Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 5: Six Days

Chapter 5: Six Days

Morning arrived under a sky the colour of chilled steel.

Jin woke to Arthur moving quietly around the unit, taking each step with the care of a man trying not to disturb his children before leaving to spend another day bleeding for the shelter.

The headache had vanished. The unnatural hunger from the night before had eased into ordinary hunger, which in the Outer Ring was less a problem and more a permanent part of being alive.

Jin stayed where he was and watched through nearly closed eyes.

Arthur pulled on his warehouse coveralls. As he passed the incubator, he glanced down at it.

Then he stopped.

He leaned closer.

Something had happened to the egg.

Even in the dull morning light, the difference was obvious. Its shell was no longer the flat grey of pavement. It had deepened into smooth slate, the surface tight, healthy, and nearly polished. The crack from the previous night had closed as well, leaving only a narrow dark seam, as though the egg had changed its mind about hatching and drawn itself shut again.

Honestly, it looked expensive now.

Arthur stared without speaking.

"Elsa," he said at last, keeping his voice low. "Come see this."

Elsa was already awake. Of course she was. She had tied back her brown hair and was halfway through a set of squats in the corner, breathing hard. She stopped, crossed the room, and looked into the incubator.

Her eyes widened at once.

"It got darker," she whispered.

She crouched beside the table until her face was level with the egg.

"And it’s smooth. Dad, most of the texture is gone. The guide said this kind of hardening takes..." She glanced up at him. "That means it’s healthy, right? This is good?"

"It’s healthy," Arthur breathed.

Then he smiled.

In three weeks of memories that had never belonged to him, Jin had not once seen Arthur smile like that.

It wasn’t the small, damaged expression from the night before, the one that looked more like an apology than happiness. This smile came slowly. Warmth spread across Arthur’s worn face while he stared at the slate-coloured egg purchased with the last of his fifty thousand credits.

"I thought I’d wasted everything," he said, mostly to himself. "I really thought..."

His voice thickened before he could finish. He pressed his mouth closed and kept looking.

The smile stayed.

Elsa stood and caught hold of his arm, fierce enough to look ready for a fight and bright enough to win one.

"We’re going to make it work," she said. "I told you we would. I told you."

She turned towards the curtain.

"Jin! Wake up and come look. Your beast is changing. Jin, it’s darker, it’s healthy, come see—"

Behind the curtain, Jin remained flat on his mattress with the phone lying face-down against his chest and his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

He could hear how happy his father was without Arthur saying another word. Elsa, meanwhile, was throwing all of herself behind a future she had built from stubborn faith and a discounted egg.

Jin knew exactly why the shell had changed.

Four in the morning. Soul fatigue. Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny pieces of training sent into the beast while his family slept.

He could get up and tell them.

Right now, he could step through the curtain, explain what the phone did, and watch Arthur’s face find an expression even bigger than that smile.

"Coming," Jin called, making sure his voice sounded rough with sleep.

He still didn’t rise.

Let them keep this version for a little while longer.

A lucky egg. A healthy beast. One small miracle with an explanation they could accept.

It was easier than the truth.

It was safer.

And, Jin had to admit, keeping the secret was more entertaining.

The wall-screen switched on for its morning cycle while Elsa prepared the synth-paste.

It was an old set mounted high in the corner, with half its pixels dead. Every Outer Ring unit had one whether the people inside wanted it or not. The Association believed citizens should stay informed.

A shining Inner Core spire appeared on-screen while an unbearably cheerful voice filled the room.

"—and a reminder to all eligible sixteen-year-olds: the Academy Entrance Examination begins in six days."

Arthur stopped near the door, his coveralls still only halfway zipped.

"Top candidates," the announcer continued brightly, "will receive offers from the elite Inner Core academies, with full Tamer licensing and Inner Core residency for their families—"

Elsa’s hand slowed as she stirred.

"—mid-tier results place candidates in regional academies. Lower scores are assigned to logistics and support tracks."

The announcer’s tone remained pleasant. The meaning didn’t.

"As always, candidates who do not meet the minimum combat threshold will not receive Tamer certification. Last cycle, of registered C-Rank talents, fewer than four percent advanced to a licensed track."

For one second, that number occupied the whole unit.

Four percent.

Four out of every hundred children just like the one hidden behind the curtain.

Arthur finished fastening his coveralls. He didn’t comment. There was nothing he could say that Jin hadn’t already heard or understood.

"Six days," Elsa said quietly.

Her gaze moved first to the dark slate egg, then to the curtain. Her jaw tightened.

