Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 56: The Sewer Had Teeth

Chapter 56: The Sewer Had Teeth

The sewer tried to eat Glitch before his tail had cleared the entrance.

That came a moment later. First, Jin checked the real one.

Glitch stood on the blanket while Jin ran a slow Appraisal over him. The results were exactly what he had waited a full day to see.

The leg was fully healed—not almost healed, not stable but weak. Healed. The repaired tissue now read the same as the surrounding muscle. His scales were dense and settled, his heartbeat steady, and the grey soul fatigue that had flattened them both after the Sync had drained from Jin’s skull overnight.

Twenty-four hours, exactly as ordered. Both of them had recovered.

Before doing anything else, Jin established a new rule. The empty cupboard had frightened him more than the Slime King ever had.

He would never again allow several days of growth to accumulate into a single High-load Sync. That transfer had consumed three days of food in twenty minutes, leaving his family short. Elena worked too hard underground for him to spend her rations carelessly.

From now on, he would cash out smaller loads, and only when there was enough food available to support them. The grinding was free. Building a stronger physical body wasn’t. No amount of clever gaming could outwit an empty pantry.

The rule settled firmly into place.

Then Jin opened the interface, because a new dungeon was waiting and the part of him that had once climbed a fence for a mythic spawn was already leaning forward.

[Rustwater Drain]

[Exploration Progress: 0%]

[Recommended Strength: Rank 1 Novice, 2-Star]

[Primary Hazards: Corrosion, Poison, Limited Visibility]

[Auto-Battle Unavailable: Safe Route Not Recorded]

No Auto-Battle. Of course not. The function only knew terrain Glitch’s avatar had already crossed. Jin would have to map this place manually—the old way, the fun way, the part of entering a new region that he actually loved.

The real Glitch settled onto the blanket, safe inside a two-room apartment forty metres underground.

His other body dropped into the dark.

For a moment, the contrast struck Jin all over again. One Glitch yawned, tucked his healed leg beneath himself, and prepared to nap. The other landed among poison and unseen predators with his scales raised and his golden eyes alert. Both were equally Glitch. Everything the avatar learned would eventually belong to the sleeping body—but none of its wounds ever would.

It was still unfair enough to make Jin want to laugh.

Rustwater Drain was nothing like Mossy Hollow.

Where the hollow had offered soft green light and gentle slopes, this place resembled a dead industrial cathedral. Enormous rusted pipes arched overhead and vanished into darkness, their seams weeping orange streaks. Narrow metal walkways ran between them, half-corroded, with entire sections missing. Green poison gathered around valve joints and fell in slow, patient drops.

Below the walkways, knee-deep black water covered the floor of the drainage system. It was still, thick, and reflected nothing.

Most of the map remained hidden. Fog of war pressed close to the entrance and swallowed everything beyond it: branching tunnels, overhead pipes, and the water disappearing beneath a low green haze.

Jin could hear things inside that darkness.

Slow ripples moved somewhere beyond the visible area. Something wet shifted inside a side tunnel. Occasionally, there came the heavy sound of an unseen creature submerging.

He couldn’t locate any of them on the screen, and every noise raised the hair on his arms in the best possible way. The entire dungeon was filled with unknown enemies and mechanics waiting to be understood.

Glitch strode forward as though he already owned it.

He had defeated the Moss-Crowned Slime King five times. He was now a 2-Star beast, glossy, strong, and personally convinced he stood at the top of every food chain he entered.

He stepped off the entrance ledge with complete confidence and planted one paw in the black water.

[Minor Corrosion Detected]

[Harden Effectiveness Reduced in Affected Area]

Glitch immediately regretted his attitude.

The water wasn’t merely dirty. It bit.

The corrosion didn’t strike his hardened scales directly. It crept between them, attacking the seams Harden couldn’t completely protect and slowly weakening the defence itself.

Lesser Regeneration activated. Warm energy gathered around the affected scales and began repairing the damage.

At the same time, Glitch’s stamina bar dropped.

Jin’s eyes narrowed. There’s the catch.

The skill could prevent gradual corrosion from wearing Glitch down, but every repair consumed stamina. Remain in the polluted water long enough, and regeneration would empty his reserves simply keeping the damage under control. The poison didn’t have to kill him. It only had to exhaust him until something else could.

Jin didn’t have time to examine the interaction further.

The rust moved.

Several flat patches clinging to a pipe below the waterline peeled away from the metal and latched onto Glitch’s flank.

[Rustwater Leech]

[Iron Quality]

[Rank 1 Novice, 1-Star]

[Traits: Corrosive Secretion, Energy Drain, Aquatic Ambush]

"Oh, that’s nasty," Jin said with reluctant admiration.

They had been disguised as rust, flattened against a pipe and waiting for something warm to wade past. Individually, the creatures were weaker than Glitch. Unfortunately, there were many of them, they were nearly invisible beneath the black water, and each attached leech leaked acid between his scales while draining his energy.

Glitch responded with the solution that usually worked. He activated Harden, tensed his body, and tried to shake them loose.

It was exactly the wrong answer.

The leeches clung more tightly to the hardened plates, flattening themselves until Glitch couldn’t catch them with his teeth. Their corrosive secretion continued seeping through the gaps.

Confusion and frustration surged through the bond. The defence that had carried Glitch through Mossy Hollow was helping his new enemies hold on.

Don’t fight them directly, Jin sent. Watch what they do.

Every time Glitch snapped at a leech, it pressed itself paper-thin against his hide. He couldn’t bite something that turned itself into a sticker.

But flattening itself against Glitch meant placing its body between his scales and any other solid surface.

Understanding passed through the bond from both directions at once.

Glitch lunged toward the nearest rusted pipe and dragged his leech-covered flank across it.

The creatures, trapped between hardened scales and corroded metal, burst.

Glitch scraped his opposite side against a walkway support. Two more leeches ruptured and fell into the water. He ground himself along the pipe with furious determination, crushing the remaining ambushers one by one.

Jin watched with genuine satisfaction. He hadn’t ordered Glitch to use the pipe. He had only directed his attention toward the enemy’s behaviour, and Glitch had invented the counter himself.

Not long ago, the young beast had needed guidance for the simplest movements. Now he was solving unfamiliar enemies inside a dungeon neither of them had seen before.

That mattered more than the twelve coins waiting at the end. Statistics could be accumulated through enough repetition. Combat intelligence had to be built decision by decision, and the avatar’s safe deaths had given Glitch opportunities no ordinary young beast could survive long enough to receive.

The final leech burst.

[Coins Obtained: 12]

[Corrosive Gland ×2]

[Rustwater Leech Added to Bestiary]

[Exploration Progress: 9%]

The reward was modest, but the old gaming itch had awakened completely. Mossy Hollow had stopped providing this feeling after Jin solved it. Here, every shadow represented a new enemy, every tunnel a hidden route, and every hazard a mechanic waiting to be broken.

For the first time since Glitch entered it, Rustwater Drain had lost something important.

It had lost the advantage of surprise.