weight on Lucian’s shoulder half a second before Lucian raised his hand to wave off the medic. The way it had already started to preen its injured wing toward him before he’d said a word.

It obeyed before he commanded it, Jin thought. No verbal cue. No hand signal I could see. It just... knew.

That’s not a smart beast. Well — it is. But that’s not what that is.

That’s synchronization. Real synchronization, the kind you build over years, until the tamer and the beast are running on the same wavelength and words become optional.

He looked at Lucian across the hollow — calm, precise, tending his beast before himself, radiating the quiet competence of someone who’d trained his whole life for exactly this.

He trained that. Deliberately. That’s not talent, or not only talent. That’s work. Brutal, patient, years of work.

Which makes him the most dangerous person in this exam. Not because he’s strong. Because he’s disciplined. Strong I can out-think. Disciplined out-thinks back.

Both boys, on opposite sides of a floodlit hollow, had correctly read the other’s greatest strength.

And both of them had missed the secret sitting right underneath it entirely.

In the observation room, the veteran examiner had watched the whole two-minute exchange without blinking.

"They noticed each other," he murmured.

"Sir?"

"314 and the Vale boy." He nodded at the frozen feed, the two candidates walking away from each other. "They just spent two minutes being very polite and sizing each other up like duelists. Neither one gave anything away." A dry almost-smile. "That’ll last longer than any fight would."

The younger examiner shifted, tablet in hand. "About 314 — the synchronization anomaly. His numbers still don’t add up. His profile’s C-Rank Data Appraisal, his beast’s Iron, and yet the bond metrics keep reading higher than anything on our board. Should we flag it? Pull him for a formal review?"

The veteran was quiet for a long moment.

"Not yet."

"But if he’s cheating—"

"Then he’ll make a mistake." The veteran leaned back, eyes still on the screen. "Cheaters always do. Give it enough pressure and enough time, and the crack shows. If there’s a trick, we’ll see it. Patience costs us nothing."

"And if he isn’t cheating?"

The veteran watched the small figure in the oversized jacket settle back down beside his resting lizard, unbothered, patient, already scanning the checkpoint for exits out of pure habit.

"Then I want to see how far he can go," he said quietly, "before someone tells him he’s not allowed to."

He tapped the desk once.

"Leave him alone. Watch. That’s the whole job."

Outside the barrier, the world was very quiet.

The waiting families had thinned as the hours dragged on — some sent home by staff, some collapsed asleep in the temporary shelters, some simply unable to keep standing.

Arthur hadn’t moved.

He sat on a hard bench near the observation fence, a paper cup of vending-machine coffee going cold in his good hand. He hadn’t drunk it. He’d bought it an hour ago mostly to have something to hold.

His ruined leg ached in the damp night air. He ignored it.

He wasn’t looking at the announcement boards anymore. He’d stopped caring about scores and placements and rankings somewhere around the time the emergency alert had rippled through the waiting crowd — unexpected incident, candidates safe, examination continuing — words designed to reassure that had done the exact opposite.

He just watched the barrier.

The great humming wall of light, behind which his lazy, impossible, secretly-something son was doing whatever he was doing.

Arthur had spent sixteen years being unable to protect much of anything. A crippled ex-tamer with a desk job and a beast ten years dead. He couldn’t go in there. He couldn’t help. He couldn’t do a single thing except sit on a cold bench and hold a cold coffee and wait.

He wasn’t worried about Jin passing. He’d let go of that hours ago.

He just wanted to see the blast doors open.

He just wanted to see his son walk back out.

"Come on, kid," he said quietly, to no one, to the barrier, to the night. "Just come home. That’s all. Just come home."

A little way down the fence, a fourteen-year-old girl with her jaw set hard and her eyes red refused to sit down at all.

Elsa hadn’t taken her eyes off the barrier in six hours.

The loudspeakers activated.

Across the entire exam zone, every exhausted candidate went still.

The Head Examiner’s voice rolled out — calm, measured, final.

"All remaining candidates."

A pause.

"Prepare for the final evaluation."

The atmosphere in the checkpoint changed instantly. Medics straightened. Kids who’d been half-asleep on cots sat up. The specific electric dread of one more, and it’s the one that counts settled over everyone at once.

"The next phase," the voice continued, "will determine academy placement."

Not pass or fail. Placement. Rank. Which tier you entered on, which instructors you got, which doors opened and which stayed shut — the thing every one of these kids’ futures had been quietly built around.

Jin exhaled slowly.

Then he stood.

Across the hollow, at almost the exact same moment, Lucian Vale rose to his feet.

The floodlights hummed. The false dusk pressed down. Eight kids and their beasts and a whole checkpoint of exhausted survivors watched two boys stand up on opposite sides of the same clearing.

Jin’s eyes found Lucian’s.

Lucian’s found his.

Neither of them smiled.

Neither of them spoke.

Glitch limped up to Jin’s side. The Thunder Falcon settled onto Lucian’s shoulder.

And without a word, from opposite ends of the hollow, the two of them turned and started walking toward the same destination.