"Then we have six days to prepare him. The egg is already ahead of schedule. We can do this. We can."

Arthur squeezed her shoulder as he walked past.

"Lock the door after I leave."

At the threshold, he paused. That new, uncertain smile still lingered faintly on his face.

"Tell your brother..." His voice dropped. "Tell him it’s a good egg. Tell him I said that."

The unit’s blast-door sealed behind him with a hiss.

Jin had heard every word.

Six days.

Four percent.

Combat threshold.

He stored each fact the same way he stored everything else now. None of it became fear. It became a countdown. A deadline. The timer above a boss fight.

Six days to turn a sleeping rock into a beast capable of surviving a test built to remove children like him.

Less than a week ago, that would have been impossible.

This morning, Jin possessed a cheat that let him train a beast inside a cave with no real risk and transfer the progress into reality while everyone slept.

He sat up, rolled his neck, and opened the game.

The System had been waiting.

Before soul fatigue ended his session the previous night, Jin had returned to the Big Slime. He pulled the divided halves apart at the cave choke point, punished each opening separately, and finished the fight without losing a single hit point.

Apparently, the game had held back the completion notices until morning.

[First Steps Complete.]

[Tutorial Route: The Mossy Hollow cleared.]

[Reward: Inventory Capacity +10.]

His Inventory expanded around the herbs, coins, and Tiny Monster Core already stored there.

The Shop still offered nothing except question marks. The core still had no usable option attached to it. Rather than inventing some purpose and wasting it, Jin left the loot where it was.

The dungeon did not open.

A new window rose over the screen instead, outlined in a gentle gold he had never earned before. The System delivered its decision through calm, clipped lines, still referring to Jin as the host.

[Tutorial Complete.]

[The host has demonstrated understanding of core mechanics.]

[Main Quest Unlocked: Raise Your First Beast.]

[ Objectives: ]

[ — Hatch your bound beast. ]

[ — Reach 100% Synchronization. ]

[ — Survive the Academy Entrance Examination. ]

[ Reward: ??? ]

His eyes returned to the last objective.

Survive the Academy Entrance Examination.

It didn’t say pass.

It didn’t ask him to score well.

The requirement was to survive.

Jin studied that word the way he had studied the Shop and its three question marks. Another closed door inside the enormous, patient machine behind the phone.

The reward was concealed. Naturally.

The game never showed him the useful part before the work. It wanted him to grind first.

A smile nearly reached his mouth.

He moved his thumb to dismiss the quest so he could begin the morning’s farming run in Mossy Hollow.

The screen stopped him.

More accurately, the System interrupted its own notification. The quest panel remained visible while another alert pushed up beneath it.

This one wasn’t gold.

It wasn’t grey either.

The new colour was a deep violet that pulsed against the glass, something far too strange to belong anywhere near a tutorial.

A faint warmth spread through the phone in Jin’s hand.

[ ! Nearby Dimensional Signal Detected. ]

[ Downloadable Rift Located. ]

[ Distance: 0.8 km ]

[ Status: Dormant ]

[ Estimated Difficulty: UNKNOWN ]

Jin didn’t move.

He read the distance again.

Zero point eight kilometres.

That wasn’t out in the wasteland.

It wasn’t beyond the shelter walls.

The signal was inside.

A few blocks away. Somewhere beneath the same rusted ceiling he had slept under. Close enough that he could reach it on foot before lunch.

A Rift.

A pocket of unstable dimension.

The Association’s deep-scan arrays were supposed to find those. A Rift was the sort of thing that set off evacuation klaxons, sealed entire sectors, and brought licensed tamers running in full combat gear.

No klaxon had sounded.

No warning had appeared on the wall-screen.

The morning broadcast had spoken about six days and four percent. Nothing more.

The authorities didn’t know.

All their towers, arrays, and armoured gods had missed something less than a kilometre away.

The game had found it.

A cheap puzzle app on a cracked phone had sensed what humanity’s entire surveillance system had failed to detect. The same soul-engine that saw a dragon inside a discount rock had reached through reality, noticed a hidden tear, and quietly offered Jin the option to download it.

Violet light reflected in his eyes as he sat motionless in the grey morning.

One cold thought settled beneath everything else. It arrived quietly, but it changed the scale of the world around him.

It doesn’t just play the world.

His thumb hovered over the pulsing panel.

He didn’t touch it.

Not yet.

It sees things the world hasn’t found yet.

From the kitchen came Elsa’s humming as she stirred breakfast for the brother she believed in.

The dormant Rift continued pulsing on Jin’s screen.

It waited for him.

And it dared him to learn more than the people who ruled the world.