Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 62: The Boss Could Wait

Chapter 62: The Boss Could Wait

Forty-eight percent. A second checkpoint, deep in the worst part of the map. Real progress—a foothold in territory that had been trying to gas them ten minutes ago. But only a foothold. The route past this point was still unrecorded, still manual, still a place Auto-Battle couldn’t safely go. He wasn’t automating the Lower Drain yet. He’d just earned the right to keep exploring it without dying on the way in.

And from the ventilation chamber, a side passage climbed to an observation ledge—a narrow gap in the wall overlooking a vast open space below.

Jin brought Glitch to the edge, and finally saw what had been shaking the pipes.

[Rotmist Salamander — Area Boss]

[Bronze Quality]

[Rank 1 Novice, 4-Star]

[Traits: Toxic Aura, Acid Breath, Rapid Regeneration]

[Recommended Preparation: Corrosion Resistance]

It filled a reservoir of glowing green waste at the bottom of the drain—an enormous pale salamander, coiled and sleeping half-submerged in the sludge that fed it. Its skin was translucent, and beneath it Jin could see poisonous energy circulating through the whole vast body in slow luminous currents, pulsing with each breath. And every breath pushed another wave of toxic mist rolling out across the reservoir, thickening the air, feeding the very meter that was already trying to drive them out.

The thing poisoned the room simply by existing.

Glitch went still on the ledge, and Jin felt the familiar heat come up the bond—the eager lean, the let’s, the little idiot sizing up a monster four times his size and finding the idea appealing.

"No," Jin said. "Absolutely not."

And this time he didn’t even have to argue himself into it, because the numbers were a wall.

The Caiman had been one Star above them, and beating it had required draining an entire lake to strip away its advantages. The Salamander was [two] Stars above Glitch. It regenerated rapidly—so even if a 2-Star body could scratch it, the damage would knit shut faster than Glitch could deal it. And it drowned the whole arena in poison that would empty Glitch’s toxin meter and his stamina at once. Walking in there now wasn’t courage. It was throwing away a life to learn a lesson they weren’t equipped to use yet.

Then Jin sat back, and something clicked, and he almost laughed.

Because the Engine had drawn him a map. Not with a quest marker—with the shape of the whole region. Farm the upper dungeon. Kill the Caiman for Corrosion Resistance fragments. Complete the skill. Use it to survive the Lower Drain. And then, grown and prepared and acid-proofed, come back for the Salamander. The recommended-preparation line wasn’t a hint. It was the intended route, laid out in order, and Jin had already been walking it without realizing.

"Okay," he told the sleeping boss quietly. "You’re last. I see what you’re doing."

Glitch grumbled, deeply, the whole way back to the checkpoint.

The days after that fell into a rhythm, and the rhythm was good.

Jin ran the routes—the complete upper loop and the partial lower one—on Auto-Battle, allowing the recorded paths to carry Glitch through the farmable sections while his real body dozed. Jin had also become better at managing himself. He no longer stared at the interface for eighteen hours. He started the automation, put down the phone, rested his eyes, drank water, and ate whenever food was available. His headaches receded into the background. He had learned his limits the same way he learned a boss—by repeatedly running into them until the pattern became obvious.

Glitch learned the toads. Throat and skull, sac intact, every time; the poison-cloud accidents stopped entirely.

And the Caiman came back.

It respawned daily, and with the drainage wheel already cleared and operational, each rematch became faster—drop the water, force it onto dry ground, exploit its turning circle, and finish it. An elite that had nearly destroyed their checkpoint was gradually reduced to another entry in Glitch’s morning farming schedule.

The second Caiman clear gave him coins and a scute and no fragment, and Jin swore at the drop rate on principle.

The third gave [Corrosion Resistance — 2/3].

The fourth, finally, gave [Corrosion Resistance — 3/3], and Jin was combining them before the victory screen had finished loading.

[Skill Book Created: Corrosion Resistance]

Corrosion Resistance: Reduces damage caused by weak acids, polluted mana, and corrosive environments. Effectiveness decreases against concentrated or higher-ranked corrosion.

He read the small text and nodded. Balanced, like everything the Engine handed him—it would take the edge off the ambient poison and the leech-acid, but it wasn’t going to make him immune to a 4-Star salamander’s breath. Good against the environment. Not a cheat against the boss. Exactly the tool the intended route called for.

[Compatibility Confirmed]

[Digital Avatar Learned: Corrosion Resistance]

The avatar only. Not the real Glitch—that stayed in the bank with everything else, unsynced, waiting on a pantry that couldn’t pay for it yet.

But with the skill on the avatar, the Lower Drain opened up. The toxin still climbed, just slower now, blunted at the edges, and Glitch could hold position long enough to push the safe route deeper and map more of the mist-choked tunnels. Jin extended the checkpoint network, expanded the recorded path, and watched the exploration percentage crawl upward.

He did not go near the Salamander. It sat at the bottom of his screen, sleeping and breathing poison, patiently last on the list.

The final report, on the last night of the waiting period, read:

[Rustwater Drain Exploration: 63%]

[Coins Accumulated: 436]

[Corrosive Materials Collected: 27]

[Avatar Deaths During Recorded Routes: 1]

[Unsynchronized Growth Load: Moderate]

[New Skill Pending: Corrosion Resistance]

That single Auto-Battle death nagged at him. He pulled the log and found it—a Rustlung Toad, sitting disguised in a stretch of the route the automation had run a hundred times safely, that had simply not been there on the previous hundred passes. The recorded path was safe until the dungeon quietly put a new ambush on it. A good reminder, he thought, filing it. Automation was a powerful thing and a lazy man’s dream, and it was still just running yesterday’s map. The dungeon got a vote too.

The bank sat at [Moderate] now and climbing, and it pulled at him—a whole skill and days of growth, right there behind the button. But he held the line. The food problem hadn’t changed. A Moderate Sync would eat more than the family had, and Elena was still working underground for every tin on the shelf. The growth would keep. It always kept. That was the one mercy of the bank.

The neighbourhood had gone tense in a way Jin could feel through the walls.

Two weeks of waiting had worn everyone thin. In the corridors, families talked in low voices about rankings and cutoffs and which schools took which scores. The candidates who’d tested with him had stopped pretending to be calm about it.

Elsa refreshed the examination page roughly every ten minutes, out loud, narrating each time it failed to update. "Still nothing. Still nothing. How does it take two weeks to divide some numbers—"

"Hundreds of thousands of numbers," Jin said, not looking up from his phone.

"You don’t even care."

"I really don’t." He did, a little. He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.

Then, the night before release, his phone chimed with something that wasn’t a dungeon.

[Shelter 7 National Entrance Examination Notice]

[Result Processing Complete]

[Individual Scores and National Top 1,000 Ranking Will Be Released Tomorrow at 08:00]

Jin looked at it for a long moment.

He looked at the Moderate growth load sitting in the bank, and the sleeping real Glitch curled on the blanket with a fully healed leg and glossy scales, and the official notice glowing over the top of it all.

And for the first time in six days, the dungeon on his screen stopped feeling like the most important thing on it.

The boss could wait.

Tomorrow, the world would finally tell Jin what it thought he was worth.