Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

Chapter 8: Optimized Diet

Chapter 8: Optimized Diet

The egg had started producing heat.

Arthur clearly did not like that.

By the time Jin woke, his father had already taken it out of the incubator. The beast-care guide had been very clear about not doing that, but Arthur stood beneath the ceiling light with the egg resting in both hands, slowly rotating it as if he might find something rotten on the other side.

"Elsa, it’s warm." There was a strain in his voice Jin had never heard before. "Touch it. The regulator is set to twenty-nine. The shell shouldn’t be hotter than the regulator."

Elsa put two fingers against the slate shell. Her eyes widened at once.

"That’s okay," she said quickly. Too quickly. "Healthy eggs make heat. Strong egg, strong heat. Isn’t that right?"

"The incubator could be malfunctioning and cooking it." Arthur turned the egg again, his mouth pulled tight. Its slate color had deepened overnight. The seams were almost black now, while the silver gloss had spread across the shell until it shone like iron rubbed with oil. "Or there’s something wrong with the egg. Maybe we messed up. Elsa, this is all we have. If I ruined it because I bought some broken secondhand incubator—"

Jin knew that look.

The thin hope Arthur had carried home from the hatchery was folding back into the same fear that had been there before.

He pushed himself upright.

"It’s absorption," Jin said.

Both heads swung toward him.

Phone already in hand, Jin climbed off the mattress and walked over. He pointed the screen at the egg just as he had dozens of times during the past week. This time, though, he added a little performance. He narrowed his eyes at the display, made a serious face, then tapped it twice.

The puzzle game covered the screen as usual. The Engine behind it was not even active.

It did not have to be.

Arthur and Elsa only needed to see a C-Rank kid using the single C-Rank talent everyone believed he possessed.

"Data Appraisal," Jin said, sounding bored, as if he were reading routine results. "Hold on."

Arthur stopped moving. He held the egg close against his chest.

"Shell density increased by twelve percent," Jin continued, inventing figures while the screen showed nothing useful. "That’s the darker color. A denser shell keeps heat in better, so what you’re feeling is retained heat. The regulator isn’t cooking it. Its mana absorption has improved, and it’s drawing ambient mana more efficiently than it did three days ago."

He tapped the phone once more for credibility.

"Metabolic rate is higher too. It’s using nutrients faster. It’s above the healthy baseline. Way above it."

Jin lowered the phone.

"Nothing’s breaking. The egg is thriving, and the incubator is working."

No one spoke for several seconds.

Arthur finally let out a long, unsteady breath. Whatever he had been carrying since the hatchery seemed to leave with it, and the panic disappeared from his face.

"Thriving," he said quietly.

"I said it was fine." Relief made Elsa’s voice shake anyway. "Strong egg."

"It does need a tighter routine," Jin added casually. He was already turning toward his mattress. A lie worked better when the person telling it acted like the matter was settled. "Keep it at twenty-nine while it rests, then twenty-nine point three during absorption. It can’t go outside that range. Feed it more often too, but reduce each portion. The cheap mana-paste is fine. Split the same amount into four feeds instead of two."

He gave a loose shrug.

"It’s developing quickly. Smaller meals, faster intake. Standard stuff."

None of it was standard.

It was nonsense assembled from the exact words his talent was supposed to deal with: density, intake, absorption, feed cycles. Of course a C-Rank kid with Data Appraisal would say things like that about an egg. As far as the world knew, adjusting beast diets was the only useful thing Jin could ever contribute.

Arthur began nodding before he had even finished.

"Four feedings. Twenty-nine to twenty-nine point three, matched to its cycle." He looked down at the egg, almost awed. "I can manage that. I’ll put alarms on my phone." Then he glanced at Jin’s screen. "You can see all of that through the app?"

"That’s the one useful thing this phone does," Jin replied.

It was the only completely honest line in the entire act.

No one else in the room knew that.

"All right," Arthur said. "You take care of it, then."

Jin had one knee on the mattress when he stopped.

