Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 42: A Breath Before the Final Trial

Chapter 42: A Breath Before the Final Trial

The forward camp wasn’t comfortable.

It wasn’t trying to be.

Portable barrier emitters ringed a stretch of flattened ground, humming that low steady note that meant nothing’s getting in tonight, probably. Floodlights buzzed. Medical tents glowed from within, canvas walls throwing the shadows of overworked medics moving fast between cots.

Exhausted candidates sat in loose clumps, too tired to talk much, beasts pressed close against them. A girl with a bandaged arm stared at nothing. Two boys shared a ration bar in complete silence.

Off to one side, a Bronze-tier hound lay on its side while a medic worked a long gash along its flank, and its tamer — some rich kid who’d swaggered into registration a week ago like he owned the shelter — knelt beside it with white knuckles and wet eyes.

Nobody looked like they owned anything now.

This is what ’controlled’ looks like, Jin thought, settling Glitch beside him. A safe zone full of kids who found out what the word Danger in Danger Zone actually meant.

He’d known. He’d read the patch notes his whole first life. Everyone else was learning it in real time.

Glitch, for his part, had recovered enough to be nosy.

The leg still slowed him — a careful limp, weight kept off it — but the moment Jin stopped fussing over the bandage, the lizard’s head came up and swiveled toward the nearest cluster of young beasts like a compass finding north.

"Go on," Jin sighed. "Slow. Don’t wrestle anyone. You’re injured, remember."

Glitch was already gone.

He limped over to a small huddle of beasts near the water trough — a stocky Bronze pup, a nervous feathered thing, and a fat gray rabbit that Jin recognized as Milo’s Thorn Rabbit.

The introductions went about how you’d expect from a bunch of exhausted teenage animals.

The Bronze pup sniffed at Glitch aggressively. Glitch sniffed back, unbothered, and the pup — clearly expecting a flinch — got so confused by the lack of reaction that it sat down and forgot what it was doing.

The feathered thing circled Glitch twice, cautious, wings half-raised. Glitch just watched it, head tilting to follow, patient, until the bird ran out of nervous energy and settled.

Then Glitch found the rabbit.

Jin watched his lizard — an obsidian-black reptile with gold eyes and budding horns, a creature that had faced down a starving Bronze pack and crossed a collapsing bridge without blinking — approach a fluffy gray rabbit and stop dead.

Confused.

Glitch tilted his head one way. Then the other. He’d apparently never encountered something that was round and floofy before and had no idea what category to file it under. He extended his nose, very slowly, toward the rabbit’s fluff.

The rabbit’s quills twitched.

Glitch flinched back like he’d been personally insulted, then immediately leaned in again, unable to let the mystery go.

The rabbit sneezed.

Glitch bolted three feet sideways, tail rigid, staring at the rabbit with an expression of deep betrayal.

Milo, nearby, lost it. "Your dragon-lizard is scared of my rabbit."

"He’s not scared," Jin said, deadpan. "He’s tactically reassessing."

"He ran away from a sneeze."

"Tactically."

Glitch, having recovered his dignity, crept back toward the rabbit a third time and — very cautiously, very gravely — sniffed it, decided it was acceptable, and flopped down beside it to share the shade.

The rabbit did not object.

Something in Jin’s chest went stupidly warm, and he chose not to examine it.

He didn’t train that night.

Everyone expected him to. He could feel it — a few candidates kept glancing over, waiting for the guy who’d led them through the disaster to start drilling, optimizing, doing something intense.

Jin just sat down and watched instead.

It was more useful than they knew.

The Engine offered the Training Instance when his hand brushed his phone. Jin opened the status panel long enough to confirm that Glitch’s digital avatar remained available, then closed it without deploying. The avatar could fight without reopening the cut on the real body, but every movement still echoed through the bond and stirred the sleeping beast. Glitch needed one quiet night more than another perfect dodge.

Old Jin would have called unused grinding time waste. This Jin had spent four days learning that restraint was also an action. Sometimes optimization meant pressing the button. Sometimes it meant knowing exactly why you should not.

Because you could learn a lot about a person by how they treated their beast when they thought nobody was grading them.

There was a boy barking orders at a Silver-tier cat, sharp and constant, treating it like a malfunctioning tool that needed correcting. The cat obeyed. It also flinched every time he raised his voice.

There was a girl who’d wrapped her beast in three blankets and was feeding it the last of her own rations by hand, cooing, spoiling it rotten. The beast was happy. It was also getting soft, and Jin suspected it had never once been told no in its life.

There was a boy who simply ignored his, scrolling through something on a device while his beast sat alone at the edge of the firelight, waiting for attention that wasn’t coming.

And there were a few — a rare few — who just sat with their beasts. Not commanding. Not spoiling. Not ignoring. Just present. Checking a paw. Sharing water. Sitting in the quiet together.

A contract doesn’t make you partners, Jin thought, watching the boy with the flinching cat.

Anyone can sign a contract. Anyone can force obedience.

Trust is the part you can’t fake. And it’s the only part that matters when everything goes wrong.

He looked at Glitch, dozing beside a fat rabbit he’d decided to adopt.

Yeah. He’d take the trust build. Every time.

Later, checking the bandage one more time before letting Glitch settle for the night, Jin did something without thinking.

He pressed two fingers gently above the wound, testing the swelling, watching Glitch’s face for a flinch — before he shifted the leg to rewrap it.

Check first. Then move. Never move the hurt part before you know how hurt it is.

He froze, fingers still resting on Glitch’s leg.

That’s Arthur.

His father used to do exactly that. Every time. With his own ruined leg on the bad nights, and with Jin’s scrapes when he was small — that careful pause, that check-before-you-move, the patience of a man who’d learned the hard way what happened when you rushed an injury.

Jin hadn’t decided to copy it. It had just... become how he did things. Sometime in the last week, without a single conscious choice, his father’s hands had become his hands.

He looked down at Glitch.

A small, quiet smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

He finished the wrap the way Arthur would have, and let it be.