"What?"

Arthur returned the egg to the incubator with both hands. He settled the moss around it, using the same careful motions he had repeated at least forty times, then raised his head.

"You manage the temperatures, the feeds, all of it." His face was more open than Jin was used to seeing. "You’re the one who can understand what it needs. I can’t read it. Elsa can’t either. And those forums don’t know a damn thing. You look at the egg and you know."

Arthur nodded toward the phone.

"Besides, it was always meant to be yours. The egg belongs to you. So raising it is yours too."

Jin had not expected those words to hit him so hard.

Arthur had poured fifty thousand credits into the egg. Every account had been emptied. It represented the final thing the family still owned.

Now he was placing it in the hands of a son who slept until noon. The same kid mocked by the whole Outer Ring. The kid Arthur had once apologized to an egg for receiving.

He was still giving Jin control of it.

Because Arthur believed he could handle it.

"Yeah." Jin’s answer came out rougher than intended. "Okay. I’ll take care of it."

"And don’t miss the feeding times," Elsa said. There was little force behind the warning. She was watching him differently as well. He was still her irritating brother, apparently, but now he was an irritating brother who understood things. "Use real alarms. Ones you don’t ignore."

"I use alarms," Jin lied.

"You have literally never set one."

"Then I’ll begin a new tradition."

Elsa snorted and went back to breakfast.

Arthur gave Jin a single clap on the shoulder before walking off without any clear destination. Jin sat on the edge of his mattress, phone in hand, suddenly aware that the whole future of an egg was now sitting behind that screen.

The family’s relying on me.

Three weeks earlier, the thought would have sent him retreating straight into his game.

Anything outside the screen was dangerous. Responsibility was dangerous. Caring about something meant giving the world another thing it could take away.

This time was different.

He had a cheat code for this responsibility. The cheat code worked. Because of him, the egg was thriving.

For once, being needed did not feel like another trap waiting to close.

It felt like a quest he might actually finish.

As the others left the unit one by one, Jin began his first task as a responsible beast-owner.

He opened the forums.

Research, he told himself. He needed proper information about feeding times, safe temperature ranges, and care routines. It would also help him maintain his cover. A kid with Data Appraisal should be able to discuss all of that without hesitating.

Some of his reading really was research.

Most of it was spent browsing Iron-tier discussions to see what people said about the creature in his incubator.

They did not say much that was kind.

"If your kid pulls a Rock Lizard at enrollment, just start the logistics application now and save everyone time," said the highest-rated post, with three thousand upvotes.

"Grey Rock Lizard evolution path: → Slightly Larger Rock → Paperweight → Doorstop (Epic)."

A reply underneath added, "don’t forget the Divine form: Ballast."

"At least it won’t run away in a fight. It knows it’s a rock."

"My condolences. The good news is you’ll never lose it in tall grass."

Jin read all of them with the calm of someone who had already endured three hundred people laughing at him face-to-face. Anonymous strangers on a forum barely counted as pressure after that.

He was not angry. His pride was not hurt.

He treated the comments like any other information.

Everyone in the shelter considered an Iron-tier Grey Rock Lizard worthless. They would keep thinking that until the exact moment they could no longer afford to.

Jin was beginning to see the advantage in that.

When people underestimated you, they protected you without realizing it. The armor cost nothing, lasted forever, and your enemies wore it for you.

He closed the forum and opened the Engine.

The Baby Lizard remained in the Mossy Hollow, exactly where he had left it. Jin moved it ahead.

Three slimes approached from separate directions.

It was the same kind of swarm that had killed the lizard on the first night.

The first slime lunged. The lizard stepped aside.

It rolled beneath the second without being touched, turned, and allowed the third to fly past and crash into a rock.

Three attackers.

Three clean evasions.

No hesitation.

Jin studied the tiny black lizard, then remembered the forum thread still sitting open in another tab.

One corner of his mouth lifted.

"Awful news," he murmured. "The paperweight learned footwork."